Patricia S. ChurchlandPatricia S. Churchland
Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain Paperback – 8 August 2014
by Patricia Churchland (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 229 ratings
Edition: 1st
At the heart of Touching a Nerve is the question of what happens when we accept that everything we feel, think and experience stems not from an immaterial soul but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains. Patricia Churchland, one of the pioneers of neurophilosophy, explains what the latest brain research into consciousness, sensory experience, memory and free will can tell us about the enduring philosophical and ethical questions about what the self is, how our personalities are created and what determines our decisions and behaviour. As Churchland reveals, once we accept that our brains determine everything about who we are and how we experience the world, neuroscience offers new, critical insights into a fascinating range of ethical and
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Review
An introspective, thought-provoking work of nonfiction that will promote intense discussion.-- "Library Journal"
It is hard to conceive of a better guide to this difficult terrain than the MacArthur-award-winning Ms. Churchland...[She] writes with surpassing clarity, elegance, humor and modesty.--Abigail Zuger "New York Times"
Makes beautifully clear how complex and contingent the simplest brain business is.--Adam Gopnik "The New Yorker"
Marvelous...A trustworthy guide, [Churchland] gives comfort not by simplifying the research but by asking the right questions.--Jascha Hoffman "New York Times"
In this remarkably moving and deeply personal book, Patricia Churchland, one of the founders of the field of neurophilosophy, reminds us all that we not only have a brain and how it works, but she plumbs the depths of philosophy's biggest questions from a neuroscience perspective and thereby opens new vistas about ourselves and our humanity.--Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Believing Brain
Bold, deeply insightful and biological to the core, with a warm and soothing touch of humanity.--Joaquín Fuster, author of The Prefrontal Cortex
[A] beautiful, unpretentious, enchanting exploration of mind, morals, and the meaning of life.--Owen Flanagan, author of The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World
A spellbinding journey into the workings of the human brain and the relevance of neuroscience to our daily lives. It will interest anyone who thinks that good philosophy needs be grounded in good science or who is simply curious about how understanding the brain can help us make sense of the human condition. A terrific read!--David Livingstone Smith, author of Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave and Exterminate Others
Like a refreshing, bracing prairie breeze blowing away the cobwebs and obfuscation of so much philosophy and neuroscience. It is dazzlingly clear, down to earth, and often funny.--Alison Gopnik, author of The Philosophical Baby: What Children
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About the Author
Patricia Churchland is the author of Touching a Nerve: Our Brains, Our Selves. She is professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
Customer Reviews:
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 229 ratings
Patricia S. Churchland
I am Professor of Philosophy (emerita) at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Research. As a philosopher, I focus on the interface between traditional philosophical questions (what is knowledge, where do values come from) and new developments in neuroscience and genetics. I call this sort of interfacing "Neurophilosophy" and my 2011 book (Braintrust) links morality with the brain and its evolution. My newest book is Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain (2013).
My husband, Paul Churchland and I work closely together, which is fortunate because at first, most philosophers dismissed our work as "not real philosophy". Mark Churchland, our son, and Anne Churchland, our daughter, are both neuroscientists (at Columbia and Cold Spring Harbor respectively). Our golden retrievers, Duff and Farley, distribute a lot of fur about and swim whenever they get the chance. It is hard to say how smart they are, but they are excellent models for attachment and bonding.
An extended interview can be found on The Science Network: www.tsn.org and on Philosophy Bites http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com
You can see Pat interviewed on The Colbert Report January 23 2014.
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About the Author
Patricia Churchland is the author of Touching a Nerve: Our Brains, Our Selves. She is professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
Customer Reviews:
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 229 ratings
Patricia S. Churchland
I am Professor of Philosophy (emerita) at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Research. As a philosopher, I focus on the interface between traditional philosophical questions (what is knowledge, where do values come from) and new developments in neuroscience and genetics. I call this sort of interfacing "Neurophilosophy" and my 2011 book (Braintrust) links morality with the brain and its evolution. My newest book is Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain (2013).
My husband, Paul Churchland and I work closely together, which is fortunate because at first, most philosophers dismissed our work as "not real philosophy". Mark Churchland, our son, and Anne Churchland, our daughter, are both neuroscientists (at Columbia and Cold Spring Harbor respectively). Our golden retrievers, Duff and Farley, distribute a lot of fur about and swim whenever they get the chance. It is hard to say how smart they are, but they are excellent models for attachment and bonding.
An extended interview can be found on The Science Network: www.tsn.org and on Philosophy Bites http://www.philosophybites.libsyn.com
You can see Pat interviewed on The Colbert Report January 23 2014.
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5.0 out of 5 stars GreatReviewed in Canada on 12 May 2019
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Great book
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Pat Cadigan
5.0 out of 5 stars Patricia Churchland Is BrilliantReviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2019
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Patricia Churchland writes exceedingly well and clearly about neuroscience. She makes it fascinating without resorting to wild speculation or provocative statements to jazz up the material, nor does she present opinion or wishful thinking as fact. Her research is impeccable and her book is, as they say, unputdownable. I don’t think neuroscience has ever been so compelling.
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Jorge G
5.0 out of 5 stars Un texto esencialReviewed in Mexico on 26 December 2016
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Es una obra (en el momento en que escribo esto es la más reciente de la autora) que se ubica a medio camino entre la divulgación y la comunicación técnica de un área en la que P. Churchland es una de las principales exponentes: la neurofilosofía. En filosofía, la postura de P. Churchland se clasifica como "identidad psico-neural" o materialismo eliminativo.
En un libro en terminado rústico, portable y editorialmente impecable.
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Nicolas
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelent read!Reviewed in Spain on 28 March 2017
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I am a mechanical engineer and I could understand 100% of this book. PS Churchland speaks honestly about what is known and what is not yet known about our brains, how it works and how it doesn't work sometimes. I have read some of the works of Sam Harris and Dan Dannet and I discovered that Touching a Nerve is a good complementary and sometimes very diferent point of view.
I strongly recomend it!
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Herbert Gintis
5.0 out of 5 stars A Relentless and Dogged Search for Truth in Defiance of the Spin DoctorsReviewed in the United States on 18 February 2014
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Churchland, who is both neuroscientist and philosopher, tries to accomplish two goals in this book. The first is to tell us what modern neuroscience has to tell us about the brain and its relationship to human behavior and consciousness. The second is to do so in a popular language that conveys the information accurately without the professional message delivery system as found in the professional journals. Now, I have nothing against the professional manner of communication, but it in fact as difficult to understand as some of the biochemical terminology that is known only to those who deal with it every day in the lab.
For an instance of successful communication, Churchland says to the reader, "You are not just a big rat," by which she means that studies of neuronal structure and hormonal pathways that describe rat behavior do not necessarily transfer to humans. You have to be really dense not to understand this. Otherwise, why could she possibly want to tell us something that we all obviously know. None of her readers has fur, whiskers, and a tail. Nevertheless, you will rarely find in an academic article a sentence like "humans are not just big rats," and for good reason.
Like many people, I am deeply fascinated by the nature of the brain and what it tells us about human nature and behavior. As a young academic, I turned to the French phenomenology philosopher Merleau-Ponty, who analyzed the neurological science of his time with prescience. When Oliver Sacks came along, and the incredible movie Awakenings (Robert de Nero and Robin Williams), and I have followed the literature ever since. With increased popularity, however, has come a huge amount of what one might call "neuro-woo,'' literary and romantic excesses of interpretation that mix a few facts from scientific studies with a large dollop of the author's own half-baked prejudices and wishful-thinkings. Readers are not well served by neuro-woo. Churchland is a sustained antidote to neuro-woo.
Now some readers have faulted Churchland with being a "reductionist" because of her avoidance of neuro-woo. I think this is a misdirected criticism. Of course the brain is a complex dynamic adaptive system with emergent properties beyond mere communication among synapses, just as a computer is more than a bunch of electrons shuttling back and forth among solid state devices. However, we can say exactly how a computer goes beyond electron dynamics because we have well-developed models of computer architecture and dynamics. We know virtually nothing about the larger structure of the human brain.
Where is consciousness located in the brain? Churchland's discussion of consciousness in mammals, and its specialization in humans, is authoritative and very enlightening. Consciousness is, however, distributed over the whole brain, and we haven't the faintest idea how that works. We can locate a single structure in the thalamus that, when disabled, deactivates consciousness, but that is about it. Churchland conveys this quite clearly. However, her presentation of the comparative anatomy in the brain of mammals strongly supports the notion that the origins of consciousness go back to the evolution of the class Mammalia, and all the major known brain areas involved in consciousness have remained essentially conserved over this evolutionary period.
Churchland is a delight to read, she is very informed in several fields, and unless you have some sort of personal chip on your shoulder, you will appreciate this book.
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Kristina Coop-a-Loop
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September 17, 2014
Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain by Patricia S. Churchland is about 25% interesting and 75% tedious. It is not the “fascinating excursion into neuroscience and philosophy” promised by a review in Publisher’s Weekly. Churchland also does not write in a “lively, down-to-earth style.” She is not an accomplished wordsmith and her awkward phrasing and piling on of technical, scientific language transformed even the most interesting sections into mind-numbing tedium.
Overall, Churchland (a neurophilosopher, whatever that is) discusses philosophy as it specifically pertains to the questions of the human soul and consciousness. This book aims to throw the cold water of reality on the idea of a soul and other non-physical substances (magic) as being the source of our consciousness, our sense of self, our memories, etc. Churchland demonstrates very clearly that we are the sum of our parts; we are physical beings and everything we feel, sense, remember is due to the miraculous organ we all have (but some of us don’t use): the brain.
As an atheist, I certainly don’t believe in the idea of a soul or other magical substances that transcend the physical world. I can accept that I perceive the world due to neurons and that “efference copy” is one of the mechanisms that allows me to know the difference between me and not me—anything not my physical body. It is a bit disconcerting to have your sense of “me-ness” summarized as complex interactions between hormones and brain circuitry, but that just highlights what a marvelous bit of engineering the brain is. As it evolved, it learned, and here we are. In science-fiction literature, there is much discussion of the android/robot yet humans are in some sense already that—just made of flesh. So the ideas Churchland discusses are incredibly interesting and her scientific knowledge is impressive. However, that’s also the problem—the amount of scientific terminology and illustrations she dumps on the reader. Sometimes it’s not so much the info dump that is the problem, it’s her inability to convey the information without overwhelming the reader. In the end, it’s not all that difficult to understand: a physical perception is created by this brain part and that’s passed to another brain part and hormones are activated and then you think something or see something or do something. Unfortunately there is too much scientific name-dropping, and that, along with the very complex processes she is attempting to explain, created confusing and tedious sections that sucked all the fun out of learning. Her writing style is less than scintillating and she is not “folksy” or “lively.” I often get the sense she is out of touch with modern American culture and she overgeneralizes a lot. In her epilogue, she calls a raven “statuesque.” What? That’s weird. Marilyn Monroe was statuesque. Uma Thurman, maybe. Not a raven. Her awkward word choices and phrasing sometimes made me think “huh what?” more often than the scientific data she presented. There are also a fair amount of typos (bad editor).
Overall, don’t buy this book unless you’re really into the brain. It’s interesting, but the facts are presented in such a way that I rushed (as much as I could) through the last three chapters or so just to be done with it. If you like reading about scientific topics, try Mary Roach instead. Any of her books are chock full of science and presented in a humorous, lively manner. Reading Mary Roach is a pleasure.
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John
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August 9, 2013
Debunks dualism. The brain is all there is, there is no separate mind=soul. Consciousness is not a gift to humans but present to some extent in all creatures, at least all mammals. The physical structure of the brain is well-understood enough to make this assertion. When we die, we're dead. The immortal soul (mind) is a convenient metaphor. These are the argument of this book, and for me they seem quite irrefutable. There's a lot of work to do to figure out exactly how consciousness works, but science will get there. Now I'm reading John Searle's Mind: A Brief Introduction and in comparison it seems like the philosophy of the mind goes through painful labyrinths to avoid coming to this obvious conclusion. BTW, she does not discount religion and spirituality as valuable tools in life, but just that beliefs they hold are not based on scientific realities. A very good read.Mind: A Brief IntroductionMind: A Brief Introduction
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Brandon
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July 5, 2013
Disclaimer: This is the same review I posted on Amazon under the username The Professor.
Being a young aspiring experimental psychology graduate with a minor in philosophy, I find the work of Patricia Churchland refreshing. A philosopher who actively works in the psychological sciences!? Astounding! About time philosophers with questions about the mind actually look to the experimental results instead of philosophizing in an office chair (no disrespect, most philosophers are brilliant and ask interesting questions, but I feel their method of answering them is unsatisfactory).
Turning to this book specifically, it is marvelously written. It's amazing that she can churn out a very academic text like Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain (which despite its age is still worth reading in my opinion, at least the second two thirds of the book) but then write a book like this a layman with no detailed experience in philosophy of mind or psychology can thoroughly enjoy. She interweaves her experiences growing up in a small farm town in rural Canada with the scientific information or philosophical questions she presents, which creates a very comfortable and personal atmosphere in the book. It's very conversational in tone.
It treats a lot of the classical philosophical questions such as, "Is there such a thing as a soul?", "Is there an afterlife?", "What is morality, really?", "Is free will real?", and "What is consciousness?". She also touches on some scientific problems such as the relationship between genetics and aggression and genocide. She definitely comes down on the skeptical of evolutionary psychology side. For instance, she disparages the idea that certain conditions in the past may have (very much unfortunately) favored genes which may build brains predisposed to participate in genocidal actions in certain conditions. Her argument is that there aren't any genes for genocide, and that just because we possess the capacity for such horrid behavior doesn't mean it was selected for in evolution. In the book The Triumph of Sociobiology, John Alcock actually discusses these sorts of criticisms of sociobiology and in fact talks about genocide as well. He points out there that no sociobiologist worth his or her degree would consistently say there are genes literally for genocide, etc. He clearly states that the proximate causes for such behaviors like that are very complex and involve a lot of gene-environment and gene-gene interactions. HOWEVER, complexity aside, some of the genetic variance that leads to predisposition to such behaviors can in certain situations end up becoming more frequent in the gene pool. Thus, these genes that *just happen* to build brains that may be slightly more predisposed to such behavior are more prominent. But in no way does that imply its a "genetically determined" behavior and John Alcock rebukes such notions, despite that being a common charge against sociobiology. Given that she happily accepts that genes which promote altruistic and empathetic behavior have been selected for and shaped by evolution, as evidenced in Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality , she's definitely not anti-sociobiology and anti-evolutionary psychology across the board.
Despite this quibble, I don't think it's enough to subtract a star. After all, it did provoke that constructive criticism, which I hope that you -- the reader of this review -- will consider.
I also really like her treatment of free will. Being someone interested in investigating the causes of our behaviors, it's often been an unsettling implication to me that because our behaviors are caused and predictable, that we are completely determined. You could call me someone of a reluctant determinist. But, she points out in this book that we DO have a large capacity for self control, and that it needn't be "contracausal" and initiated by some immaterial spirit. These points are similarly made by Michael Gazzaniga in more detail in Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain and similar points are made by Dan Dennett in his various writings on free will. So, perhaps I can regard our behaviors as caused while also believing in free will of some sort. Perhaps this is trying to have my cake and eat it too (freely?), but it's at least something to consider.
In any case, the book is well worth your time and is a pretty short read. It might also make a good gift for anyone you know who holds more dualist convictions or is uneasy about neuroscience.
EDIT: Given Churchland's asociation with eliminative materialism, the thesis that such mental entities like intentions, beliefs, etc, are part of a misguided folk psychology and don't really exist, I was surprised to see how much she talked about intentionality and so forth. Perhaps she's backed off eliminative materialism, or perhaps she treats eliminativism as merely one possibility. Particuarly, in the epilouge, she states that reductionism is often associated with go-away-ism which is exactly what eliminativism is, but that reductionism is NOT that. She is of course correct, saying that one higher level phenomenon can be explained with a lower level phenomenon (reduction) is very different from elimination. What I'd like to know is if she's adopted reductionism over eliminativism, or if she just avoided advocating it because it's a shocking thesis that would likely turn readers away.
For those interested in reductionism, I'd also recommend Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
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Dan'S_mind
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March 31, 2023
Reflecting on efference copy made me appreciate anew that a basic job for a breain is to distinguish the 'me world' from the 'not me' world. Effernce copy is probably only one trick, albeit an important one, among many for achieving that distinction betweeen me and not-me.
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Stefan Gugler
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December 4, 2020
Uff, that was disappointing.
It reads like a smug undergrad student who just read Oliver Sacks, Bill Bryson, and Daniel Kahneman and tries to anecdotally regurgitate it with the tone of Richard Dawkins. Given the book was published in 2014, it's almost staggering how much old, boring, sometimes debunked "interesting" experiments it included, like the stanford prison experiment or the marshmallow test. These and two dozen other examples of things are mentioned, without actually going into one and/or trying to explain what is really going on. Mostly, it just feels like sort of a gotacha "ha, see, the brain is complicated ", even though I didn't disagree. She is really preaching to the choir hard. Whenever she mentions people that disagree, it's anti-vaxxers or people who don't believe in science or something. I mean, I guess that's an ok point, but so much work went already into debating these people. It's like debating creationists. Sure, you can do it in 2014, but we are sort of over it, aren't we? And even if it's somehow worthwhile, Churchland doesn't approach the debate in a good or healthy manner. Even though she says that it is not 'scientistic', the way she dismisses people with these unscientific believe systems doesn't lead anywhere. More like "lol u crazy" but that didn't further the debate at all.
Her main thesis seems to be, that the brain is just a machine, so some sort of qualia reductionism but propositional attitude eliminativism (I guess she'd explain more about this in other books?) But the way she dismisses non-reductionist ideas is outrageously simple. "... but there is no evidence for that" is one thing you read a bunch. Heck, I'm sort of enamored with eliminativism myself, but as a 'neurophilosopher' I'd expect her to engage more properly with the arguments instead of just dismissing them. If I remember Chalmers' survey correctly, most academic philosophers are not eliminative materialists, so there is plenty to take up and systematically debunk, if you are of Churchland's opinion.
From time to time she indulges in stories from her past that always end in "it's complicated" and "we have to figure that out in a case by case scenario" and then all of a sudden a couple of jargon words and then the topic is changed. I mean, I don't know, it just didn't feel like there is a coherent narrative or theory that she meant to convey but more of a 300 pages rant about some obvious conclusions you come to as a eliminative materialist without really illuminating the disagreements with other ideas.
Wouldn't recommend, rather read one of the books by the authors mentioned above (not Dawkins though
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Maia
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February 4, 2017
A conversational and highly accessible look into how the workings of our brains effect the very basis of what makes us human- morals, choices, self-control, compassion, aggression, gender identity and learning. If you are interested in neuroscience but do not want to be overwhelmed with technical details, this book is perfect.
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ash | spaceyreads
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November 19, 2018
Something about her style of writing just rubs me the wrong way. Too many exclamation marks, especially used to end sentences that is making a point to prove she's right and if you're not agreeing with her you're wrong.
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Ahmad
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April 26, 2020
After reading so many pop science books, they all start to sound the same.
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Joshua Stein
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March 11, 2016
I should say that I really enjoy Pat Churchland; she's been a huge influence on me as a philosopher and writer. Because of that, I must admit that I really enjoyed this book. It's part memoir and part introduction to her philosophical views, and seeing the relationship between those two things. For those who are interested in Pat Churchland as a person, and want insight into her mind, ignore the rest of this review and consider this an enthusiastic recommendation and five star review.
As a piece of philosophical writing, this book has some pretty serious problems, and the problems are worth mentioning. Before I dwell on those, I do think that the book is a good example of how to fight the paradigm of dry, technical philosophical writing both in introductory texts and in writing for a more advanced audience. At various points, Churchland does a great job writing thoughtfully and engagingly about her ideas, integrating experience and easy metaphors.
The first and, in my opinion, most serious problem with the book is the organization. It really isn't organized in a way that feels cohesive and engaging. If it were tied together solely by the narrative arc of Churchland's own life, rather than any particular idea, that would be enough, but that narrative approach falls off in later chapters and is quickly lost. As a result, the book really has to be read as a collection of essays dealing with various subjects in philosophy of mind and often only tangentially related to one another; though everything is ostensibly about the brain, even that often fades a bit in order for Churchland to extrapolate on social implications of philosophy and stuff.
The second problem is that there are some areas of the philosophical explanations Churchland offers that are really not explored adequately. Throughout the book, she returns to explaining the development of the brain in terms of the genetic preconditions. Of course, she knows and occasionally acknowledges that this sort of explanation isn't adequate. But she only really gestures at the sociological and developmental elements implicated in the development of the brain and mind, and so we only wind up with part of a story, and the parts that are missing are actually very important to understanding Churchland's explanations. The most egregious examples of this are in the chapters on sex and gender and on the development of social cognition.
The final problem is one that comes up a lot in writing from really good philosophers trying to make a point to a less experienced audience; Churchland regularly dances back and forth between some explanations that are actually highly technical (particularly when dealing with the neuroscience) and glosses over a lot of other material with sort of a gesture. Now, this isn't a particularly serious problem; to a certain extent, it's inevitable when we are dealing with these sorts of audiences and authors really just have to make certain choices. I think the choices that Churchland made in putting this whole thing together would likely make processing very difficult for those who don't have a fair amount of familiarity with the field, and that cuts against one of the strong points of the book, particularly its thoughtful use of metaphor and storytelling to capture some pretty difficult concepts in neurophilosophy.
Still, this is definitely worth a read for those who are starting to get their footing in neurophilosophy or who find themselves generally enamored of Pat Churchland's various philosophical writings.
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Stefanos
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November 11, 2015
Books like touching a nerve are difficult to find.It touches on a hard-to-access topic, full of technical jargon and many sensitive issues and yet, manages to be surprisingly comprehensible, highly educative on a wide range of topics, respectful on delicate matters and all in all a very entertaining read.The main subject is the science of the brain and how the three-pound mass of jelly (as Ramachandran likes to put it) was engineered by evolution and how it makes us who we are.Patricia Chrurchland makes clear that neuroscience is a field in it’s infancy and many issues remain unkown, nevertheless it has already offered us great insight and we could only be optimistic about it’s future. In the book she discusses dualism,’after-death’ experiences, the evolution of morality and aggression, self-control, free will, habits, unconscious cognition, sleeping and consciousness.There is a lot in here.
There are three implicit messages, Patricia Churchland makes, that i particularly appreciated.The first, spans throughout the book, is a powerful case against the traditional philosophical inquiry about the questions of morality, free will, consciousness and human nature that is wholly based on pure reason and introspection; and instead shows how much we can learn from neuroscience.The second being against the view,few philosophers hold, that “we’ll never understand consciousness” which is groundless and unproductively pessimistic.Surely,we will never understand it if we won’t try.The third is, mostly addresses to us, laypeople, and the fear that learning about the brain would somehow belittle our existence and everything we hold dear and throw us in nihilism. A view i consider to be completely unsound.Neuroscience simply shows us that we were not what we thought we were.Heliocentrism and evolution told us that we are not in the center of the universe,nor separate from animalia.Likewise neuroscience told us, among others, that we are the product of our brains, not immaterial souls and that this is the only life we have.At first, these may be unsettling thoughts but really...they do not affect anything truly important. We can still love, appreciate the aesthetic, live meaningful and moral lives, positively affect the world and additionally have the pleasure of knowing and overcoming our ignorance.
If only i weren’t a biased prick that confuses unfamiliarity to content with it’s quality i would give it five stars.So engaging and intriguing.Truly worth reading!
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2013
2 MIN READ
MIND Reviews: Touching a Nerve
Books and recommendations from Scientific American MIND
BY MOHEB COSTANDI
September 2013 Issue
Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain
Patricia S. Churchland
W. W. Norton, 2013 ($26.95)
When Galileo announced his observation of Jupiter's moons, his discovery challenged a deeply entrenched way of thinking about our place in the universe.
Modern neuroscience has kindled a similar revolution in the way we think about the brain. In Touching a Nerve, neurophilosopher Churchland argues that all things that we have traditionally ascribed to a higher power—morality, free will, the soul—are in fact products of the brain. The mysterious lump of matter inside our head is responsible not only for everything that makes us human but also for what makes us unique.
This view that the brain is responsible for every aspect of our physical and mental lives has gained traction among neuroscientists, but the idea of the self as brain has also encountered resistance. It's not hard to understand why, Churchland notes. Some research, for example, shows that patterns of brain activity can predict our choices or actions before we become consciously aware of having made a decision, and it may be hard to reconcile this evidence with the notion of free will.
Churchland illustrates how our understanding of the brain is beginning to reveal the biological basis of traits such as aggression and morality. For instance, zapping the temporal lobe using deep-brain stimulation can improve spatial memory, and using a powerful magnet to alter activity in the right temporoparietal junction can make our moral compass go haywire, causing behaviors we think of as immoral to become permissible.
Brain-damaged patients provide some of the strongest evidence for how our brain makes us who we are. Injuries to various parts of the frontal lobe can leave some people unable to talk or can alter personality, yielding impulsive or antisocial behaviors, and lesions to the medial temporal lobe can erase our memories or prevent new ones from forming.
Churchland also seamlessly weaves this research with experiences from her own life. She describes, for instance, how as a child growing up on a farm in British Columbia, a friend lost awareness of her legs after injuring them in a bicycle accident and how her grandmother lost her sense of self to Alzheimer's disease.
By drawing on personal stories and modern brain research, Churchland creates a compelling narrative to further the idea of the self as brain. Her well-supported, cautious analysis provides insights into how we evolved traits such as empathy and altruism and explores the genetic and biological factors that determine an individual's unique sense of self. Through her examples, we can all come to understand our actions and intentions more clearly.
More by Moheb Costandi
SA Mind Vol 24 Issue 4
This article was originally published with the title “Mind Control” in SA Mind Vol. 24 No. 4 (September 2013), p. 70
doi:10.1038/scientificamericanmind0913-70b
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