Touching a Nerve

The Self as Brain

By: Patricia S. Churchland

Narrated by: Karen Saltus

A trailblazing philosopher's exploration of the latest brain science - and its ethical and practical implications.

What happens when we accept that everything we feel and think stems not from an immaterial spirit but from electrical and chemical activity in our brains? In this thought-provoking narrative - drawn from professional expertise as well as personal life experiences - trailblazing neurophilosopher Patricia S. Churchland grounds the philosophy of mind in the essential ingredients of biology. She reflects with humor on how she came to harmonize science and philosophy, the mind and the brain, abstract ideals and daily life.

Offering lucid explanations of the neural workings that underlie identity, she reveals how the latest research into consciousness, memory, and free will can help us reexamine enduring philosophical, ethical, and spiritual questions: What shapes our personalities? How do we account for near-death experiences? How do we make decisions? And why do we feel empathy for others? Recent scientific discoveries also provide insights into a fascinating range of real-world dilemmas - for example, whether an adolescent can be held responsible for his actions and whether a patient in a coma can be considered a self.

Churchland appreciates that the brain-based understanding of the mind can unnerve even our greatest thinkers. At a conference she attended, a prominent philosopher cried out, "I hate the brain; I hate the brain!" But as Churchland shows, he need not feel this way. Accepting that our brains are the basis of who we are liberates us from the shackles of superstition. It allows us to take ourselves seriously as a product of evolved mechanisms, past experiences, and social influences. And it gives us hope that we can fix some grievous conditions, and when we cannot, we can at least understand them with compassion.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2013 Patricia S. Churchland (P)2013 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

"Patricia Churchland may be the world’s leading neuro-philosopher today, but she also hails from humble beginnings in rural Canada. And that plainspoken farm girl, that second self, is on full display in this beautiful, unpretentious, enchanting exploration of mind, morals, and the meaning of life." (Owen Flanagan, author of The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World)

The plainspoken truth about who we really are

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This is a heroic attempt to summarize what we know about who we are, why we're here, and why we do the things we do. It is an attempt to "stand in the truth" which is very challenging to our deeply held desire to be metaphysical beings or something other than biological brains in an all too physical body.

What other book might you compare Touching a Nerve to and why?

The God Delusion, also written by a biologist (Richard Dawkins), also resisting the pull to superstition and pseudoscience.

What three words best describe Karen Saltus’s voice?

Unfortunately preachy, but clear.

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

The orchestra of hormones that regulate human aggression.

Any additional comments?

Standing in the truth is hard work, but rewarding.

Mildly disappointing

I purchased this book after reading an op-Ed article on gender and sexual diversity. I did a little research of Dr churchland and prepared for her progressive view of things aligned with Steven pinker etc.

I wanted to say I did not regrete. Cos it did help me firm up ideas on gender and free will, but it is mild disappointing how the content is structured. Aka the balance of science and philosophy. Overall it is laudable effort in a field which needs refreshing .

Mind explained by what we know not magic

The best understanding comes about by talking about what we know. There is no explanatory power in invoking the supernatural when trying to explain anything including the problem of consciousness. The idea of a soul to explain consciousness adds nothing to our understanding. This book looks at how we no longer need the Cartesian duality of the mind and the brain in order to explain how we think.

This book looks at the 'hard problem' of consciousness and goes about systematically explaining why it should never be considered unsolvable or classified as the 'hard problem' and how significant progress is currently being made in the field and for which is best explained to layman by a Neuro-Philosopher such as the author is instead of by a neuroscientist.

She writes in a very conversational manner and excels at story telling. The book really comes alive when she gives real life stories from her past. But, make no mistake, she doesn't dance around explaining difficult concepts about evolution, genetics, brain functions, and even the common fallacies you'll often hear which over simplify about race (such as the truly vile book by Nicolas Wade, 'A Troublesome Inheritance'), gender identity and free will. She did point out in the book that Daniel Dennett (whose books I love and have listened to on Audible) is wrong when he says that consciousness needs language. I still love Dennett but Churchland is right on the points she made.

Overall a very sophisticated book written in a conversational manner even while covering hard to understand topics.

Pretty good, a little dense, could really use a different narrator

As an outsider to the subject matter I found the book interesting but a little hard to understand and follow. This was really not helped by the narrator, who sounded like she was smiling the entire time, even when it was clear that the author was trying to be serious during certain parts

Rock on Pat

If you could sum up Touching a Nerve in three words, what would they be?

Neuroscience for everbody

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

“Rock on Berti!” (Bertrand Russell). I like being able to cry at the ending of Anna Karenina and Dr. Schiwago, but I also enjoy shedding a tear or two after the final paragraphs of a well-written science book.

Neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland (according to Wikipedia an eliminative materialist), composes beautifully clear, straightforward sentences, and, in true story telling style, transports us to the cutting edge of neuroscience. I decided to finally read Patricia Churchland to protect myself against the temptations of quantum neuroscience, for which I have a strange liking that may well be more artistic than scientific.

The book (I actually listened to it as an audiobook while jogging and cleaning) summarizes the current state of neuroscience including the latest research into consciousness, memory, and free will, as Churchland examines their relationship to contemporary philosophical, ethical, and spiritual questions. There is nothing breathtakingly new to somebody who follows the field on a regular basis; for (neuro)scientists quite a bit is old hat, e.g. how neurons work. Yet it is written in such a comprehensible style that it rejuvenates and replenishes the old memory bank – very useful for science journalists.

There are a couple of topics I slightly disagree with, and I find her somewhat conservative (e.g. difference between man and woman). But I guess if I want a more visionary approach I should read science fiction.

I liked the way she ties her ideas to her upbringing on a farm, bringing highflying neurophilosophical thoughts down to earth. My attention wandered when it came to paragraphs obviously directed at science-skeptics. I guess this is directed more towards US readers. In short: a great (audio-)book for anybody, especially laypeople interested in a good overview of neuroscience. Rock on Pat.

Enlightening!

An approachable account of what the findings in neuroscience mean about the way we see ourselves. I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in the subject in particular to those with an optimistic outlook.

Joining The Ranks...

of other neo-Darwinean evolutionary theorists, such as Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Robert Wright, Churchland argues here, with good cause and good evidence, that the self indeed arises, solely and without aid, from the brain. How exactly that happens, of course, remains a mystery, though there is good scientific evidence for believing that it is so. If this book has a flaw, it is not in its science, but rather in its approach--and one can read it in the title "Touching A Nerve." Churchland, like Dawkins and Dennett, often waves the flag a bit too high and too wildly, being a bit too aggressive against unseen (and probably nonexistent) enemies of her theories. All right, Jerry Fallwell might not take to the idea, but he probably isn't going to be reading this book anyway. If I could say anything to Dennett, Dawkins, and in this case, Churchland, it would be "how about you just calm down about the religious right and do science, believing it will speak for itself to the logical--whereas all the blustering in the world won't do a thing in regard to the illogical." Notwithstanding, the book is still well-done and is a fine addition to the growing neo-Darwinean canon.

common sense gone systematic

The feeling for something, and the sense of being something are hallmarks of human experience. The nature of the self that knows these things is perhaps the most ancient discussion in the humanities. What I find remarkable, as someone who finished graduate school in the early 1980's, is the tremendous sense that somehow, finally, we are about to really understand the brain. The last thirty years has seen remarkable expansion of knowledge in the fields we collectively call "neuroscience."
This concise work by Dr. Churchland, explores neuroscientific contributions to many of the old arguments about the nature of the self with particular attention to moral philosophy, and how we come to be the persons we are. While clearly versed in the scientific material, and able to draw appropriate implications from the research (in stark contrast to some authors who seem simply carried away by the implications of the science) the narrative (performed gracefully by Karen Saltus) is down home and even folksy.
Interwoven with the science are teaching stories from a rural Canadian background. The stories illustrate the author's invitation to view the world (including the sense of self) as phenomena of mind, emerging from our biological brains. In a worldview grounded in biology and the philosophy of science, she finds the commonsense view that we are unique creatures with brains which are constructed by evolutionary processes that leave us with much in common. She finds herself personally comfortable, and I would say hopeful, that this understanding does not amount to "paradise lost," but rather embraces new possibilities in appreciating complexity and difference.

Review

There is a good amount of brain biology and some associated philosophy in Dr. Patricia Churchland's book. Overall, I think she does well in connecting science to philosophy, pointing out misconceptions and gets ideas across clearly, and I think many of the topics she touched on in the book really takes someone well-versed in both neuroscience and philosophy to do well. Mainly, she argues against dualism, pointing out there is no "I" separated from "my brain," and discusses the implications of this, for self-identity, choices, free will, morality, etc. In terms of philosophy, she doesn't spend too much effort in covering all possible philosophical stances, so I wouldn't say her arguments are foolproof, but I get and like her ideas.

One set of interesting topics she mentions is about the illusions created by our brains that question the boundary between the self and the world. These include somatoparaphrenia (the denial of ownership of a body part), out-of-body experiences, self-tickling by a delay mechanism, and the sensation of motion induced by efference copy. Another topic I like is factors contributing to behaviors such as sociality and aggression: in addition to biological factors, she emphasizes that environmental factors, including both ecological and cultural factors, cannot be ignored.

Some contentious topics she tackles on are the biological factors behind religion, morality, and war. She pays various degrees of attention to them, and in the end many questions come down to the existence of free will and its moral and legal implications. She points out that the term "free will" can be used in two ways: the contracausal account of free will that some philosophers use to mean the thoughts that occur with no causes, as opposed to the regular sense of free will ordinary people use:
<blockquote>If you are intending your action, knowing what you are doing, and are of sound mind, and if the decision is not coerced (no gun is pointed at your head), then you are exhibiting free will.</blockquote>
The former seems not too interesting to her and she dismisses it somewhat quickly (she does give three counterarguments already), but to be fair, you can't convince idealists using evidences from physical sciences, and this is not a book on metaphysics. The latter, as she noted, is fuzzy and not well-defined, and I sense usually not well thought-out in terms of its metaphysical implications. With this fuzziness, she argues free will in the regular sense is compatible with our behaviors being completely caused by factors known to physical laws, and would like to replace it by a less confusing term: "self-control." If you're the same as your brain, a brain exerting self-control (through prefrontal cortex) is nothing miraculous or supernatural, is completely within the bounds of science, while, as she claims, also sounding agreeable to most ordinary people feeling we have "free will." The implication of this is that for moral and legal purposes, self-control, a subject of study determinable by science in principle, is the factor to be considered to determine guilt. She then goes on to discuss some nuances in the legal, social, and medical practicalities of considering self-control in crime and punishment.

The next contentious topic, and one related to everything, is consciousness, and importantly, the unconscious, nonconscious, and subconscious. The existence of the unconscious itself and how it interacts with consciousness are fascinating and productive grounds to establish many arguments against a lot of traditional armchair philosophy on consciousness. It's another place where Dr. Churchland's neurophilosophy shine.

These are not all separate topics. I constantly refer back to previous pages when I read about later chapters, and the ideas mentioned in earlier chapters pop back in later pages when they're related and help make a point. Although I already agree with most of where she stands, I still find myself learned a lot from her on the science as well as the philosophy.