Now I will be reading Steven Pinker’s book “How the Mind Works”. Inside the primary chapter, I find it rather hard to leave down the words. Always am I writing things down and making notes of these. It’s in this first chapter, or at the least where I’m at in this section, where Pinker elaborates on the attractiveness and value of the ether theory.

 
“It’s but one of the amazing ideas in intellectual history, for it solves one of the puzzles which make up the “head-body problem”: how to join the ethereal universe of meaning and purpose, the things of our mental lives, with a physical hunk of matter such as the brain.”

 
He later goes on to demonstrate this, demonstrating that the head computes advice, that links to other info, which links to other info. This constant linking of advice can link together one’s recollection, to ones will, to one’s physical interaction. He used the analogy of a child who would like to see his grandmother by taking the bus. When the child failed to enjoy the company of his grandmother, then the child wouldn’t usually go. Additionally, he wouldn’t go in the event the bus would take another route. The computational theory links together selection of actions with one’s will.

 
With the computational theory, I find a fascinating link. The head and body will not be independent, but instead, the head is a performance part of the brain. In this sense, let us use an analogy with the computer. For critics comfortable with Pinker’s work, he does, in fact, say his resistance to the brain/computer metaphor as the brain is wholly different and enough more capable of activities.