PHILOSOPHY OF MIND Brains, Consciousness, and Thinking Machines

Professor Grim tries to cover a lot of ground in these 24 half-hour lectures, in which he examines "intriguing questions regarding minds and brains that run from the mysteries of consciousness to prospects for thinking machines." Speaking as if he’s addressing a classroom rather than a microphone, Grim has a genial, if slightly effete, style and a gift for colorful and apt metaphor. He doesn’t hesitate to take sides in the intellectual debates he discusses. The relationship between his topics is not always clear, partially because the order in which he presents them seems sporadically arbitrary, partially because of the large specialized vocabularies he introduces—not to mention the complexity of the issues he addresses. That complexity makes the accompanying printed outline particularly helpful. Y.R. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2009]