In an article in the NY Times magazine today about the growing role that neuroscience is playing in law, Stephen J. Morse, professor of law and psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, is quoted as saying:
"I'm a thoroughgoing materialist, who believes that all mental and behavioral activity is the causal product of physical events in the brain." Fair enough. But he's also quoted as follows: "Suppose neuroscience could reveal that reason actually plays no role in determining human behavior....Suppose I could show you that your intentions and your reasons for your actions are post hoc rationalizations that somehow your brain generates to explain to you what your brain has already done" without your conscious participation. Who is the "you" to whom the brain is purportedly offering this explaination? Who is the "you" who is not consciously participating in what the brain generates? Don't Morse's references to this mysterious "you" constitute an implicit recognition that there's *more* to mind than brain, contradicting his "thoroughgoing materialist" self-characterization? Maybe he was just speaking imprecisely to make a point. And "without your conscious participation" is the article writer's contribution, possibly a clumsy paraphrase of something Morse went on to say to clarify the quoted statement. But I'm intrigued. I've seen this sort of apparent contradiction from materialists before, as if some part of them *knew* there was a "you" that isn't encompassed by brain but had simply excluded it from their theorizing, only to let it slip out in unguarded moments.
