The mechanical understanding of mind bridges both the gap between the mental and the physical and the gap between the rational and the dynamical. In addition to seeking a better understanding of the relation of mind to body, one specific motivation in pursuing this understanding stems from an interest in finding new means with which to characterize and analyze limits to rationality, a central interest common to psychology, economics, and artificial intelligence. Pursuing this motivation requires facing philosophical problems that have puzzled people for millennia.

Although science has answered some of these philosophical questions about nature and mind, it has left others unanswered. For example, one ancient question concerns determinism, or more generally, lawfulness. Many views hold the mind to exhibit essential freedoms not enjoyed by matter; other views hold the mind subject to various laws of psychology, economics, sociology, and anthropology, and argue about the precedence of these competing regulations. Though scientific progress has inspired some of the competing variants and the development of quantum theories has complicated the stark alternatives contemplated by earlier generations, scientific evidence has done less than one might expect to support or weaken the cases for the fundamental alternatives. The liberty or lawfulness of the mind remains controversial.

Unresolved questions do not represent failures of science. They represent the human condition.