Is the mind the same thing as the brain? Not at all. The brain is an organ, three pounds of protein, fat, and water. It is no different in principle than a kidney or a liver. The mind, though, is made of ideas, hopes, images, memories, words. Those weigh nothing, take up no space. They're not even physical.Does the brain produce the mind? It can't. There is no scientific theory of how a physical organ could produce a non-physical idea. The brain and the mind are related, but we don't know how.This nonfiction book describes the mind without pretending it is a puppet of the brain. It proposes a structure and operating principles for how the mind works without using biological explanation. That lets us understand mental experience on its own terms. Bill Adams (writing as William X. Adams and William A. Adams) is a cognitive psychologist who left the academic life for the information technology industry to find out if the mind is like a computer. He writes nonfiction in philosophical psychology, and psychological science fiction to dramatize what he discovered. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
