Blogosophy

Nietzche on the Brain

The body is a great reason, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a shepherd. An instrument of your body is also your little reason, my brother, which you call "spirit"--a little instrument and toy of your great reason.
     "I," you say, and are proud of the word. But greater is that in which you do not wish to have faith--your body and its great reason: that does not say "I," but does "I."
     What the sense feels, what the spirit knows, never has its end in itself. But sense and spirit would persuade you that they are the end of all things: that is how vain they are. Instruments and toys are sense and spirit: behind them still lies the self. The self also seeks with the eyes of the senses; it also listens with the ears of the spirit. Always the self listens and seeks; it compares, overpowers, conquers, destroys. It controls, and it is in control of the ego too.
     Behind your thoughts and feelings, my brother, there stands a mighty ruler, and unknown sage--whose name is self. In your body he dwells; he is your body.
     There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. And who knows why your body needs precisely your best wisdom?
     Your self laughs at your ego and at its bold leaps. "What are these leaps and flights of though to me?" it says to itself. "A detour to my end. I am the leading strings of the ego and the prompter of its concepts."
     The self says to the ego, "Feel pain here!" Then the ego suffers and thinks how it might suffer no more--and that is why it is made to think.
     The self says to the ego, "Feel pleasure here!" Then the ego is pleased and thinks how it might often be pleased again--and that is why it is made to think.

- Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tr. Walter Kaufmann, p. 34-35

I think this is almost exactly right, in light of our best current empirical understanding of the mind and the brain, as I discussed in re Descartes' Error and similar posts. Complex processes in the brain give rise to consciousness and self-awareness, and they are driven by (not the drivers of) the body and its needs, affinities, desires, and the brain and mind are fundamentally instrumental. Their existence, and the way that they operate are, for better or worse, shaped by evolution and bounded by their instrumentality. (That's not to say that McGinn is right to despair of ever understanding them; in fact McGinn has never looked more wrong than in light of the strides that are being made in practically every field that starts with "neuro." Reason unaided might not be up to the task, perhaps even for deep reasons, but the scientific method is an astonishingly powerful lever)

As Nietzche said "A thought comes when it wills, not when I will it." This seems to me to be a really key insight, that a lot of philosophy of mind that I've read--even philosophy of mind that properly dismisses the Cartesian self--misses completely.