Science Friday on NPR today: for Interesting Ian

[bignickel]

http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2003/Oct/hour2_101003.html

"What makes you YOU? Is it a physical part of your brain? Some cocktail of neurotransmitters unique to you? Or something else entirely? "

It's on at 2 PM CT today; I'm not sure what time that would be in England, but at this moment (11:44 AM CT), that's 2 hours and 15 minutes awy.

[roger]

If he or anyone can't hear it live, don't worry, they archive all the shows on streaming media. Just follow the Archives link on that page after the broadcast.

[Iamme]

bignickel---The question posed (without listening to the show)sounds like an easy one to answer.

Even if everyone's neurtransmitters WERE the same, let's just say....We are who we are and where we are, and only know what WE are doing because our brain is just inside of OUR head. Not other peoples heads.

Let me even add that if we all even thought the same stuff because we were wired the same...we would still be a "me", because of our seperation between us and other people. All we would do is get mad, if everyone else went around copying our every move, let's say.

But it would only be the "me" in each one of us that would cry out if we fell and got hurt, or laugh when we saw the Three Stooges, ior be the one being satisfied after a nice big bowl of Doritos... or if we calculated a problem, we would be the one doing the calculating and getting the associated headache, and we would only feel these things in OUR body. Not theirs.


It be like me asking how an engine knows it is running a Toyota and not a FORD. The Toyota engine is in the Toyota! Duh!

I think that the philosopher who posed this question is the same one who posed the question that if you weren't in the woods to actually hear a tree fall...did the tree make a noise? (And there are all sorts of versions...some sillier...that make the same type of correlatory questions)

[Bikewer]

I listened to both segments, and they were quite good. The cosmology segment was all too short, but it was enough to show that I have to go back and do more reading; the last I have is Hawking's Brief History of Time.
Difficult stuff, but fascinating.

The exchanges between the neuroscientist and the poet were quite good, and not filled with invective as you might imagine.

Again, it's been years since I did any serious reading in the field; The Three-pound universe, Origins of conciousness, and a few others.