Theodore Schwartz: prediction

Transcript context

…Given that people can live after split-brain events — does this mean we’re really two people or more people? I don’t think that the unified self really exists in the way that we think it does. As you mentioned, there’s a neurosurgical operation called a corpus callosotomy, where we can split the two sides of the brain in half so that they become two independently functioning brains, and that person does not feel like two people. They feel like one self, even though the left side of the brain will make the right hand do one thing, and the right side of the brain will make the left side do something else. Both halves of their body are being controlled by different brains, and sometimes they’re behaving in opposite ways, but yet the individual still feels like a unified individual. How is that possible, to have two brains and still feel like one self? We can also remove half a brain. We do a surgery called a hemispherectomy, where we take out half the brain. That person doesn’t wake up feeling like half a person. We know that all that we are is our brain. That’s what creates our selves. I think that there are hundreds of different modules processing information in the brain and determining what behaviors we should do and making decisions for us, and then we carry out that behavior. Then, there’s another part of the brain that basically is a storyteller, that tries to make sense of it all after the fact. I do not think we have free will in the way that most people do. I think that our brains make decisions for us. We carry out those behaviors, and then we write a story that makes it into a logical timeline that makes us feel as if we were the ones, that there was a self that made that decision, whereas, in fact, that self didn’t really exist. What you think is you, in your opinion, is just the storyteller part at best.…

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