You Aren’t What You Eat
A big “thank you” to whichever reader recommended I read “De La Mettrie’s Ghost”! The recommendation was made in comments to another post 2 years ago, and I only recently got around to reading it. In fact, I got annoyed with it at first, and put it down to finish a couple of other books. But I’m glad I picked it back up.
The author seems quite impressed with reductionism, but does a fine job of being objective. The book is an invaluable survey of all of the current (and past) perspectives on consciousness. Partway into the book, the author gives a rather brief treatment of David Hodgson, but with clarity and lack of bias. This led me to seek out some more of Hodgson’s work, and it’s really rewarding. It was worth reading the book just to discover Hodgson.
It’s funny; the deeper you get into the complicated and stubborn arguments, the simpler things become. There are an infinite number of variations of the same basic argument, which boils down to “you are what you eat”. The rebuttal tends to be rather unitary and boring, and boils down to “what you eat becomes you.”