The Book of Minds

How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens

De: Philip Ball

Narrado por: James Cameron Stewart

Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human?

Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will?

Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball's brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.

©2022 Philip Ball (P)2022 Tantor

The book was like an engrossing conversation but the delivery of

The narrator’s style sounded more like he was making a grand announcement with every sentence. I found this distracting. I preferred a more conversational reading style. Once I got past that, the topic was super interesting and entertaining.

Good book. Unlistenable narration.

Like the author, interested in the topic. But this is the worst match between reader and text that I’ve ever experienced in professionally produced work. It’s uncanny that anyone it the production team could have thought this was working.
Feel so badly for the author

A good 2 hour lecture hidden in this 18 hour book

This is a relatively recent title, so it was surprising to find so much filler that is decades old and of questionable relevance to the current discussion. A couple of hours worth of newish material to ponder, if you can endure the painful rehash of every google entry even remotely related to this topic, not presented just as history, but with the added pleasure of listening to Ball's interpretation of each trivial bit. At length.

Maybe not boring if this is the first book on this topic you have ever read or listened to.

The author's habit of constructing long, convoluted, and digressive sentences didn't combine well with the narrator's style, which tried to emphasize every third or fourth syllable in a kind of singsong that sounds like a mix of a wartime newsreel and an auctioneer.

Works as performance art, I can definitely see having this on at a gallery show, with the right pieces.