Gazzaniga M.S. Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain

HarperCollins Publishers, 2011. — 163 p. — ISBN: 978-0-06-190610-7.About the Author. Michael S. Gazzaniga is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, the founding director of the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project, and a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of Sciences. He lives in California.There is this puzzle about everyday life: we all feel like unified conscious agents acting with self-purpose, and we are free to make choices of almost any kind. At the same time, everyone realizes we are machines, albeit biological machines, and that the physical laws of the universe apply to both kinds of machines, artificial and human. Are both kinds of machines as completely determined as Einstein, who did not believe in free will, said, or are we free to choose as we wish?Chapter One - The Way We Are.
Chapter Two - The Parallel and Distributed Brain.
Chapter Three - The Interpreter.
Chapter Four - Abandoning the Concept of Free Will.
Chapter Five - The Social Mind.
Chapter Six - We Are the Law.
Chapter Seven - An Afterword.