Brain inside view

An inside view of the human brain (from Kalat, 2001)... 

The Biochemistryland map is a way of viewing the key biochemical reactions of the body. The map, though, does not correspond to any known human anatomy. Why, then, should one bother to place the various biochemical reactions in such an artificial format Why not simply draw a liver, intestine, muscle, brain, etc. and indicate the various biochemical reactions therein so that one may know where in the body the individual reactions occur The problem with this approach is that a particular chemical reaction often occurs in many organ systems. If the individual organs were drawn, with the idea of including their chemical reactions inside them, there would be extensive duplication of pathways and an uninterpretable map. If one wishes to draw the individual reactions only once, one needs a different format. The format of the Biochemistryland map allows this, in a way that can be appreciated visually as a whole. 

Believers in the view that the brain has its self deny this duality. They declare that the psychic experience, the cognitive/volitional and affective state of consciousness, the most amazing product of nature, is inseparable from measurable changes in brain neurons. The objective and subjective aspects of brain activity are thought to be as interrelated as the outside and the inside of one and the same thing. This study is an exercise in support of this opinion on the basis of the following new argument ... 

I call this view the Standard Theory. 1 call it the Standard Theory not just because it is widely accepted by materialists but because, if you are a materialist, it is hard to see how something like this view could fail to be true. Beliefs (just like coins) have to be inside the system whose behavior they explain. How else could they produce the behavior they are said to explain Nonetheless, what gives these internal states the meaning or content we appeal to in order to explain behavior isn t there. There is nothing in the brain that makes one neurological event about football, another about philosophy. It is the same with words. Words and sentences are printed in books, but what makes some words about football and others about philosophy is not in a book. 

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