The aim of this book, originally published in 1984, was to bring together a number of approaches to this important topic. Significant advances had been made in the two decades before publication in our understanding of many aspects of the coding that occurs along the visual pathways. The major developments had been associated with probing the nature of "logical" processes, whether physiologically or psychophysically, and relatively less attention had been devoted to the problem of how such locally coded knowledge is put together to yield coherent representations of spatially (and temporally) extended patterns - that is, to figural synthesis. Thus, while a great deal was known about the responses of individual cells in the visual system to controlled stimulation, and about the specificity of the orientational and spatial-frequency tuning of channels assessed psychophysically, there had been much less discussion of how such knowledge could be brought to bear on the general problems of understanding pattern recognition.

How was the standard model of the mind developed? Is it adequate? And is there a place in this model for the creative genius of artists, scientists, and mathematicians? This book looks at how scientists investigate the nature of the mind and the brain, providing answers to these important questions. It opens with a description of the historical roots of cognitive science and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the standard model of the mind, including its inability to account for the many dramatic features of human achievement. The final chapter develops the notion that human creativity and the unfolding of human consciousness demand two things: that we acknowledge the central role that ideals play in human knowledge and conduct and that such ideals have no role in the standard model. Brave New Mind proposes a new image of humankind that accommodates the place of ideals and creativity in cognition and life, without abandoning the scientific ideals of empirical soundness and theoretical rigor.