The brain has become everyone's subject, perhaps because evidence for an afterlife or a godlike creator stubbornly refuses to reveal itself. (and perhaps Psychoanalysis is another god that failed )
The human brain is now thought to contain the answers we have failed to find elsewhere.
Neuroscience will explain our emotional responses as well as our problem solving abilities and our indefatigablecuriosity. Purpose, however, may remain the domain of philosophy.
Eagelman emphasises the unconscious functioning which determines most of our actions and decisions, and acknowledges Freud's insight that much of behaviour is a product of unseen mental processes.
The concept of extended mind, whereby external stimuli and exchanges with other minds enables broader conceptualising capacity and creativity that an isolated human could not achieve, may in turn be extended by AI into some new more complex form of mind.
One can choose to greet this news with optimism, as heralding a leap forward for humanity that overcomes our present limitations, or with pessimism, seeing instead the prospect of a restored slavery, as robots decide what humans may or may not do, think and feel. Eagelman is an optimist: ' We can hack our own hardware, and as a result our brains don't need to remain as we've inherited them.'
As an introduction (with an accompanying DVD) 'The Brain The story of You' by neuroscientist David Eagelman makes fascinating reading.
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