Brain and Self

I say “I have a heart”, “I have lungs”, etc. I am evidently saying that I stand in the having relation to organs in my body—possession, ownership. These things are not identical to me; they are extrinsic to me, not what I am. I also say “I have a brain”, as if expressing the same relation by “have”. That would be true if dualism were true—if I were an immaterial being standing apart from my brain. My relation to my brain would be like my relation to my heart—contingent, external. That was a view long held and may be assumed to have shaped our language. But there is a crucial difference between the two cases: for I am my brain but I am not my heart. Dualism is false about the self: the self simply is the brain. This is why the identity of the self tracks the identity of the brain, as in brain swap thought experiments. I will not defend this view here, but take it as given. My question is whether it is consistent with saying that I have a brain. I think the two propositions are inconsistent: you can’t be your brain and also have a brain. Since it is true that you are your brain, it must then be false that you have a brain. This idea is a result of dualist thinking, encouraged by the empirical character of our knowledge that our self is located in the brain (not, say, in the heart). Our language is logically misleading, but intelligibly so, since the identity in question is a posteriori. It is as if we said “Water has H2O”, suggesting a possession relation, while in fact water is H2O. The brain is certainly part of my body and distinct from it, but it is not part of my self, or possessed by me, or an accessory of mine. We don’t say “I have me” or “I have Colin McGinn”—I am those things. Similarly, I am my brain—but then I can’t have my brain. This has consequences for the way we think: I can say that I breathe with my lungs, but can I say that I think with my brain? That certainly sounds funny—I don’t use my brain to carry out acts of thinking, as if it is something separate from me. The truth is rather that my brain thinks, because I am my brain. We don’t talk that way, for intelligible reasons, but it is the literal truth. Nor do I perceive with my brain, or emote with it, or will with it—it does all these things, since I do and I am it. We could truthfully go around saying “My brain is thinking (perceiving, emoting, willing)” instead of “I am thinking etc.”. Our language would be more “logically perfect” (factually accurate) if we were to do that. We have made the a posteriori discovery that the self is the brain, as we have made the a posteriori discovery that water is H2O and the stars are giant lumps of matter (the stars don’t have these lumps as merely correlated entities). If I were to say “I am thinking but my brain is not”, I would contradict myself. I am not linked to my brain as I am linked to my other bodily organs; my brain constitutes me. Anything mental that I do, it does. We would do well to talk this way and not perpetuate an outdated dualism of self and brain. My stomach digests, my lungs breathe, my heart pumps, and my brain thinks. I don’t merely have a brain that enables thinking, while that act is something that only I can do. The brain is not an under laborer but the main actor. If so, I don’t stand in the possession relation to it; it is not something I am connected to, linked with, in principle separable from.

Then how should we understand the relation between self and brain? Is the possession relation alien to these things? That doesn’t follow, and I think we have reason to invert the traditional conception—my brain possesses me. Brains possess selves. My brain has me—I don’t have it. Why do I say that? I say it because the self is useful to the brain, part of its equipment, what it needs to survive. The brain has various parts and attributes that enable it to survive from day to day, which are vital to it biologically and humanly. We cannot survive and reproduce without an intact brain, and we cannot live as value-laden sentient beings without the brain. Life is valuable to us, and brains are needed for that. Let us speak of the “selfish brain”—a biological unit (analogous to the gene) that seeks to preserve itself. Organisms strive to keep their brain alive (if they have one, and brains are very common among animals). Thus, the human brain has various substructures with Latin names that must function for the brain to stay alive: these are the organs of the brain—and the brain hasthem. The human brain has a hypothalamus, for example. Among these organs are various mental faculties (comparable to bodily organs) that also help keep the brain alive. The brain possesses a faculty of thinking (seeing, feeling, remembering, etc.). It also possesses a self—an ego, a person. This entity also helps the brain survive—it wouldn’t have come to exist if it didn’t. So, the brain has a self. Not all of it is that self, however; some of the brain has nothing to do with mental activity. Strictly speaking, the self is identical to part of the brain—the part responsible for the mind. So, the brain is larger than the self, more inclusive; and this larger entity possesses a self. It is a biological unit with parts analogous to a body’s parts, and among these parts is a self or mind. We may therefore correctly speak of the brain as “having” a self. I could give my brain a name such as “Binky” and say “Binky has me” or “I belong to Binky” or “I am possessed by Binky”. It sounds funny (in both senses) but it’s true. My selfish brain is the possessor of a bunch of things, and I am one of them. My brain is a biological unit containing functional parts, and I am one such. In a certain sense, I am a servant of my brain (as the whole organism can be said to be a servant of the genes). Call this the “brain’s-eye” view of the self-animal world (as biologists speak of the “gene’s-eye” view of the biological world). From the brain’s perspective it is the pivotal entity.

You might find yourself convinced by this as an abstract argument, but uncomfortable with the conclusion—it seems counterintuitive, conceptually perverse. Let me try to assuage this unease with a thought experiment. Suppose we reach a point at which brain transplants have become common: bodies fail and we can now place brains in new bodies that prolong life indefinitely for the brain transplanted. Suppose too that these are placed in a transparent dome through which they are clearly visible. In addition, plastic surgery on brains has become commonplace to enhance their appearance (they were never pretty), perhaps accompanied by cerebral jewelry and makeup. The crucial role of the brain in producing personhood has long been commonly accepted. Brains have names and people regularly talk as if brains have minds in them; it has become fashionable so to talk. Wouldn’t it then be quite natural to think in the way I have been recommending? The brains (=people) want to survive, which is why they pay for a transplant, and they readily speak as if brains house selves. Folk ontology has changed in such a way as to make brains salient and recognized for what they are—persons in their own right. Some brains may choose to live out their days detached from a body and just floating in a vat—they are not thereby declared non-persons. People say “You look good today” when coming across a recently buffed and powdered brain glowing with good health. People think of themselves as brains and they do not refrain from speaking of the attached self: “The self of my brain is behaving well today, no more going off on tangents, thank God”. No one ever says “I have a brain” anymore, because the obvious retort is “What do you mean? You are your brain—get with the program!” Or suppose on a distant planet a life form has evolved that consists just of a brain in a shell. It lives parasitically in trees and reproduces by division. Inside is a mind that serves the organism well (it selects good trees to perch on). Wouldn’t we say that this species of creature has a mind (other similar species might not)? These brain-like organisms contain or have a self. But isn’t that what we normal humans actually and centrally are–selves in a brain? We are brain-selves—carbon-based neural selves. Isn’t it about time that common sense caught up with science—as our astronomical beliefs have? The earth revolves around the Sun; the self revolves around the brain. Isn’t that what scientific ontology is telling us? Talk of “having a brain” is antiquated mumbo-jumbo, misleading at best. I once had a brain, or should I say, it once had me—to paraphrase the Beatles (Norwegian Wood). It is just not true that you have a brain, but it is true that your brain has you.[1]

[1] Someone might try to contrive a sense in which “I have a brain” is consistent with identity with my brain—say, “There is a brain inside my skull”. But this does not preserve the analogy with “I have a heart”, which relates me to something not identical to me. No, the original sentence says, or presupposes, that I am not identical with my brain, i.e., that dualism is true. But it isn’t.

Anti-Feminist Politics

I used to think that the primary appeal of Trump to his supporters was his racism. That is undoubtedly a factor, but I’m coming to think that his attitude towards women is a big factor too. I mean his misogyny, his sexism, his contempt, his aggression—all the bad stuff. Notice that his many sexual and other transgressions have not dented his popularity with certain sectors of the population; indeed, they seem to have enhanced it. What is going on psychologically? I have the feeling that feminism is part of it, in particular the Me-Too movement. I think this has angered a lot of people, mainly men: it has made feminism seem doctrinaire and punitive, even cruel and fanatical (the Al Franken episode stands out for me, also Andrew Cuomo). This has angered many men and instilled fear in them. Nor does it help when pundits and politicians trot out the slogan “women must have control over the own bodies” as an argument-ending move—a transparent piece of nonsense to any rational person (for the record I am in favor of abortion). Trump seems to these people to represent a needed counterweight to “feminist” excesses. Men thus resonate to his retrograde tendencies, finding in him a bulwark against a new form of repression and brutality (so typically American in its hysteria and violence). None of this is reasonable, but it is psychologically intelligible. It is what is called backlash. If my diagnosis is correct, contemporary feminism (so called) is part of the reason for Trump’s ascendancy. If he wins, they will be part of the cause.

Ted Honderich and Others

Ted and I had adjacent offices at UCL. A tall man, with a corduroy suit, floppy hair, a Canadian-English accent—he was hard to miss. He had ambition, lots of it. It is fair to report that he was not held in the highest regard philosophically. When I left my office on the top floor, I would drop by Jerry Cohen’s office on the way down. Jerry was a very funny man, a great impersonator. He had a repertoire of routines. We both worked on perfecting these. The main people impersonated were Richard Wollheim, Hide Ishiguro, and Ted. I cannot reproduce for you here the flavor of Jerry’s impersonations, but they were hilarious and not flattering. For Richard I remember “I wonder if I might have a word”; for Hide “Well, I just think”; for Ted “Come come” and “We have it then that p”. During faculty meetings Jerry and I would have to stifle our laughter when these three opened their mouths. I got on with Ted well enough, but we did not see eye to eye philosophically (he had a lot of trouble understanding Leibniz’s law). After a decade I left UCL and saw little of Ted. Then I left England and saw even less of him. In 2008 the Philosophical Review asked me to review a collection of essays by him mainly about consciousness. I thought: I wonder what old Ted has to say about consciousness. I felt a twinge of collegial feeling for the old boy. I thought it might be interesting. As I read it a feeling grew in me: this is terrible. The worst thing was the lack of understanding of the current literature, combined with a pronounced tendency to denigrate anyone else in the field (a Ted tactic generally). The prose style was pretty execrable throughout. What’s a poor reviewer to do? I panned it. This had nothing to do with our past interactions; it reflected only my low opinion of the quality of the work at hand. Of course, the whole thing exploded later. Oddly enough, Ted came to accept my strictures and worked hard to circumvent them. He actually made an effort to read and understand the literature! He sought my opinion, sent me drafts. It was definitely better, though still intellectually lacking. I think I did him some good. There was less of that “We have it then that p” said on the basis of nothing but bluster. When I heard that he had died I thought of those days long ago—in Jerry’s office, of Richard and Hide (only Hide is still alive, living in Japan). Things seemed so innocent then, before the current malaise set in. We laughed a lot; not so much these days.