I’ve always wanted to write a book that explains cognitive psychology to the interested lay reader, and this book is it. There are a few good text books around, but nothing that explains all the important ideas in the scientific study of cognition to a wider audience. I expect progress to be slow.

I hope to post the book online as it progresses to seek feedback. I was impressed by the collaborative aspect in the writing of Charles Leadbeater’s book We-think. At least I wouldn’t have just myself to blame for any errors.

I can’t even settle on a title. I liked Steven Pinker’s How the mind works, but that’s gone now. If it follows on from Talking the talk, what about Thinking the thought? Perhaps not.

This book, provisionally called The mindful brain, is currently in a long outline form. I’m slowly making progress. Very slowly. Currently I am working on making it more appealing to the lay reader by lightening it up in a serious way, and making it more autobiographical. The subtitle is “Why we behave as we do”, which sounds ambitious, but given time, I want to explain to non-psychologists what we understand about why we do as we do, and how the mind is the interface between the body and brain and the physical and social worlds.

It’s now up to the 19,540 word mark, parts have been used for teaching, and soon might be available for posting online outside Dundee.

Update: I’ve added the controversial subtitle Why we behave as we do. I’ve also decided to focus on higher-level cognition, so have decided to drop the chapter on perception and instead add one on statistical approaches to social psychology. Indeed, the purpose of the book is to explain how the mind does quick and dirty processing in order to survive, and how we get by on it very nicely most of the time.