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IX - Brain Collaborates with Psyche

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

Charles Scott, Sir Sherrington
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Summary

There is however one peculiar inconsistency which we may note as marking this and many other psychological theories. They place the soul in the body and attach it to the body without trying in addition to determine the reason why or the condition of the body under which such attachment is produced. This would seem however to be a real question calling for solution.

Aristotle'sPsychology, i, 3, §§ 22–3. (Wallace's translation, p. 35.)

Further I cannot admit that the connection of soul and body is really either intelligible or explicable.

F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality.

The body is of cells and like the rest of the body the brain I is of cells. Have then the cells of the brain mind and JL the body's other cells not? Supposing a cell to be sentient, surely we have little chance of knowing whether it be so. A well-versed observer of the one-celled animal world has said that were an amoeba as big as a dog we should all acknowledge its mind. We could then put many more questions to it, but, with all deference, I am not clear that mind would be recognizable in the answers given. Aristotle knew the exposed human brain insentient when touched or manipulated. For him to remark the fact it must have seemed to him noteworthy. Today the surgeon reports that he removes large areas of the cortex of the brain—the cortex is the region where brain and mind meet- from conscious patients without their noticing difference or change.

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Man on his Nature , pp. 263 - 292
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1940

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