Why Brains Don't Compute

This book examines what seems to be the basic challenge in neuroscience today: understanding how experience generated by the human brain is related to the physical world we live in. The 25 short chapters present the argument and evidence that brains address this problem on a wholly trial and error basis. 

The goal is to encourage neuroscientists, computer scientists, philosophers, and other interested readers to consider this concept of neural function and its implications, not least of which is the conclusion that brains don't 'compute.'

Dale Purves is the George B. Geller Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences where he remains Research Professor with additional appointments in the department of Psychology and Brain Sciences and the department of Philosophy at Duke University. After earning a B.A. from Yale, an M.D. from Harvard and additional postdoctoral training at Harvard and University College London, he joined the faculty at Washington University School of Medicine in 1973.  In 1990 he became  the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke Medical Center and was subsequently Director of Duke's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. He also served as the Director of the Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore .