Description

The introduction introduces the central question of the book: how can we understand minds that are different from our own? Philip Ball examines the difficulty of defining what a “mind” is and argues that human beings often judge other forms of intelligence by comparing them only with human experience.

The author presents the idea that there may be a broad “space of possible minds”—a range of ways that intelligence, awareness, perception, and decision-making could exist. Instead of assuming that the human mind is the standard model, the book explores many possible kinds of minds found in nature, technology, and even hypothetical life beyond Earth.