Behold, the dumbest brain surgeon in the world, as he argues that altruism cannot be located in your brain because your altruism doesn't change if you move your head. No, really.
Read for yourself. Read it twice, because you won't believe you just read what you read, the first time through:
But how does moving your brain change your altruism? Do properties of altruism, like benevolence, have pitch, yaw or roll? Is generosity measurably and reproducibly different when you (and your brain) are on the north, rather than the south, side of the room? Are you measurably more or less charitable if you tilt your head 30 degrees to the left? If you walk around the room does your altruism change in a reproducible way? If you stand up, is your altruism different that when you're sitting?
For altruism to be located in the brain, changes in altruism must map, in some reproducible way, to changes in brain location. But it's obvious that no property of altruism maps to brain location. If no property of altruism maps to brain location, then altruism is independent of brain location, and it's nonsense to say that altruism is located in the brain. Altruism is completely independent of location, so it can't be located in the brain, or anywhere. It can't be 'located' at all.
Interesting. So I guess the music coming from my iPod must exist outside the iPod itself since it doesn't change if I move my iPod to the other side of my desk... ?
But wait, what about this: Obviously, the sound of the music from a passing car changes as it drives past a stationary observer. So, obviously again, the music must exist inside the car and we experience its movement past us. And yet, to the driver of the car, the music doesn't change at all as the car moves. So, by the brain surgeon's logic above, the music must exist outside the car. A paradox? No, this is probably just an example of some kind of special musical relativity... Eureka! So, therefore, I will postulate that as a car approaches the speed of light, the music should get heavier and heavier! What starts out as Air Supply in a stopped car changes to the Eagles, then to Spoon as the car accelerates; and if the the speed increases still, it will change to the Queens of The Stone Age, Black Sabbath, then Metallica, Minor Threat, and finally to the Japanese spazzmetal band, Boris, at which point the car will have become so massive that it begins to act like a black hole. And then we all die. Or maybe not.
Either way, you'd think that, as a brain surgeon, he'd know how the brain responds to acts of charity.
Bah. This guy should see a neurologist, I think he's lost his fucking mind.
