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Interesting conversation this morning.  Thanks all.  A couple of things that came out of it that I want to mull further ...

Methodologically, there was a nice reminder of the tendency of all of us to justify one's own preferred story by attacking alternatives, and that's worth thinking more about in terms of the brain.  If it is accepted that there is no observation that disproves either Descartes et al or Dickinson et al, why favor attack over .... simply stating the merits of one's own preference and leaving it at that?  How would either a Descartist or a Dickensonian account for the common inclination to try and eliminate unfavored alternatives from the field of play? 

More generally, I was greatly intrigued by the fact that three different characteristics were cited by both Descartists and Dickensonians as reasons to favor their own positions:

• more open to future possibilities/explorations
• more amenable to agency/control
• less self-centered, egotistical

It hadn't occurred to me before that each these could be used to favor either position.  Its a nice piece of brain (mind? soul? spirit?) exercise to get one's head around that.  What, I wonder, is the difference that would cause some people to see Descartism as favored by any of these and others to similarly see Dickensonionism? 

I trust everybody recognizes that Dickensonionism reflects my story/summary of the observations that are Dickinson's poem, and that other stories/summaries of those observations are of course possible?  See Schmeltz for more along these lines.

Sorry about forgetting to put a Phineas Gage link in the course notes (have corrected).  Here's the recently discovered possible photo of him and some background in an accompanying articles.  For more on Gage and modern work related to his case, see Antonio Damasio's Descartes' Error.   Another relevant classic case that is being revisited with current technology is that of H.M., who became amnesic after surgery for epilepsy.  See here.  

Toward the end of class today, someone raised the issue of whether you needed something complicated to create the rules for the "simple things interacting in simple ways" that we look at.  Let's talk about that more here if you're inclined?