Who Am I and If So How Many? (33 page)

Now, here’s the meaning of life … Well, it’s nothing very special, really. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.

1
who sought to become the ‘poet’ of his own life
Rüdiger Safranski,
Nietzsche
:
A Philosophical Biography
, trans. Shelley Frisch (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 27.

1
Once upon a time
Safranski,
Nietzsche
, p. 85.

2
‘All we need … is a chemistry’
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human
,
All
Too
Human
, trans. Marion Faber, with Stephen Lehmann (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), p. 14.

3
‘We are unknown to ourselves’
Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the
Genealogy
of Morals and Ecce Homo
, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967), p. 15.

4
‘I know my destiny’
Safranski,
Nietzsche
, p. 28.

5
‘We are simply temporal’
Arthur Schopenhauer,
Parerga and
Paralipomena
, vol. 2, trans. E.F.J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 88.

1
Now on to the second story
Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey,
Lucy
:
The Beginnings of Mankind
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981).

2
‘We’ve got it’
Ibid., pp. 17–18.

3
‘A geological episode of unimaginable proportions’
Richard Leakey,
Origins
Reconsidered
:
In Search of What Makes Us
Human (New York: Anchor, 1993), p. 9. See also Leakey,
The Origin of Humankind
(New York: Basic Books, 1994).

4
In the western region of the Great Rift
Gerhard Roth,
Das
Gehirn und
seine Wirklichkeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000).

5
The brains of the australopithecines
Ernst Pöppel,
Grenzen
des
Bewusstseins
(Frankfurt: Insel, 2000). See also Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth,
How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

6
The notion of ‘right’ and ‘left’
Paul Watzlawick,
How Real
Is Real
?
Confusion, Disinformation, Communication
(New York: Vintage, 1977), and his Invented Reality (New York: Norton, 1980).

1
What is the most complex thing in the world?
Santiago Ramón y Cajal,
Texture of the Nervous System of Man and the Vertebrates
, 3 vols., trans. Pedro Pasik (New York: Springer, 1999f.). Ramón y Cajal’s autobiography has been translated into English as
Recollections of My Life
, trans. E. Horne Craigie and Juan Cano (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). For studies of the history of neuroscience, see M. R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker,
History
of Cognitive Neuroscience
(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), and Stanley Finger,
Origins of Neuroscience
:
A History of Explorations into Brain
Function
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Among the numerous overviews of the brain and the field of neuroscience are V. S. Ramachandran,
A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles
to Purple Numbers
(New York: Pi Press, 2004), and William H. Calvin,
How
Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now (New York: Basic Books,
1996)
.

2
‘There can be no doubt’
Immanuel Kant,
Critique of Pure Reason, trans.
Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 41.

3
‘the Janitor’s Dream’
Calvin,
How Brains Think
, p. 36.

1
‘At this time I was in Germany’
René Descartes,
The
Philosophical
Writings of Descartes
, vol. 1, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff,
and Dugald Murdoch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 116.

2
‘the grandfather of the Revolution’
Friedrich Nietzsche,
Beyond Good
and Evil
, trans. Marion Faber (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), sect. 191, p. 80.

3
‘I knew I was a substance’
Descartes,
Philosophical
Writings of Descartes
, p. 127. For a biography of Descartes, see A. C. Grayling, Descartes:
The Life of René Descartes and Its Place in His Times
(New York: Free Press, 2005). For an overview of Descartes’ impact on modern philosophy, see Russell Shorto,
Descartes’ Bones
(New York: Doubleday, 2008). For a neuroscientific perspective on Descartes, see Antonio R. Damasio,
Descartes
’
Error: Emotion
,
Reason, and the Human Brain
(New York: Putnam, 1994).

1
‘On a bright summer day’
Ernst Mach,
Contributions to the Analysis of the
Sensations
, trans. Cora May Williams (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1897), p. 23, fn. 1.

2
‘The ego,’ he asserted
Mach,
Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations,
p. 20.

3
Mach quipped that a sensation
Ernst Mach,
Knowledge and Error:
Sketches on the Psychology of Enquiry
, trans. Thomas McCormack and Paul Foulkes (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1976), p. 359.

4
‘The ego is unsavable’
Mach,
Contributions to the Analysis of the
Sensations
, p. 20. On Mach’s life and works, see
Ernst Mach
:
Physicist and
Philosopher
, ed. R. S. Cohen and Raymond J. Seeger (New York: Springer, 1975).

5
‘succession of perceptions’
David Hume,
A Treatise of Human Nature,
vol. 1, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary Norton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 47.

6
‘object of inner sense’
Immanuel Kant,
Critique of Pure
Reason
, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 329.

7
‘travelers to unimaginable lands’
Oliver Sacks,
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
(New York: Touchstone, 1998), p. ix.

8
Many neuroscientists tend to the view
Gerhard Roth,
Fühlen, Denken, Handeln
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2003), pp. 378–411. On the question of the self in philosophy today, see Werner Siefer and Christiane Weber,
Ich
–
Wie wir uns selbst erfinden
(Frankfurt: Campus, 2006), and Thomas Metzinger,
Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

9
‘Man is an individual’
Niklas Luhmann,
Die Soziologie und der Mensch,
vol. 6 of
Soziologische Aufklärung
(Wiesbaden: Verlag, 2008), p. 130.

1
The year is 2267
The
Star Trek
episode ‘This Side of Paradise’ can be found at www.memory-alpha.org.

2
neuroscience has taken it up instead
Roth,
Fühlen
,
Denken, Handeln,
pp. 285–373.

3
Wilhelm Wundt identified three central contrastive pairs
Wilhelm Max Wundt,
Outlines of Psychology,
trans. Charles Hubbard Judd (Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1907).

4
More recently, Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen,
Unmasking the Face
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1975), and Paul Ekman,
Emotions Revealed
(New York: Henry Holt, 2003).

5
a list of fifteen
His list of fifteen ‘basic emotions’ is on page 55 of Paul Ekman, ‘Basic Emotions,’ in
Handbook of Cognition and Emotion,
ed. Tim Dalgleish and Mick Power (Sussex, UK: Wiley, 1999), pp. 45–60.

1
He was a difficult man
The authoritative edition of Freud’s works is Sigmund Freud,
The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: The Standard Edition,
24 vols. (London: Hogarth, 1973). The classic biography of Freud is Ernest Jones,
The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud,
3 vols. (New York: Basic Books, 1957). An outstanding recent biography is Peter Gay’s
Freud: A Life for Our Time
(New York: Norton, 2006).

2
‘be such as to overthrow’
Sigmund Freud,
Beyond the Pleasure Principle,
trans. C.J.M. Hubback (London: International Psycho-Analytical Press, 1922), p. 78.

3
One well-known example
Daniel J. Simons and Christopher Chabris, ‘Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events,’
Perception
28 (1999), pp. 1059–74.

4
A large part of our unconscious
For analyses of the unconscious, see Roth,
Fühlen, Denken, Handeln,
pp. 225–41; Timothy D. Wilson,
Strangers
to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Antonio R. Damasio,
Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
(New York: Harcourt, 2003).

5
Brain researchers today dream
A new synthesis of neuroscience and psychoanalysis is offered in Eric R. Kandel,
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and
the New Biology of Mind
(Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2005); the essay under discussion is on pp. 5–26. See also François Ansermet and Pierre Magistretti,
Biology of Freedom,
trans. Susan Fairfield (New York: Other Press, 2007).

1
Eric Richard Kandel’s story begins
Eric R. Kandel,
In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
(New York: Norton, 2007). See also Larry R. Squire and Eric R. Kandel,
Memory: From Mind to Molecules
(Greenwood Village, CO: Roberts and Company, 2009).

2
The terrain onto which Kandel had ventured
For a study of memory research, see Douwe Draaisma,
Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older: How Memory Shapes Our Past,
trans. Arnold Pomerans and Erica Pomerans (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Daniel L. Schacter,
Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past
(New York: Basic Books, 1997); Hans Markowitsch,
Dem Gedächtnis auf der Spur: Vom Erinnern und Vergessen
(Tübingen: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009).

3
the story of Kim Peek
The life of the savant Kim Peek is described in Fran Peek,
The Real Rain Man: Kim Peek
(Salt Lake City: Harkness, 1997).

1
In the fall of 1914
The story of Wittgenstein’s study of the traffic accident in Paris and the quotation about the proposition can be found in Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Notebooks, 1914–1916,
vol. 1, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 7 (September 29, 1914) and p. 80 (August 2, 1916), respectively. For a biography of Wittgenstein, see Ray Monk,
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius
(New York: Free Press, 1990). For his family background, see Alexander Waugh,
The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War
(New York: Doubleday, 2008). For information on Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, see Ludwig Wittgenstein et al.,
The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle,
ed. Gordon Baker (New York: Routledge), 2003.

2
‘My ferocious German’
Bertrand Russell,
Logical and Philosophical Papers, 1909–13,
vol. 6, ed. John Slater and Bernd Frohmann (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. xxv.

3
He encouraged Wittgenstein to criticize
The groundbreaking work by Russell that Wittgenstein dissects is Bertrand Russell’s
Principles of
Mathematics
; this 1903 classic was reprinted in 2009 by Routledge, New York.

4
‘a “critique of language”’
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus
, trans. David F. Pears and Brian F. McGuinness (New York: Routledge, 2001), sect. 4.0031, p. 23.

5
‘What we cannot speak about’
Ibid., sect. 7, p. 89.

6
‘Joseph saw, distinguished, categorized’
Oliver Sacks,
Seeing Voices: A Journey into the Land of the Deaf
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 40, 44.

7
Chomsky provided a credible explanation
Chomsky’s pioneering work on the nature and acquisition of grammar is found in Noam Chomsky,
Language and Mind
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972).

8
‘hermit, ascetic, guru’
Gilbert Ryle, ‘The Work of an Influential but Little-Known Philosopher of Science: Ludwig Wittgenstein,’ in
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Critical Assessments,
vol. 3, ed. Stuart Shanker (London: Croom Helm, 1986), p. 139.

9
‘Our language can be seen as an ancient city’
Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations,
trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 7e.

10
‘the meaning of a word’
Ibid., p. 20e.

11
‘a main source of our failure to understand’
Ibid., p. 49e.