Mind Time

There is an fascinating article in the July-August 2004 edition of American Scientist magazine called “Free Will and Free Won’t.” (Unfortunately, only an abstract is available to non-subscribers. It’s a great magazine though and well worth the subscription price.)

The article mentions the work of the neurologist Benjamin Libet, who just so happens to have a new book out on Harvard University Press called Mind Time: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness. The book is a short survey of his 50 years in the field of understanding the relationship between the objective and the subjective experience of consciousness.

The book is actually quite poorly written, which is a shame as the subject matter is so compelling. I’d tend to place as much blame on the editor as the author here. There is quite a bit of repetition and awkward reference to material that had just been covered. Libet is obviously excited by his discoveries and this is perhaps an overwrought effort to guide novices through to his conclusions which are so seemingly paradoxical.