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Are humans just a 'pack of neurons'? Steven Rose is frustrated by a poorly argued challenge to the materialist consensus in neuroscience
I Am Not a Brain: Philosophy of Mind for the 21st Century
By Markus Gabriel; translated by Christopher Turner
Polity Press, 240pp, £25.00
ISBN 9781509514755
Published 8 September 2017
Call up Markus Gabriel on Google Images, and you'll find a conventional-looking man. Clearly, he is a person, not a brain. But why, when this seems so clear, does a philosopher need to write an entire book justifying the obvious?
The answer, regrettably, is that many in my own discipline, neuroscience, seem determined to put the opposite case. Books claiming the "emotional brain", the "sexual" brain, the "social" brain, even the "synaptic self" spill from my shelves. The message is clear, as DNA pioneer Francis Crick informed his readers, "you are nothing but a pack of neurons".
Some philosophers, particularly...