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Though The Computer Between My Ears will address issues of interest to philosophers, such as the nature of metaphor and the structure of language, It will not be simply an academic volume. These ideas are complex, but the only reason they are thought to be inaccessible is the language typically used by the philosophers who discuss them. The physicist Richard Feynmann observed that there is good science and bad science, and one way to tell if something is good science is that it can be explained in simple terms to people with no advanced training. The same is true of good philosophy: if the ideas are sound, they do not need dressing up in arcane language. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book about fairly esoteric subjects in classical philosophy. But by writing about these subjects in a clear and accesible way, the author was able to make clear (to millions of readers) that these ideas are central to life in an age of technology.
The approach is important, as well. Many of the scientific issues presented in The Computer Between My Ears are not at all esoteric, but are apparent wherever one looks. Linguistic debates about the structure of language syntax can seem arcane, but examples are everywhere. The movie "Wayne's World," for one, added a new rule of syntax to the English language by putting "not" at the end of sentences. Psychological arguments about "intentionality" and the consciousness of machines can seem intimidating, but many of the ways that computers and brains are dissimilar can be seen in the difficulty you have in interpreting action from a still photograph. (Is the baby falling or running?) The Computer Between My Ears will use everyday experiences--though seldom in the obvious way--to elaborate many of these complicated points about linguistics, psychology, and genetics in a way that is rigorous and accessible, and possibly even enjoyable to read.
Many writers about language, I note, know a great deal about language except how to wield it understandably. As one philosopher put it:
That is, writers should write so people can understand what they mean.
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