The Book of Minds

This “fascinating and illuminating account” explores how we might perceive the mind if we didn’t put humans at the center of our understanding (The Guardian Observer).

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?

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. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.”

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? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we?

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.

“Illuminates much of what makes human minds unique.” —Publishers Weekly

“Comprehensive and far-ranging.” —Library Journal

“A most thought-provoking book.” —Psychology Today