Conflict in the neuro zone
Two books offer different takes on the relationship between the brain and our sense of who we are
A journey into the human brain starts with the usual travel decisions: will you opt for a no-frills jaunt, a five-star luxury cruise, or trek a little off the beaten track, skipping the usual tourist attractions?
Now that science's newfound land is suddenly navigable, hordes of eager guides are offering books that range from the basic to the lavishly appointed to the minutely subspecialised. But those who prefer wandering off-trail may opt for two new tomes, neither written by a neuroscientist.
Can humans still live a moral and spiritual life even without the ideas of soul and heaven? You bet they can
When philosopher Patricia Churchland says her book represents "the story of getting accustomed to my brain", she is speaking as a human being and a career humanist. An emerita professor at the University of California, San Diego, she has spent a career probing the physical brain for the self and its moral centre. And unlike many humanists who hate the science for the irritating violence it does to centuries of painstaking intellectual labour, she is entranced by the power of the data, and her delight is utterly contagious.
Churchland loses little time in dispatching the archaic notion of the soul, and suggests that near-death visions of heaven simply represent "neural funny business" in a malfunctioning brain.
Can humans still live a moral and spiritual life even without the ideas of soul and heaven? You bet they can. "We may still say that the sun is setting even when we know full well that earth is turning," Churchland says - and she is off and running.
Where do values come from? Does a "brainstem-limbic system shaped by reward-based learning and problem solving" suffice? Can behaviour be genuinely moral if the consciousness is not involved? Does the "me" that is you include the many levels of your unconscious? Do you have free will? Is there such a thing as criminal intent? Does criminal behaviour prompted by misaligned circuits, aberrant neurotransmitters or tumours in vital areas imply innocence? Should we empty out the prisons?
It is hard to conceive of a better guide to this difficult terrain than the MacArthur award-winning Churchland, who knows the science inside out and writes with surpassing clarity, elegance, humour and modesty, punctuating the hard parts with accessible lessons about the brain she learned during a hardscrabble childhood on a Canadian farm.