Main description:

This book examines what seems to be the basic challenge in neuroscience today: understanding how experience generated by the human brain is related to the physical world we live in. The 25 short chapters present the argument and evidence that brains address this problem on a wholly trial and error basis.

The goal is to encourage neuroscientists, computer scientists, philosophers, and other interested readers to consider this concept of neural function and its implications, not least of which is the conclusion that brains don't "compute."

Contents:

Preface

PART I. TWO REALITIES

Chapter 1. Solving Problems

Chapter 2. Objective and Subjective Reality

PART II. Computation

Chapter 3. Algorithms

Chapter 4. Coding for Computers

PART III. ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS

Chapter 5. Neural Networks

Chapter 6. The Resurrection of Neural Networks

Chapter 7. Reinforcement Learning

Part IV. perception

Chapter 8. What We Perceive

Chapter 9. Lines and Intervals

Chapter 10. Angles

Chapter 11. Lightness and Darkness

Chapter 12. Empirical Ranking

Chapter 13. Color

Chapter 14. Colorimetry

Chapter 15. Motion Speed

Chapter 16. Motion Direction

Chapter 17. Size

Chapter 18. Stereopsis

PART V. Linking OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE

Chapter 19. Stimuli and Behavior

Chapter 20. Associations

Chapter 21. Mechanisms

Chapter 22. Reflexes

PART VI. THEORIES

Chapter 23. Feature Detection

Chapter 24. Statistical Inference

Chapter 25. Information Theory

PART VII. SELF AWARENESS

Chapter 26. Awareness

Chapter 27. Summing Up