Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other. It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Humans like to think of themselves as unusual. We've got big brains that make it possible for us to think, and we think that we have free will and that our behavior can't be described by some mechanistic set of theorems or ideas. But even in terms of much of our behavior, we really aren't very different from other animals.
Our sense of self is a kind of construct. It is in some ways like a novel, and it's like a fabric of fictions that we patch together from memory.
As the most social apes, we inhabit a mirror-world in which every important relationship, whether with spouse, friend or child, shapes the brain, which in turn shapes our relationships.
We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.
Human beings are social animals; we devote a significant portion of our brain just to dealing with interactions with other humans.
Our self image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.
Our animal origins are constantly lurking behind, even if they are filtered through complicated social evolution.
We need a self because the complexity of the chemical processes that make up our individual humanities exceeds the processing power of our brains.
The idea that there is a sharp boundary between our true inner selves and the outside world is pervasive but highly questionable. The boundaries of the self might well be more porous than we ordinarily think.
In 'Self Comes to Mind' I pay a lot of attention to simple creatures without brains or minds, because those 'cartooned abstractions of who we are' operate on precisely the same principles that we do.
No opposing quotes found.