Neurophilosophy
•The
normal mind is not beautifully unified, but rather a problematically yoked-together bundle of partly
autonomous systems. All parts of
the mind are not equally accessible to each other at all times. These modules or systems
sometimes have internal
communication problems which they solve by various ingenious and devious routes. If this is true
(and I think it is), it
may provide us with an answer to a most puzzling question about conscious thought: what good is it?
•No one
has ever seen a self.
•"For
my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I
always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred,
pain or pleasure. I never can
catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.... If anyone, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I
must confess I can reason no
longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we
are essentially different in
this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive
something simple and continued, which he calls himself;
though I am certain there is no such principle in me."
David Hume, Treatise
on Human Nature, I, IV, sec. 6.
