Who We Are (and Who We Can Be)
April 17, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, affirmations, balance, inspiration
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
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April 18th, 2008 at 1:29 am
What a compelling lecture. It makes one wonder if we are spiritual or just chemical.
April 20th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Hi, Yep - It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
To think that because simpler phenomena are found to underlie more complex phenomena reduces them to being nothing but the simpler phenomenon is the reductionist fallacy - or “nothing buttery,” as one of my former professors used to call it.
For example, say it turned out that a particular pattern of brainwave activity were associated with the experience of loving someone. That wouldn’t make love “nothing but” a pattern of brain activity. Love would still be the experience that it is. People wouldn’t start exchanging brain wave graphs on Valentine’s Day - it would still be Hallmark cards.
Well, that was an odd way of putting it! But best I can do in a short space…
April 20th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Thanks both Yep and Paul for your thoughtful comments. I so appreciate each one (and each of you)
April 20th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Yes, it’s an easy trap to use reductionism to explain-away something that deserves more analysis and thought. That’s too easy and gains nothing. But, I do find it interesting that spirituality has its own set of logic rules. If this were a discussion of magic, most of us would agree that magic is something that we cannot explain. But when we happen to learn the secret behind the trick, we realize it wasn’t in fact magic at all, but just a simple trick of the mind. Of course, C.S. Lewis would likely tell me, I “ought not participate in adult conversation.”