Why Choose This Book? : How We Make Decisions

by Montague, Read

• ISBN13: 9780525949824
• ISBN10: 0525949828
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781101665619
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-02
• Publisher: E P Dutton

Summary

With a new perspective on the science of decision-making from the center of the computational neuroscience revolution, Why Choose This Book? shows what the latest brain science reveals about the crucial events of everyday experience - the choices we make. From how we decide what we consume to even the romantic, ethical, and financial choices we make, Read Montague guides the reader through a new approach to the mind with an accessible style that is both entertaining and illuminating. In taking apart the mind's decision-making machinery, Montague first illustrates how our brains are like computers that are slow, small, fuzzy, and cheap - and began with goals like food, water, and sex. Second, he reveals how simple goals like these then turn into ideas like beauty, love, and terror with a life of their own. Finally, he explains how a value system in our heads controls those ideas so we can make good decisions - and how that physical system can break down leading to bad decisions, addictions, mental illness, and even large economic disasters.

Author Biography

Read Montague is a professor in the department of neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine, director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab, and director of the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Why Did He Do That?	vii
1. Computers That Care
How Desperation Built Value into Brains	1	(22)
2. The Brain Is (Almost) Perfect
It's Slow, Noisy, and Imprecise	23	(34)
3. My Rabbit Knows What to Do
How Planning Makes Decisions in Advance	57	(30)
4. Sharks Don't Go on Hunger Strikes
And Why We Can	87	(32)
5. The Value Machine
And the Idea Overdose	119	(43)
6. The Feelings We Really Treasure
Regret and Trust	162	(36)
7. From Pepsi to Terrorism
How Neurons Generate Preference	198	(21)
8. Our Choice
It's Not Your Mother's Soul, but It's Still Alive	219	(29)
Epilogue Are Humans Computable?	248	(15)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	263	(2)
ENDNOTES	265	(34)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	299	(24)
INDEX	323