Dr. Walter's overall impressive monograph reads like a heavily edited notebook documenting the authoršs progress from psychiatrist to philosopher, and as such provides an invaluable checklist about how thorough and rigorous one's own reflections on this topic have been. It is to be hoped that the next step for like-minded medical practitioners will be to explore the sources of the often tenacious psychological resistance to the idea of mind/brain identity since, analogous to the 'indirect' method of proof in mathematics, this is in practise the only useful working hypothesis - "free-will" being nothing more, really, than an assertion about a presumed absence of causation - no matter what one's personal predilections or intuitions are about the ultimate conclusion. Rather than, in the manner of advocates, endlessly constructing and revising arguments pleading for our personally favored final verdict, we would hereby become free (sic) to work towards a reasoned conclusion in an unprejudiced manner, simply by assuming that neurobiological research might indeed prove capable of approaching ever closer to the limit of what can possibly be discovered about the functioning of the human mind, and then seeing how far we get before this hypothesis either runs into a contradiction or becomes too far-fetched to be plausible. In the hands of dedicated multi-disciplinary practitioners, philosophy should then evolve into an effective theoretical dimension of neurobiology at its most general and abstract level, calling attention to critical experiments which might be feasible even now, as well as to novel approaches which sooner or later will surely be called for.

One vexing question remains at this point, "what are we to believe/presume in the meantime?", considering that the ethical and moral basis of civilized behavior is felt by many to depend upon a quasi-dualistic answer to the question of personal responsibility (but see E.M.Curley's Behind the Geometrical Method: A Reading of Spinoza's 'Ethics' for a venerable alternative point of view). It's regrettable that a golden opportunity, not to say philosopher's obligation, to finally relegate this fiercely emotional factor in the free-will debate to the realm of colossal misunderstanding - the sociological fallacy - has once again been passed up. Free-will as an ideological basis for holding miscreants responsible for their 'dastardly deeds' is, to be sure, a concept which has mercifully evolved into a dictum of a justified degree of punishment rather than permitting unbridled retribution towards offenders who, as we now recognize, may not have acted at a 'willful' psychological level at all but were victimized by 'extenuating circumstances'. Nevertheless, the very notion of 'justification' puts punishments inflicted on such a basis outside the motivational domain of either effective negative conditioning ('behavior therapy') or protection of society ('preventive detention') and becomes, rather, a rationale for inflicting a dosed amount of pain such that offenders get their 'just deserts'.

Instead of striving for maximally effective (de)conditioning procedures with a minimum of suffering all around, the present moral code thus legitimizes punishments imposed more with respect to what an offender is felt to 'deserve' than to their expected efficacy or social utility. This judicial philosophy has its bed-rock in the concept of free-will, which was born and nurtured together with the biblical doctrines of 'original sin' and 'eternal damnation', and without which there would no longer be any ethical basis for perpetuating vestiges of such archaic vindictive beliefs. Mythology is an all-pervasive aspect of mankind's 'collective consciousness' and, given the tenor of the never-ending discussion, this particular myth may well serve some useful purpose - but only if a clear distinction is maintained between story telling and problem solving. In particular, we will then no longer have to worry that insights into the neurological basis for self-consciousness could negate our inborn 'theory of mind', and therefore lead us to start treating one another in a purely mechanical fashion as if everyone else were "only a zombie" (a consequence so feared by Roger Sperry, for one: for discussion of this point, see Corner 1976).

As shown by post-hypnotic suggestion and split-brain experiments, human beings are virtuosos in constructing dogged rationalizations for whatever behaviors they find themselves engaging in... including, I imagine, being kind and considerate. By confining pseudo-explanations to their proper mythological domain we could learn to accept them as being 'true' in some sense and, consequently, not necessarily inadequate as ethical foundations for humane social behavior. In this way we would become liberated from potentially tormenting conflicts with intellectual conclusions arrived at by strictly objective methods of logical analysis. By continually reminding us of the essential difference between these two types of human creativity, neurophilosophy could thus turn out to be a highly 'liberating' enterprise after all!

Corner, M.A. (1976) The nature of consciousness: some persistent conceptual difficulties and a practical suggestion. [in Progress in Brain Research, vol. 45, Perspectives in Brain Research, edited by MA Corner and DF Swaab; Elsevier, Amsterdam; pp. 471-475].

Corner, M.A. (1987) Of Mouse and Mind ­ Prolegomena to a Psychoneurobiology of Development. [inaugural lecture as professor of Developmental Physiology, University of Amsterdam, 46 pp. (available on request: m.corner@nin.knaw.nl].

Corner, M.A. (1994) Reciprocity of structure-function relations in developing neural networks: the Odyssey of a self-organizing brain through research fads, fallacies and prospects. [in Progress in Brain Research, vol. 102, The Self-Organizing Brain: from Growth Cones to Functional Networks, edited by J. van Pelt, M. Corner, H. Uylings and F. Lopes da Silva; Elsevier, Amsterdam pp. 3-31].

Corner, M.A. (1999) ): Can we ever understand free will? [Journal of Consciousness Studies (JCS-online Extracts: June 12 posting)].

Damasio, A. (2003) Feelings of emotion and the Self. [in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 1001: The Self: from Soul to Brain, edited by J. LeDoux, J. Debiec and H. Moss; pp. 253-261.]