Las sombras de la mente : Hacia una comprensión científica de la consciencia

Roger Penrose, professor at Oxford University and author of works such as *The Emperor's New Mind* and *The Way of Reality*, tackles in *Shadows of the Mind* the ambitious task of arriving at a scientific understanding of the human mind, which, in his view, cannot be reduced to the simplistic schemes of those who maintain that conscious thought operates like a computer and can be explained in terms of computational models. He begins by demonstrating that "understanding" goes far beyond mere computation, and attempts to discover how consciousness arises "from matter, space, and time." Penrose argues that while neural signals may behave as events explainable in terms of classical physics, the connections between neurons are controlled at a deeper level, where activity must exist at the quantum/classical boundary. The neuronal level described by our usual representations of the brain is merely a shadow of a deeper activity where the physical basis of the mind must be sought: the quantum mechanical field that humans experience as consciousness and free will. His bold proposal compels him to delve into complex and innovative aspects of science, but he leaves open a path so that, through a selection of the book's most accessible sections, any reader can easily follow his argument.