George Paxinos
The University of New South Wales, Australia
Title: Brain & Mind: Who is the puppet and who the puppeteer?
Biography
Biography: George Paxinos
Abstract
The question in the title has social, legal and religious implications.
If the mind controls the brain, then there is FREE WILL and its corollaries, dignity and responsibility. You are king in your skull-sized kingdom. You are the architect of your destiny.
If, on the other hand, the brain controls the mind, an incendiary conclusion follows: There can be no FREE WILL, no praise, no punishment and no purgatory.
Our brain is the riverbed that holds and channels our stream of consciousness (Koch, 2012). It is molded by the family and the culture we were raised in. Dementia will pay an unwelcome visit to many of us at the end of life. It will disrupt the internal structure of our neurons or their nourishing blood vessels and we will be living evidence the mind is the product of the brain and has no influence on it.