Free Who Am I and If So How Many? by Richard David Precht Page A

enough to establish that there is one? ‘Man is an individual,’ Niklas Luhmann wrote, ‘simply because man claims to be one. And that is sufficient.’ The same could be said of the self.
    ‘The ego is not a definite, unalterable, sharply bounded unity.’ Ernst Mach was correct on that score, unless we should find evidence of what some neuroscientists like to refer to as a ‘frame.’ But it is rather unlikely that our sensation goes ‘a-roaming by itself in the world.’ The self is like a reasonably attentive schoolchild – on the ball, caring, and alert. People do not have a core, a ‘true self’ that can be pinned down in some specific spot. But even if we were to find one, it would not mean much, because the true demystification would have been to find a mechanism of the self,slap it down in front of it the philosophers, and declare: this is it! Instead, we have an inscrutable, multilayered, and multiperspectivist self. Brain research does not prove that there is no self, but rather that the self we recognize represents an incredibly complex and amazing process in the brain. Neuroscience is still miles – or rather, decades – away from solving the mystery of the nature of our selves, assuming it ever gets there. If the observation of simple emotions was the moon landing of neuroscience, the journey to the self is a manned voyage to Jupiter at the very least. As of now, we can only imagine what we will find …

OMICRON CETI III
Mr Spock In Love
What Are Feelings?
    The year is 2267, stardate 3417.3. The starship Enterprise is off on a new mission. The planet Omicron Ceti III is in deep trouble, having been bombarded by berthold rays, which have wiped out all animal life on the planet, and the Enterprise is being sent to ascertain the whereabouts of the surviving colonists, although there is little cause for hope. Omicron Ceti III has been showered with rays for three years, seemingly too long to allow for any survivors, yet when Captain Kirk beams down onto the planet with a landing party, he is astonished to find the colonists alive and well. It turns out that the spores of a mysterious plant have protected them from the berthold rays. But the effects of these spores extend well beyond their protective function; they also transform the colonists’ entire outlook on life. Anyone who breathes in the spores is suddenly infused with a great sense of peace, coupled with a desire never to leave the planet again. In this galactic Shangri-La, even Spock, the Vulcan who is otherwise impervious to human emotions, undergoes a transformation. Feelings take over his brain, which had been capable only of rational thought. Spock falls in love with a young colonist, and the confirmed rationalist turns into a hopeless romantic. The entire Enterprise crew eventually give into their feelings, and Captain Kirk wages a solitary battle against the emotional pull of the planet. Duty calls, but the crew members refuse to return to their posts. Kirk figures out that he can neutralize the effect of the spores by raising the crew’s adrenaline levels. On some pretext he lures Spock back into the Enterprise , then taunts the Vulcan until he flies into a rage. As his adrenaline rises, Spock regains his foothold on reality. Kirk and Spock come up with a method to combat the effect of the spores. They send a subsonic frequency down to the planet that will spark quarrels among the remaining happy-go-lucky crew members of the Enterprise . The therapy does the trick, and everyone returns to the business of flying through the galaxy.
    ‘This Side of Paradise,’ filmed in 1967, is an episode from the first season of Star Trek . Philosophy is front and center in the episode. Spock would seem to be a veritable ideal toward which all apostles of reason since Descartes have been striving. Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and many other philosophers would have encouraged man to