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An Expert Suggests We’re Wrong About How We Experience the External World
His idea literally turns common assumptions inside out
Trying to understand the mind is like trying to understand the universe at large. Every time we think we find an explanation, someone asks, “but what about before that?”
For instance, when the experts say, “the Universe began with the Big Bang,” we ask, “but what caused the Big Bang?” Similarly, neuroscientists discovered that neurons in the brain transmit commands and information to the rest of our body. And we ask, but what commands the neurons?
Well, systems neuroscientist, co-recipient of the 2011 Brain Prize from the Lundbeck Foundation, and author, György Buzsáki, suggests we should shift our perspective when trying to answer these questions.
Outside-In Framework
It’s helpful to know the status quo in order to recognize how Buzsáki’s ideas alter from it. See, the Enlightenment era was full of curious-minded philosophers like John Locke, who believed we’re born into the world as blank slates, completely pure. The idea is that the world, and our experiences in it, are what shapes us.
A thousand years ago, they called it “tabula rasa,” — which means “the mind in its hypothetical primary…
