Abstract

This volume contains twenty-one selected articles and lectures written by the author over a period of some two decades. The remarkable range of McCulloch's abilities and interests is attested to by the diverse character of the contents, which range from neurophysiology to poetry and a scathing attack on Freud and psychoanalysis. Despite the dazzling diversity of topics treated, there is a readily discernible theme underlying all of McCulloch's work. It is represented explicitly in such papers as the classic "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity," a progenitor of more recent automata studies, and "Why the Mind is in the Head," McCulloch's contribution to the Hixon Symposium. This theme is, in the author's words, "the attempt to found a physiological theory of knowledge" or "experimental epistemology." Philosophers who take identity solutions to the mind-body problem seriously will applaud McCulloch's ingenious and sustained efforts to bridge the gap between conceptual analysis of mental concepts and painstaking scientific investigation of the physical "embodiments" of mental processes. Nevertheless, many philosophers will also be irritated by the way in which McCulloch tends to use mentalistic concepts. When nerve impulses are treated as atomic propositions and thinking is unhesitatingly attributed to a reverberating neural circuit, one cannot help but feel that genuine philosophical issues are in serious danger of being obscured rather than illumined.—V. R. M.