The Oxford Companion to the Mind

The title of my review comes from the first sentence of the new edition of the Oxford Companion to the Mind, first published in 1987 and which I reviewed at the time. The statement indicates the editor's own interpretation, elaborated later in his introduction when he refers to the 'wonders of the mind and how it lives in the brain'. But first, an acknowledgement. The publication of this new edition represents a magnificent editorial achievement: the amount of work that must have gone into it is truly mind-boggling given the extent of detail and the sheer number of contributors involved. Although many entries from the 1987 edition survive in some form, most have been extensively revised and updated.

Nor is this surprising given the extent of new work in the field (the new edition runs to just over 1,000 pages where the 1987 was around 850). Consider the fact that brain scanners were only just being invented as the first edition went to press! The editor tells us that publication was in fact held up so as to include an article. Such technology has shaped the way we think about the mind. Then in the 90s the topic of consciousness became respectable (The Journal of Consciousness Studies dates from 1994). The new edition contains a much longer entry on qualia and an extensive mini-symposium on consciousness in which a number of well-known writers express their views, among them David Chalmers, Sir Roger Penrose, Daniel Dennett, Ian Glynn, Nicholas Humphrey, Sir Brian Pippard and Steven Rose; notably absent here is a contribution from Max Velmans.

On the biographical side, entries are confined to those who have died, which, as he points out, spared the editor the embarrassment of explaining to colleagues why they had not been included. Needless to say, one of the games played by reviewers is to complain about people left out! So although Roger Sperry merits 2 1/2 pages, Sir John Eccles and Sir Karl Popper, both of whom held unfashionable dualistic views, are omitted.

The entries relating to neuroscience are comprehensive, explaining in plain language the intricacies of brain function, perception, sleep and dreams, memory and language. Both general psychological and philosophical issues are explored: the mind-body problem, free will and the neural correlates of will in brain imaging (a new article by Sean Spence). There is a section on Indian ideas of the mind and an excellent new entry on science and religion by John Polkinghorne, but the near-death experience only appears indirectly in an article on depersonalisation.

No Network review would be complete without commenting on the entries under parapsychology. The editor himself contributes the entry on 'paranormal'. His discussion is careful and measured, including a long paragraph on C.D. Broad's concept of basic limiting principles with respect to the relationship between the paranormal and science. Gregory comments that 'we remain uncertain about the powers and limits of the human mind, so claims of the paranormal can hardly be dismissed out of hand'. He adds that clear-cut paranormal phenomena demonstrating disembodied mind might show brain-mind identities to be untenable, a conclusion that many readers of this Review may well have reached! He then concludes that 'we may seriously doubt whether there are any such phenomena'.

When one finds that the authors selected to cover parapsychology, out-of-body experiences, extrasensory perception and psychokinesis are the late Chris Evans, Richard Wiseman and Susan Blackmore, most readers will know what to expect by way of sceptical bias. Having said this, much of the treatment is thorough. Sue Blackmore's piece on OBEs discusses both experiments and theories, but the uninitiated reader might be misled by her objective sounding statement that 'on balance the evidence suggests that nothing leaves the body during an OBE and that paranormal phenomena do not occur during NDEs. Likewise her entry on ESP, which does not cite Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe claims that very little progress has been made despite thousands of experiments and that 'ESP is either extremely rare or does not exist'.

Richard Wiseman contributes entries on conjuring and psychokinesis (PK). In the latter short entry Dean Radin's book is cited but it is pitted against Alcock. He does present both arguments for and against the existence of PK, but the overall impression is that not much progress has been made in this field either. It is a great pity that the late Bob Morris, Koestler Chair of Parapsychology in Edinburgh was not invited to contribute (nor is his colleague John Beloff) since his writing reflects genuine balance; and Dean Radin might have been asked to write something about his work on meta-analysis of parapsychological experiments. However, the position of the book and its editor reflects the overall consensus within psychology and philosophy, so one should not be surprised.

Having said all this, this is a volume that many readers will want to own as an in-depth work of reference and scholarship and will make an ideal birthday or Christmas present for some time to come.