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Self and sensibility
OPINION LETTERS Self and sensibility From Elizabeth Young In his forthcoming book, Julian Baggini (12 March, p 34) will probably address the fact that we each at different times experience our “self” as first person singular – “I”, as first person plural – “we”, and even as second, or sometimes third, person. And the first person is experienced differently in different tenses: I think, therefore I was; I feel, therefore I am; I ought, therefore I shall be. As for free will, aren’t scientists applying it when they decide that something is true, and write an article about their findings, and that something else is false, and say so? What would “truth” be, if we are not “free” to recognise it? London, UK From Ernest Ager Baggini must be using a different definition of “discover” to the one I use. In reference to the
ponderings of the philosopher David Hume that each of us is merely a bundle of thoughts, sensations and experiences (a belief also held by the Buddha) he says that “neuroscience confirms and explains the mechanics of this centreless self, but it certainly didn’t discover it”. Many people have hypotheses, thoughts and guesses; they ponder upon them and even believe them. This is not discovery. In the late 1400s, people hypothesised about lands to the west of the Atlantic; do we therefore strip Columbus of his “discovery” of America? Baggini says he does not wish to disparage neuroscience, yet says “it is simply a philosophical mistake” to think that understanding more about the nuts and bolts of the basis of self and identity must add something to fundamental understanding of what makes us the individuals we are. But until we carry out the experiments, we are “merely” guessing at the
Enigma Number 1640
Four-cast Susan Denham Fill each of the 16 boxes with a digit so that the same four consecutive digits appear in each row and in each column. In this way you can then read four 4-figure numbers across the rows and four 4-figure numbers down the columns. You must choose your digits so all eight 4-figure numbers are different and none of them has any odd factor between 2 and 20.
What are the lowest and the highest of your eight 4-figure numbers?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 4 May. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1640, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1633 Same perfect square: the integers are 74 and 95 The winner J. Jamieson of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK Answer to 1634 Symphonic buttons: press 66648887 The winner Hampton Oates of Chester, UK
28 | NewScientist | 2 April 2011
nature of selfhood – even if our guesses are very well thought out and based on observation of the human condition. Any or all of these ideas may be mistaken. Neuroscience – science – allows us to discount some of the ideas, and to build on the remainder. It makes discoveries. Exmouth, Devon, UK From Ella Taylor-Smith Apart from a passing reference to the environment a person finds themself in, Baggini’s discussion of self seems limited to the individual’s internal experience. However, self is also an external construct, legally and socially. Our behaviours are strongly influenced (even circumscribed) by the expectations of other people – family, colleagues, friends and partners. Perhaps the next step in exploring self is to gauge the relative influence of internal and external factors or even to question whether an individual’s conception of their self is always more valid than someone else’s. Edinburgh, UK From Bob Humphrey The existence of a “delay-line” between the unconscious part of the brain deciding to move, for example, and you or I becoming consciously aware of this does not necessarily imply any lack of free will. It is quite possible that the unconscious part is “me” and undertakes my thought processes including making decisions; and these are all passed to the “display” part of the brain to form conscious awareness, albeit after a short delay. This would not mean these decisions were anything other than real and “mine”. Bristol, UK
Wrong trousers From Hedley Brown How refreshing to see Richard Bergman suggesting an alternative to the body mass
index (BMI) of obesity, which makes muscular men anxious (12 March, p 31). Back in the 1970s my colleagues and I discovered that there was a weirdly accurate correlation between the incidence of coronary disease in the UK and the ratio of waist to inside-leg length of trousers sold by a wellknown drapery store. I could not persuade the big trouser company to part with the raw sales data, so we could not
publish in a journal. But we had seen the heart and trouser maps, and we spread the news at lectures in the hope of un-spreading waistlines. Nunthorpe, North Yorkshire, UK From Frank Hollis When I saw this item was about somebody questioning BMI as a measure of obesity I thought “at last!” But I was surprised to find that its most obvious flaw was not mentioned. Indeed, I’ve never seen it mentioned. Why does the BMI assume that one’s weight should be proportional to the square of one’s height, when it should obviously be proportional to the cube of height, that is to one’s volume, for an optimum body density? Steyning, West Sussex, UK The editor writes: n A tall person who was a scaled-up short person could be very big-boned indeed: so the mass divided by the cube of height (the “Ponderal index”, apparently) is wrong too. BMI is a workable approximation.
ponderings of the philosopher David Hume that each of us is merely a bundle of thoughts, sensations and experiences (a belief also held by the Buddha) he says that “neuroscience confirms and explains the mechanics of this centreless self, but it certainly didn’t discover it”. Many people have hypotheses, thoughts and guesses; they ponder upon them and even believe them. This is not discovery. In the late 1400s, people hypothesised about lands to the west of the Atlantic; do we therefore strip Columbus of his “discovery” of America? Baggini says he does not wish to disparage neuroscience, yet says “it is simply a philosophical mistake” to think that understanding more about the nuts and bolts of the basis of self and identity must add something to fundamental understanding of what makes us the individuals we are. But until we carry out the experiments, we are “merely” guessing at the
Enigma Number 1640
Four-cast Susan Denham Fill each of the 16 boxes with a digit so that the same four consecutive digits appear in each row and in each column. In this way you can then read four 4-figure numbers across the rows and four 4-figure numbers down the columns. You must choose your digits so all eight 4-figure numbers are different and none of them has any odd factor between 2 and 20.
What are the lowest and the highest of your eight 4-figure numbers?
WIN £15 will be awarded to the sender of the first correct answer opened on Wednesday 4 May. The Editor’s decision is final. Please send entries to Enigma 1640, New Scientist, Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS, or to [email protected] (please include your postal address). Answer to 1633 Same perfect square: the integers are 74 and 95 The winner J. Jamieson of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, UK Answer to 1634 Symphonic buttons: press 66648887 The winner Hampton Oates of Chester, UK
28 | NewScientist | 2 April 2011
nature of selfhood – even if our guesses are very well thought out and based on observation of the human condition. Any or all of these ideas may be mistaken. Neuroscience – science – allows us to discount some of the ideas, and to build on the remainder. It makes discoveries. Exmouth, Devon, UK From Ella Taylor-Smith Apart from a passing reference to the environment a person finds themself in, Baggini’s discussion of self seems limited to the individual’s internal experience. However, self is also an external construct, legally and socially. Our behaviours are strongly influenced (even circumscribed) by the expectations of other people – family, colleagues, friends and partners. Perhaps the next step in exploring self is to gauge the relative influence of internal and external factors or even to question whether an individual’s conception of their self is always more valid than someone else’s. Edinburgh, UK From Bob Humphrey The existence of a “delay-line” between the unconscious part of the brain deciding to move, for example, and you or I becoming consciously aware of this does not necessarily imply any lack of free will. It is quite possible that the unconscious part is “me” and undertakes my thought processes including making decisions; and these are all passed to the “display” part of the brain to form conscious awareness, albeit after a short delay. This would not mean these decisions were anything other than real and “mine”. Bristol, UK
Wrong trousers From Hedley Brown How refreshing to see Richard Bergman suggesting an alternative to the body mass
index (BMI) of obesity, which makes muscular men anxious (12 March, p 31). Back in the 1970s my colleagues and I discovered that there was a weirdly accurate correlation between the incidence of coronary disease in the UK and the ratio of waist to inside-leg length of trousers sold by a wellknown drapery store. I could not persuade the big trouser company to part with the raw sales data, so we could not
publish in a journal. But we had seen the heart and trouser maps, and we spread the news at lectures in the hope of un-spreading waistlines. Nunthorpe, North Yorkshire, UK From Frank Hollis When I saw this item was about somebody questioning BMI as a measure of obesity I thought “at last!” But I was surprised to find that its most obvious flaw was not mentioned. Indeed, I’ve never seen it mentioned. Why does the BMI assume that one’s weight should be proportional to the square of one’s height, when it should obviously be proportional to the cube of height, that is to one’s volume, for an optimum body density? Steyning, West Sussex, UK The editor writes: n A tall person who was a scaled-up short person could be very big-boned indeed: so the mass divided by the cube of height (the “Ponderal index”, apparently) is wrong too. BMI is a workable approximation.