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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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In case you haven't heard of mirror neurons, they are very cool. Parts of our brains react the same way whether we are performing an action (say, for example, playing an electric guitar) or whether we are watching someone else perform the same action. Mirror neurons were charismatically and emphatically championed by neurologist Vilyanur S. Ramachandran at edge.org back at the turn of the century (ie: six years ago). A heated exchange followed with animal behaviourist Marc Hauser, anthropologist Milford H. Wolpoff and other experts. I don't know anything about this topic, so each expert completely won my allegiance, in turn. This kind of blow-hard scientific tit-for-tat makes for super entertaining reading! My favourite quote came about after everybody had been shooting off at the mouth about their animals-communicate-like-this and animals-behave-like-that theories. Milford H. Wolpoff reminded us tjat, "...we did not evolve from 'animals', but most directly from a common ancestor with chimpanzees..." Thanks for keeping it real, Milford!
Anyhow... mirror neurons are still big (bigger) news. Edge has an update here, in which Ramachandran, always forthcoming with the florid and entertaining prose, claims that mirror neurons may help us navigate the question of whether we should opt for our real brains over those other hypothetical ones, replicas suspended in vats (yes vats, à la Daniel C. Dennett...), that are programmed to think like "Einstein, Mark Spitz, Bill Gates, Hugh Heffner, and Gandhi, while at the same time preserving your own deeply personal memories and identity." But what if you had more than one brain replica in a vat? Say, five...
The question of whether "you" would continue in multiple parallel brain vats raises issues that come perilously close to the theological notion of souls, but I see no simple way out of the conundrum. Perhaps we need to remain open to the Upanishadic doctrine that the ordinary rules of numerosity and arithmetic, of "one vs. many", or indeed of two-valued, binary yes/no logic, simply doesn't apply to minds — the very notion of a separate "you " or "I" is an illusion, like the passage of time itself.That Ramachandran sure gives Oliver Sacks a run for his money in the Humorous Neurologist category!
We are all merely many reflections in a hall of mirrors of a single cosmic reality (Brahman or "paramatman"). If you find all this too much to swallow just consider the that as you grow older and memories start to fade you may have less in common with, and be less "informationally coupled", to your own youthful self, the chap you once were, than with someone who is now your close personal friend. This is especially true if you consider the barrier-dissolving nature of mirror neurons. There is certain grandeur in this view of life, this enlarged conception of reality, for it is the closest that we humans can come to taking a sip from the well of immortality. (But I fear my colleague Richard Dawkins may suspect me of spiritual leanings of "letting God in through the back door" for saying this.)