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The metaphysical limitations of neuroscience.
Soul Dust: the Magic of Consciousness
Nicholas Humphrey
Quercus, 288pp, £25
Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain
Antonio Damasio
William Heinemann, 384pp, £25
The republic of letters is in thrall to an unprecedented scientism. The word is out that human consciousness - from the most elementary tingle of sensation to the most sophisticated sense of self - is identical with neural activity in the human brain and that this extraordinary metaphysical discovery is underpinned by the latest findings in neuroscience. Given that the brain is an evolved organ, and, as the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky said, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, the neural explanation of human consciousness demands a Darwinian interpretation of our behaviour. The differences between human life in the library or the operating theatre and animal life in the jungle or the savannah are more apparent than real: at the most, matters of degree rather than kind.
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