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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Neurological?

Early Monday morning, attempting to form my first sentence, I couldn't quite put the words together, but I managed, in my second sentence, to say, "It's so cold, my stung is tuck." Ah, I thought, Professor William Archibald Spooner himself might have noted that felicitous transposition. "Or my brain," I added.

Of course, probably (or, at least, for all I know), it's the brain in either case. Neurology has something to do with almost everything human. Possibly even our propensity to have faith. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, is reported to now be "investigating the neurological basis of belief."

I've always been sceptical of attempts to reduce mental acts to neurology, perhaps fearing that my own consciousness would somehow be compromised. It is perhaps a tribute to the power of Harris's book that reading it is warming me up to the project and leading me to feel hopeful rather than fearful that the investigators may find out something reliable. God knows we need to get a hold on religion...*
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* ...for the sake of formulating and enacting an enlightened social policy—in nations, anyway, not in thrall to theocracy.

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