Vilayanur Ramachandran:
PHANTOMS IN THE BRAIN (Morrow, 1998)

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By analyzing different kinds of brain damage, and the feelings associated with phantom limbs (people with missing limbs can still feel pain in those non-existent limbs), British neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran concluded that the brain constructs cognitive maps that are, basically, plausible interpretations of the world. It is those maps that cause all mental life, starting from perception itself. The limb is no longer there, but its representation in the brain is still there, and thus the person feels it as if it still were there. Whether it is truly there or not is negligible compared with the fact that it is represented in the brain. If one generalizes this finding, one reaches the conclusion that all mental life could be "phantom", because that is a general behavior of the brain. All sensory experience is an illusion. All feelings are illusions. Even the self consists of an illusion, largely constructed out of interactions with others. The brain creates these representations of different kinds (from representations of limbs to representations of the I) and then believes that they truly exist and they get associated with feelings. (Thus the solution to the pain caused by a phantom limb would be to induce the brain to believe that the phantom limb does not exist anymore, i.e. to remove the representation of that limb in the brain). In a sense, the entire body is a "phantom limb": the brain constructs its existence and then "feels" it.

His test for consciousness includes three properties: irrevocability, choice and memory. Any living being that exhibits these features can be said to be conscious. Ramachandran thinks that consciousness is located in the temporal lobes and associated limbic structures. Ramachandran thinks he has even located the seat of religious feelings: they seem to originate from the brain's temporal lobes.

An interesting point that the authors make is that both brains and cultures use languages: the brain uses the language of neural chemistry, a culture uses the spoken languages. Unfortunately, he fails to produce a general meaning of this fact (other than the trivial fact that both are compound objects made of many interacting parts).