Who we are

The French philosopher Rene Descartes‘ most important contribution to the natural sciences was his introduction of the concept of doubt. The process of gaining knowledge, he claimed, must start by doubting everything that seems factual. The only thing of which a person can ever be sure, Descartes said, is that he or she exists. Even the existence of the material world around a person could be an illusion. In his most famous statement, “ Cogito ergo sum ”—I think, therefore I am—he referred to an immaterial, thinking self. “’I‘, that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body,” he wrote. It is an ironic twist that modern neurosciences now doubt the existence of this immaterial ’mind‘. There is no scie.jpgic evidence for a ’mind‘ or ’self‘ that exists independently of the body or brain. By contrast, it is the brain that causes thoughts, decisions and other traits that we attribute to the mind and to our free will. “I think that the statement ’not me, but my brain decided' is correct”, said Gerhard Roth, a neuroscientist at the University of Bremen, Germany (Roth, 2004).Illustration: Simon Walter![][1] > This reduction of ‘free will’ or the ‘self ’ to mere chemistry raises important questions for philosophers and psychologists…This reduction of ‘free will’ or the ‘self’ to mere chemistry raises important questions for philosophers and psychologists, who must integrate knowledge of brain chemistry and neuronal processes when explaining human nature. The results of neuroscie.jpgic research have led to the emergence of fields such as neuroeconomics, neuromarketing, neurolinguistics, neuropsychology and neurotheology, and neuroscientists are now asked to offer their expertise on almost everything from the existence of God, to education and criminal justice.In the past, natural scientists tried to explain behaviour … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif