Brain vs. Mind

Paper Summary:

The philosopher Thomas Nagel became famous for his advocacy of the idea that human consciousness and subjective experience cannot be reduced to a discussion of "mere" brain activity and that the human brain is bifurcated into two hemispheres. The paper shows that in his essay on "Brain Bisection & the Unity of Consciousness," Nagel stresses that merely because this is the case, the sum or interaction of human being's two brain hemispheres of left and right is essentially greater than the cataloged capabilities of the two parts. Nagel stresses this as proof of his thesis that the human consciousness is more extensive than simply a list of the respective components of the brain's left and right hemispheres. The paper critically analyzes Nagel's view. It also touches on the growing research on gender differences between the interaction of brain hemispheres

From the Paper:

"Even if human beings are indeed all "brain," this does not mean that human beings will not vary in the ways that the different components of their brain interact in an interesting, varied, and compassionate manner. Nagel fears the potential predictability of the human consciousness as reducing the mysteries of human subjectivity to a catalog of components. But to suggest, for instance, that the right brain might deal more with abstraction, as to the hemispherical components of left brain which are said to deal more with verbal capacity, can hardly predict the relative ability of any individual to use those abstractive or verbal capacities."

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