Sublime

The prime impetus behind this enthusiasm is a form of brain imaging called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an instrument that came of age a mere two decades ago, which measures brain activity and converts it into the now-iconic vibrant images one sees in the science pages of the daily newspaper.

Judgments of responsibility depend upon the overall complexion of one’s mind, not on the metaphysics of mental cause and effect.

believe that nature (including the human mind)

You are the activity of your neurons.

There is no central planner that can look down and say: ‘It looks like signals would flow better if that neuron over there was connected to this one here.’6 That is why the brain needs to overproduce and prune.

For example, our surmises regarding the subtle function of neural processes within the brain are profoundly constrained by the fact that the brain did not evolve in order to understand itself.

Worldviews share the neural network’s fuzziness. They are not precise, but they’re frequently close enough. They can be wildly inaccurate. It isn’t accuracy that counts, however; it’s utility. They may be sloppy, but they render solutions to real world problems fast. As neural-net builder Hopfield says, “Biology, by and large, is not interested in

Libre-arbitre

or, better, a collection of perceptions—a tightly woven bundle of neurally encoded predictions geared toward keeping your body alive.