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Who's in Charge?: The Neuroscience of Decision-Making, the Notion of Free Will and the Idea of a Determined World Paperback – August 24, 2012
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“Gazzaniga is one of the most brilliant experimental neuroscientists in the world.” —Tom Wolfe
Michael S. Gazzaniga has been called the “father of cognitive neuroscience.” In his remarkable book, Who’s in Charge?, he makes a powerful and provocative argument that counters the common wisdom that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes we cannot control.
There is no "you" consciously making decisions. So how do we make decisions? How can we have free will if we don't pull the levers of our own behavior?
What moral and legal implications follow if we don't have free well? Who's in Charge is a primer for a new era in the understanding of human behavior that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications.
His well-reasoned case against the idea that we live in a “determined” world is fascinating and liberating, solidifying his place among the likes of Oliver Sacks, Antonio Damasio, V.S. Ramachandran, and other bestselling science authors exploring the mysteries of the human brain.
- Print length272 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateAugust 24, 2012
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.68 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100061906115
- ISBN-13978-0061906114
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“Gazzaniga is a towering figure in contemporary neurobiology. . . . Who’s in Charge? is a joy to read.” — Wall Street Journal
“A fascinating, accessible, and often humorous read for anyone with a brain! And a must-read for neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and criminal attorneys.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Fascinating. . . . Gazzaniga uses a lifetime of experience in neuroscientific research to argue that free will is alive and well.” — Salon.com
“Terrific. . . . [An] engrossing study of the mechanics of thought.” — Publishers Weekly
“A fascinating affirmation of our essential humanity.” — Kirkus Reviews
“From one of the world’s leading thinkers comes a thought-provoking book on how we think and how we act. . . . An exciting, stimulating, and at times even funny read that helps us further understand ourselves, our actions, and our world.” — CNBC.com, Best Books for the Holidays
“An utterly captivating and fascinating read that addresses issues of consciousness and free will and, in the end, offers suggestions as to how these ideas may or may not inform legal matters.” — Daily Texan
“[The] scope of Michael S. Gazzaniga’s Who’s in Charge? is huge―it tackles the age-old debate of free will [and] offers a lot to consider about what Gazzaniga deems the ‘scientific problem of the century.’” — Portland Mercury
“Fascinating. . . . [An] intriguing and persuasive treatment of the moral implications of modern neuroscience.” — Reason.com
“This exciting, stimulating, and sometimes even funny book challenges us to think in new ways about that most mysterious part of us―the part that makes us think we’re us.” — Alan Alda, actor and host of Scientific American Frontiers
From the Back Cover
There is no "you" consciously making decisions. So how do we make decisions? How can we have free will if we don't pull the levers on our own behavior? What moral and legal implications follow if we don't have free will? Who's in Charge? is a primer for a new era in the understanding of human behavior that ranges across neuroscience, psychology, ethics, and the law with a light touch but profound implications.
About the Author
Michael S. Gazzaniga is internationally recognized in the field of neuroscience and a pioneer in cognitive research. He is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many popular science books, including Who’s in Charge? (Ecco, 2011). He has six children and lives in California with his wife.
Product details
- Publisher : EccoPress; Reprint edition (August 24, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061906115
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061906114
- Item Weight : 7.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.68 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #54,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #30 in Neuroscience (Books)
- #31 in Cognitive Neuroscience & Neuropsychology
- #62 in Popular Neuropsychology
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Michael S. Gazzaniga is internationally recognized in the field of neuroscience and a pioneer in cognitive research. He is the director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of many popular science books, including Who’s in Charge? (Ecco, 2011). He has six children and lives in California with his wife.
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Customers find the book easy to understand and engaging. They find the content interesting and useful for understanding brain and human behavior. However, opinions differ on the content - some find it informative and important, while others consider it anecdotal evidence rather than scientifically argued.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book easy to understand. They appreciate the author's clear explanations and engaging prose. The facts are presented in a simple way that non-scientists can understand. Readers mention it's informative and humorous, making them rethink some of their preconceived ideas.
"...book is not, by any means, an easy read, it is very interesting, very informative, and also somewhat humorous. Overall, I really enjoyed the book...." Read more
"...Again, his ideas here flowed very well and it made me rethink some of my preconceived notions about my own self and my actions. His book has..." Read more
"...'s colloquial style of writing makes the book enjoyable and easy to understand. I also respect the stance he took on the issue of free will...." Read more
"...For me this book was an absolutely fascinating look at various studies in neuroscience and the real world consequences of them and I would recommend..." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They find it relevant and a valuable resource for future generations.
"...It is very easy to follow and Gazzaniga keeps the reader interested. He uses humor and true stories to make the book more relatable...." Read more
"...Although this is one of the most intellectually stimulating books I have ever read, it did present itself with a few major flaws...." Read more
"...Gazzaniga's colloquial style of writing makes the book enjoyable and easy to understand. I also respect the stance he took on the issue of free will...." Read more
"...Gazzangia's first- hand experiences with split brain patients is fascinating and provides some amazing accounts into the left hemisphere interpreter..." Read more
Customers have different views on the book's content. Some find it interesting and useful for understanding how decisions are made in the brain. They appreciate the wide variety of topics covered and the steady flow of uncompromised knowledge. However, others feel the content lacks convincing scientific arguments and is based on anecdotal evidence rather than systematic science. There are also complaints that the book lacks supporting experimental results.
"...3. Fascinating topics and the author does a wonderful job of breaking them into subtopics.4...." Read more
"...author's thesis is concerned, I remain unconvinced due to a lack of supporting evidence and a far too brief look at competing theories and finer..." Read more
"This book has a lot of interesting information, about the way decisions are made in the brain. I learned a lot from it...." Read more
"...fresh with examples in a number of fields, and at times startling in the information revealed, a learning experience." Read more
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- Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2013The purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of Michael Gazzaniga's Who's in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. I chose this book to learn more about the concept of free will and how our brains work to make decisions, consciously and unconsciously. While this book is not, by any means, an easy read, it is very interesting, very informative, and also somewhat humorous. Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I think it is written very well for a topic that is very complicated. I would recommend this book for someone who is interested in the concept of free will, but hasn't done much previous reading on the subject.
The book is broken down into seven chapters. The way the chapters are divided really helps to understand the different aspects of this subject. Each chapter is further broken down into subtopics within the topic of the chapter. In chapter one, The Way We Are, Gazzaniga explains the puzzle of free will. He explains how humans like to believe that we are free to act the way we want to act and to make whatever choices we want. This chapter discusses the science of the human brain, at least as much as can be discussed with the current knowledge. Throughout the first chapter we are walked through topics including: brain development, equipotentiality, neuronal connections and neurospecificity, and experience. Gazzaniga goes on to explain the evolution of the human brain, physical differences, connectivity changes, and types of neurons. He ends the chapter by explaining how all human brains are not equal.
The next chapter describes how functions are distributed throughout the brain and the concept of localized brain functions. The world of the unconscious is analyzed. This chapter emphasizes the importance of studying patients with brain disorders and focuses on split-brain patients. A significant amount of the current knowledge about the two hemispheres of the brain has come from the analysis of split-brain patients. Gazzaniga then explains the concept of consciousness, what it is, and how it works.
Chapter three focuses on what the interpreter is and how it relates to our perception of free will. This chapter also discusses the unconscious and why we feel unified. We see why input is so important, how to hijack the interpreter, and what it all means.
After the first three chapters, we have a pretty good understanding of the structure of the brain, how different parts are responsible for different functions, and how the parts of the brain work together. This is all essential knowledge to understand what the concept of free will means. The next chapter shifts from focusing on the structure and function of the brain to focusing on the concept of free will and abandoning this concept. This chapter introduces the idea of determinism, "the philosophical belief that all current and future events, actions, including human cognition, decisions, and behavior are causally necessitated by preceding events combined with the laws of nature." This implies that all events are predetermined and could be predicted in advance. This idea is very important throughout the rest of the book. Throughout this chapter, topics such as physics, chaos theory, and quantum mechanics are used to emphasize the concept of determinism. This chapter also includes a section on how to rile a neuroscientist.
Chapter five introduces the social aspect of the human mind. It explains social behavior and how humans were born to be social, including sections titled: "Big brains and competition, or the origin of party schools" and "The bigger the party, the bigger the brain." The chapter discusses the question of coevolution and the domestication of the wild man. The idea of motor neurons, mental states, understanding other's emotions, and mimicry is also emphasized in this chapter. The chapter ends by discussing dilemmas of self-interest.
Next, the focus shifts to how all of this can be very important for our future, how it applies to the law. The sixth chapter tries to answer the question of who is to blame, me or my brain? Neuroscience is beginning to appear in the courtroom as evidence. We need to know who is responsible for our actions. Are we to be held accountable if we really had no control over what we did? This chapter discusses the problem of individual variation when it comes to brain structure and function. The last chapter is an afterword and brings all of the chapters together.
This book is very scientific, but is broken down into sections that are very easy to follow. Gazzaniga uses analogies and anecdotes to make the reader able to relate and understand the information. It is very easy to follow and Gazzaniga keeps the reader interested. He uses humor and true stories to make the book more relatable.
The first three chapters focus on the structure and functions of the brain. I found this very helpful, informative, and important to understanding the concept of free will that is discussed in great detail throughout the rest of the book. I really like the way Gazzaniga uses stories and humor to keep the reader interested as well as to help the reader understand the point he is trying to make. If you do not have a solid understanding of the concepts throughout the first three chapters, the rest of the book will be difficult to follow. This is information that I have studied for many years, as I am a Biology major, but it is always interesting to see how people present information in different ways, especially something so complex as the human brain. I thoroughly enjoyed Gazzaniga's approach to explaining this information and how he makes is so relatable.
Once the book shifted to discussing the concept of free will, how it works, and abandoning the concept, it was a little more difficult for me to follow. I enjoyed reading this part because it was challenging, yet still entertaining. Usually discussion of physics and quantum mechanics would scare me away, but I was very interested in seeing how he was going to relate it to the concept of free will. A couple times throughout the fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters I had to stop just to soak in all of the information. I found the idea of determinism to be very interesting and I kept coming back to the question "How?" I really enjoy this type of challenging reading that is important to everyone's life, yet many people do not take the time to even read something like this.
By the time I had finished the book, I felt like my whole perspective on the idea of free will was completely changed. I really didn't understand the debate about it before reading this book and now I feel as if I have been given so much information that I'm not sure what to do with it all. In my opinion, it is always better to have more information than not enough, and that is exactly what this book provided.
One quote from the book that I found to be very thought provoking was the first part of chapter four, "The human interpreter has set us up for a fall. It has created the illusion of self and, with it, the sense we humans have agency and 'freely' make decisions about our actions."
The thing I found most thought provoking, however, was when Gazzaniga said, "You'd never predict the tango if you only studied neurons."
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject who is willing to take the time to really understand it. I found it very enjoyable, although it is a challenging read. I would particularly recommend this book to someone who has background knowledge about the brain and how it works. It is much easier to follow if you know the terminology and if you already know what certain areas of the brain do or how they function. Gazzaniga does a good job of explaining it, but it is a tough subject to learn, and more is always better. This is a book that needs to be read slowly and you have to pay attention to all the different parts or you will get lost. The subject matter of this book is not meant for light reading. It will be very enjoyable for someone who is really wanting to learn about this debatable topic.
- Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2013Dr. Michael Gazzaniga is not only one of the most intelligent cognitive neuroscientists that I have had the pleasure to read about, but he is also very capable of conveying this intelligence in a way that is very easy to understand. In 2011, Dr. Gazzaniga wrote the book, “Who’s in Charge”. This wonderful piece looks at how our minds control who we are and what we do. He argues against the common belief that our lives are wholly determined by physical processes and he argues that in the very same way we are responsible for our actions.
There are a few major flaws that present themselves throughout the book. One flaw is that the author doesn’t define what he means by free will. This ends up being a major problem because the definitional problem is often the center of the debate for free will. Another flaw is that he fails to mention modern philosophers that discuss free will, selfhood and downward causation and it left me wanting a bit more in this area. Even with these flaws, the book causes one to really think about what it means to be conscious.
In 2011 HarperCollins published the book “Who’s in Charge” written by Michael S. Gazzaniga, born 1939. Dr. Gazziniga is the director of the SAGE center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1964, he received a Ph.D. in psychobiology from the California Institute of Technology. He has made important advances in our understanding of consciousness and how the two hemispheres of the brain communicate with one another.
The book has one central argument, that even though physical laws govern the physical and our brains our part of this physical world, these physical laws don’t exactly govern our behavior and our conscious selves. He discusses the idea that determinism weakens our view of human responsibility. This would allow someone to argue that they did not commit the crime, instead their brain did it. He talks about these ideas in the perspective of law men, psychologists, neurologists and even physicists.
The beginning of the book lays groundwork so that the average person may understand the neurology behind free will. It details how humans may not be different than other animals because of our large brain to body ratio and instead because of the connectivity of the brain. It was important to talk about this because we need to find what gives humans consciousness. It is possible that the insular cortex gives us our “mind”. After this, he uses a split brain patient from his earlier work to explore the possibility of dual consciousness (which then he later disproves). This groundwork was laid out in such a way that I never felt “lost” later in the book, which I enjoyed greatly.
Later on in the book he dives in to why it is important to look at how our consciousness affects our daily lives. A main topic here was that our unconscious is responsible for so many of our daily actions with our conscious mind only gives us a false explanation. A good example used here was that if you saw a rattle snake you would jump away quickly. You would say that it was because you were scared but in reality it would be because your unconscious mind made you jump. I had to read this part a couple times through, not because it was confusing, but sometimes unbelievable in a stimulating sort of way.
The final portion of the book talks about the implications of free will in a law and personal responsibility setting. A major point here was that if free will was in fact a false idea, and everything we do is in fact pre-determined, then everything we do would not be under our control and therefore not our fault. In this book he not only fought the idea that we lack free will, but he also explained how detrimental it would be to society if our courtrooms believed this. Again, his ideas here flowed very well and it made me rethink some of my preconceived notions about my own self and my actions.
His book has some major connections to neuroscience. First of all, Dr. Gazziniga used neuroscience to try and pin point the exact location of consciousness. He thought that if we could find what part of the brain gives us consciousness then we could possibly determine what makes us “us”. Then we could also use the connections in certain brain regions to try and determine what a person’s next action would be. If we can determine what a person’s next action is with 100% accuracy then it would tell us that a person’s actions are pre-determined and that we have no free will.
During my time reading his book, Dr. Gazzaniga has showed true understanding over multiple fields of science. In an earlier section he gracefully details how physicists see the world. Since I am no physicist myself, it could have been very easy for him to go over my head in this section. Instead he very carefully described what some major physicists believed and how that relates to the neuronal connections in our brain. He also never tries to convey his opinion without making you think long and hard on the issue. It is important to note that if you are going to read this book that you should be prepared to be challenged about your beliefs.
Overall I have to give this book a 4 star rating. Never before have I read a book about neuroscience, the law, psychology and physics that tied these subjects together so seamlessly. Although this is one of the most intellectually stimulating books I have ever read, it did present itself with a few major flaws. Despite these issues, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has found themselves wondering why people do what they do. This book truly is an intellectual feast.
Top reviews from other countries
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Natalia dos ReisReviewed in Brazil on May 22, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Ainda não li mas gostei muito
Parece muito interessante, aproveitar treinar o inglês.
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JoaquínReviewed in Spain on November 10, 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars A rather confusing expotition
Las ideas son interesantes y los argumentos están basados sólidamente en datos, pero las digresiones y la estructura de la exposición oscurecen la comprensión de la tesis principal.
- Kindle-KundeReviewed in Germany on November 30, 2024
1.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't explain any of the questions
User "Seven" has written a good explanation of why the book is poor in every sense possible .
- VirReviewed in India on August 20, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Great book
- ricardoReviewed in Australia on August 20, 2024
1.0 out of 5 stars Used book
When I bougth this book I can't imagine was a used book. Didnt saw any information about it.