Page 86 - Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul

Darwin’s Dilemma: The Soul

Nowhere in the brain is there a
friend, our mother or father smil-
ing at us. The image of this book
you are reading exists nowhere
in the brain. In short, the
world we imagine we see
around us is neither outside
us nor inside the brain.
Scientists who claim that the
The brain
image does exist in the
brain have this question
to answer: If an image
does form in the brain,
then who is it who per-
ceives that image?
Vilayanur S.
Ramachandran is
Director of the
Center for Brain
and Cognition and
Neurons
professor with the
Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the
University of California, San Diego. He dramatizes this question in
his book Phantoms in the Brain:

He glanced down at the glass . . . in his hand. “Well, there is an up-
side-down image of this glass falling in my eyeball. The play of light
and dark images activates photoreceptors on my retina, and the pat-
terns are transmitted pixel by pixel through a cable—my optic
nerve—and displayed on a screen in my brain. Isn’t that how I see
this glass . . . ? Of course, my brain would need to make the image
upright again.”

Though his knowledge of photoreceptors and and optics was

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