The Mysteries of Our Minds

You would think we would know a lot about our own minds. They are after all, inside our heads. But the brain and consciousness are still brimming with things we don’t understand: Where is consciousness? How do thoughts progress? Why do we choose certain meanings or perceptions over others? The brain is perhaps one of the last great mysterious frontiers, just waiting to be explored—and conquered. Sit back, relax, and join on us a journey into the depths of our own heads. 1. How Your Brain Decides Without You In a world full of ambiguity, we see what we want to see. By Tom Vanderbilt Princeton’s Palmer Field, 1951. An autumn classic matching the unbeaten Tigers, with star tailback Dick Kazmaier—a gifted passer, runner, and punter who would capture a record number of votes to win the Heisman Trophy—against rival Dartmouth. Princeton prevailed over Big Green in the penalty-plagued game, but not without cost: Nearly a dozen players were injured, and Kazmaier himself sustained a broken nose and a concussion (yet still played a “token part”). It was a “rough game,” The New York Times described, somewhat mildly, “that led to some recrimination from both camps.” Each said the other played dirty. READ MORE 2. Why We Procrastinate We think of our future selves as strangers. By Alisa Opar The British philosopher Derek Parfit espoused a severely reductionist view of personal identity in his seminal book, Reasons and Persons: It does not exist, at least not in the way we usually consider it. We humans, Parfit argued, are not a consistent identity moving through time, but a chain of successive selves, each tangentially linked to, and yet distinct from, the previous and subsequent ones. The boy who begins to smoke despite knowing that he may suffer from the habit decades later should not be judged harshly: “This boy does not identify with his future self,” Parfit wrote. “His attitude towards this future self is in some ways like his attitude to other people.” READ MORE 3. Where Uniqueness Lies The ultimate treasure hunt for the key in our brains that unlocks our difference. By Gary Marcus If you dropped a dozen human toddlers on a beautiful Polynesian island with shelter and enough to eat, but no computers, no cell phones, and no metal tools, would they grow up to be like humans we recognize or like other primates? Would they invent language? Without the magic sauce of culture and technology, would humans be that different from chimpanzees? READ MORE To really curl up with Nautilus, subscribe today and get your copy of our Winter 2015 Nautilus Quarterly. It includes new features, some of our best online content, and pages of sumptuous illustration. Join us on a journey of surprises.