clair073

Brains have owners. The question is, "Just who is this owner?" Can the brain be its own owner? Or is it more likely that the brain generates a process that acts like an owner? You might call that process you . The owner is your conscious mind. But how does conscious mind exist? What does the brain do to possess it? Everything the brain does, as far as we know, involves the deployment and distribution of nerve impulses in defined circuitry to control bodily functions, thought, and behavior. Thus the owner, that is your conscious you , could exist as a special collection of nerve impulses operating in a particular way. The conscious self is an explicit frame of reference by which the nerve impulse patterns of stimuli from all senses can be evaluated in the context of self-awareness. The smell of sizzling steak is only detected by my olfactory pathways, but it is perceived by my “I.” In both cases, this processing is mediated by nerve impulses.  Likewise, the sight of a beautifu...

An area of controversy in the life sciences relates to the relative roles of genetics and the environment. Confusion commonly afflicts politics. For example, early Communists glommed on to the discredited genetic theory of “inheritance of acquired characteristics.” This theory holds that changing a person’s attitude and behavior would somehow result in changes to his or her genes, which would allow for genetic transmission of the changed attitudes and behavior to his or her children. For this idea to be true, outside influences on the brain would have to change the genes not only in brains but also in the sex cells (sperm and egg cells). The idea was held in ancient times by Hippocrates and Aristotle, but it gained scholarly imprimatur with formal publication in 1809 by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In the 1930s, the Russian president of the Soviet Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Trofim Lysenko, applied the doctrine to Soviet agriculture with disastrous results. At the same time, Soviet pol...