Besides a detailed discussion of neuroscience, Schwartz makes several interesting philosophical arguments. First is an argument from evolution. If, as Edelman and others suggest, the conscious mind cannot affect the brain, how can it contribute to our survival? If it has no survival value, why would it have evolved? Schwartz rejects the notion that consciousness could be a spandrel, a term advanced by Gould and Lewontin to describe accidental byproducts of evolution that were not specifically selected for by evolutionary pressure. There's no way to determine who is right as yet, but to explain the most astonishing aspect of human existence--that we are conscious of our existence--as an accidental byproduct of evolution does indeed seem weak.

Second, Schwartz argues from quantum physics, relying on the assistance of a colleague, physicist Henry Stapp. According to the predominant interpretations of subatomic physics, the universe at its tiniest grain is not solid, but fuzzy, and comes into focus only when observed. Most physicists, not being psychologists, are content to leave unexplained how a brain actually observes anything. However, Schwartz paraphrases physicist Eugene Wigner asking, "If the position of atoms (and thus, for our purposes, the state and arrangement of neurons, since neurons are only collections of zillions of atoms) have no unambiguous existence independent of the consciousness of an observer, then how can that very consciousness depend on those same atoms?"

Schwartz, following Stapp, suggests that "mental force" in a way not yet understood, allows the mind to bias what happens in the brain. That is, at the point where a decision is to be made, the brain is delicately balanced between two cascades, one which would have the action go forward, and one which would inhibit it. Even if the effect of the mind is very tiny, if the brain were in such a delicately balanced state (imagine a nickel balanced on its edge) it could push it in one of two ways. Diehard materialists scoff at this notion, arguing that mixing quantum mechanics and consciousness is an attempt to conflate two separate mysteries.

I am very much on Schwartz's side, because the most profound event of my life involved the application of mental force, as Schwartz would call it. I suffered from chronic eye pain over a period of eight years, which grew to the point where I could no longer do my job. I saw a parade of eye doctors, until an ophthalmologist at UCSF (the same institution where Libet did his research) suggested that the volume of pain I experienced was the result of my heightened attention to minor signs of irritation. At that moment, I heard an inner voice--the voice of my mother, yelling at me, "Stop reading! You'll ruin your eyesight. You'll go blind by the time you're thirty." She used to say this frequently, and planted in my mind the notion that I could "ruin my eyes." Following this epiphany, I realized that my chronic pain was psychosomatic. After building for 8 years, it faded away permanently in 48 hours, once I had reframed my thoughts. Somehow, my mind had influence over the volume of pain I experienced.