My Brain Made Me Do It: The Rise of Neuroscience and the Threat to Moral Responsibility [ペーパーバック]

Having little background in neuroscience or philosophy, I wasn't sure what to expect when my Philosophy of Science professor recommended this book. However, after just a few sentences, the well-crafted, extraordinarily lucid writing pulled me into a landscape of neurotransmitters and metaphysics, providing fascinating case studies, ethical quandaries, and engaging scientific explanations. Asking fundamental questions about the freedom of choice and moral responsibility, the author isn't afraid to battle head on with difficult, looming questions that seem irreconcilable with current scientific data.

Not only was the book fascinating to read, but it forced me to confront many issues about determinism and free will that have bothered me for ages. Time and time again I came across issues I've thought about but have never known how to articulate. My Brain Made Me Do it not only takes on these discussions, but it makes it accessible and understandable, which as a student I can easily say is no easy feat for most authors. Perhaps because the author is still a student himself, his impressive book manages to tackle really complex philosophical and scientific ideas in a way that is both engaging and approachable.

Weaving in beautifully written examples about law, politics, literature, and science, the author argues that biological determinism is not the answer. Rather, as human beings, we have the gift of consciousness, which allows us to make moral deliberations - to create, to discover, to communicate. Our minds don't work like algorithms, and it is our "boundless reasoning" that makes us so unique and capable. Although our understanding of consciousness and free will is limited, neuroscience, according to the author, does not repudiate moral responsibility.

I highly recommend this inspiring book to anyone who has ever made a decision and wondered whether it was really in your control.

This book is an enjoyable read for anyone just getting into neurophilosophy or with an interest in how neuroscience relates to free will. The threat to free will addressed by Eliezer Sternberg (a precocious medical student with philosophy and neuroscience degrees) is neurobiological determinism. If the brain 'controls' the mind, and the brain is a physical system governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, then the mind is also physically determined. It follows that, given enough information, each mental state may be predictable - or more than that: predetermined, as much as the the tides or any other natural phenomenon. The book's final chapters are Sternberg's attempt to resolve the neurobiological mind with some vestige of free will (not clearly defined). The final theory is workable, though not completely vetted.

Sternberg covers a lot of ground in terms of fascinating studies and observations, from Mike Gazzaniga's split brain patients with 'dual consciousness' to the defense lawyer Clarence Darrow's brilliant oration that the two privileged young men, Leopold and Loeb, cannot be held morally responsible for their premeditated murder of a friend, because they were biologically predestined to do it. In terms of anecdotes and 'evidence', this book is very interesting. Sternberg cites his sources well and follows up with a reading list.

However, Sternberg, with just a bachelors degree in philosophy under his belt (which is all I have, I should add), makes assumptions that are at times glaringly obvious and occasionally insidious. Unfortunately, that is no small problem for this project, which uses the empirical evidence to construct rational arguments made for and against an enduring concept of free will.

The most frustrating assumptions Sternberg makes result from his drawing a hard line between the brain and the mind. He begins the book by defining the mind as neuroscience is coming to understand it, but his arguments use the folk concept of the mind (as some sort of non-physical, spirity-type thing); that is, of course, incoherent with the scientific view. Toward the beginning of the book, it seemed as though there would be no way for free will to exist without a non-physical cause - which I think is an extreme version of the common sense idea of free will. The modus ponens and modus tollens arguments he sets up lead to seemingly significant conclusions, but have very questionable premises. Despite several transgressions of this sort, this book is very well researched, generally well-reasoned, and overall a very interesting read.

"My Brain Made Me Do It" begins with an account of a crime, and a defense attorney's attempt to cite the level of brain chemical's in the defendant's brain as an excuse for his behavior. From here, Sternberg launches into a gripping investigation of whether recent developments in brain research--from rare clinical cases to studies of neurological behavior prediction--to invalidate our notion of free will and moral responsibility, eventually making his own argument as to how the issues can be reconciled.

Each chapter begins with an illustrative example or story that leads into a question to think about. The author then proceeds to provide accounts of actual experiments that have been done. The science, though not oversimplified, is explained very clearly, to the point that they often seem very worrisome. At points I thought to myself that the research was direct proof that we are all just automatons. But Sternberg finds the subtle flaws in each case and shows that there is a fundamental problem with the scientific approach to issues of human decision-making.

The questions and arguments build up until the last few chapters, in which Sternberg puts forth a new approach that could be taken that could integrate what neuroscientists know about the brain, and what we, as individuals, know about our minds and selves. It's extremely well-written, and it's one of those books that will make you think, and motivate you to have lengthy discussions about the big philosophical questions that, in some way, we all wonder about.