The Self and its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism.: By Karl R. Popper and John C. Eccles. New York: Springer International, 1977, 597 pp., $17.90.

It is a remarkable event for an outstanding philosopher, Sir Karl R. Popper, and an equally outstanding neurophysiologist, the Nobel prizewinner Sir John C. Eccles, to have collaborated on a book on the mind-body problem. Although not unexpected, it is also quite remarkable that the position the authors adopt is that of metaphysical mind-brain dualism and interactionism. Eccles has long advocated this view (see, e.g., 1953)(and 1966), as have a few other eminent neuroscientists, notably Sir Charles Sherrington (1940) and Wilder Penfield (1975). These men, however, are vastly outnumbered by neuroscientists, philosophers, and others to whom dualism represents an alien mode of thought. In regard to the mind-body problem psychoanalytic theorizing has traditionally been antidualistic (see Deutsch, 1959), although most often merely by implication. Because that is the sense in which Popper and Eccles use the concept, I shall in the following for the most part refer to mind-body dualism simply as interactionism or as the interactionist view of the mind-brain relationship.

The book is in three parts. The first, philosophical, part is written by Popper. The second part by Eccles, although stretching into metaphysics, is predominantly neurophysiological. A series of dialogues between Popper and Eccles make up the third and final part of the book. Since it has the greatest general interest, I shall concentrate in this review on Popper's contribution. The book is not easy to read. But it is important, mainly because of