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Phantoms in the brain: probing the mysteries of the human mind
V. S. RAMACHANDRAN & SANDRA BLAKESLEE
New York: William Morrow, 1998
iii + 328 pp.
Phantoms in the brain is an excellent book and highly recommended for anyone interested in the nature of the human mind. It is a pleasure to read due to the consistently high quality of the writing and the accessible presentation in the manner of Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould. Ramachandran lays bare the mental lives of patients who are afflicted with puzzling conditions such as phantom limbs and temporal lobe epilepsy. His authority and insight are remarkable.
This book forms, among other things, a welcome contribution to current debate in cognitive science regarding consciousness and the relation between mind and body. With respect to consciousness, Ramachandran responds to many of the issues raised by Daniel Dennett in Consciousness explained (1991), particularly on the topic of "filling in." There, Dennett explains the usual non-awareness of people for the blind spots in their visual fields, for example, as the result of the brain simply ignoring the fact that it has no data on these little patches of the world. This phenomenon then becomes the model for Dennett's explanation of consciousness as a fiction generated by the mind to explain away its ignorance about itself. Ramachandran shows that filling in is a real phenomenon which occurs when some area of the visual cortex, in the case of a blind spot, that is deprived of its expected sensory input instead receives input otherwise belonging to another area. This explanation is extended outside the visual realm to other forms of self-representation present in the brain. When brain damage affects areas of the cortex that represent body imagery, for example, the result can be phantom limbs and alien hands. This phenomenon then becomes the model for Ramachandran's considered view of consciousness, which is outlined in the final chapter and which will stimulate much research and debate.
In the final chapter, Chapter 12, Ramachandran applies the results of his case studies to two issues concerning the nature of consciousness, namely qualia and the self. He does not pretend to solve the problem of qualia, but does state and defend the idea that qualia arise...