Crossing the divide: A website about Literature, Art & Philosophy by Venkat Ramanan

My review of Peter Godfrey-Smith's book, Metazoa: Animal Minds and the Birth of Consciousnes s has just been published in the Newtown Review of Books . (Image: Pleine Mer, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) (Wikimedia Commons))

This was originally posted on   LinkedIn Pulse  on January 17, 2016. The most important lesson we can learn from observing these insects is that we need to know the mosquito better before we can build a better mosquito trap - and this applies perhaps to all our challenges. I am convinced that even if there is only one mosquito left in the world, it is sure to come and get me. Because of this dread, I have always grudgingly admired the single-mindedness and efficiency with which genus anopheles unfailingly zooms in on someone like me. It is perhaps this curiosity which piqued my interest in a recent report  in the The Atlantic magazine about the quest to find a better mosquito repellent. This article not only explained to me why mozzies think of me as their Lord Voldemort. But after reading it I felt also that there may be a few lessons too for the corporate world apparent from the life and times of the humble mosquito. Know your customers, the marketplace Lesli

We use the brain as an adjunct to our life, as a highly sophisticated tool to facilitate our actions. However, do the functions of the brain alone amply explain the whole of the human condition? W hen I throw a ball to someone else, I show the unfailing workings of a natural law. That however does not mean that I represent that law of physics, let alone become an embodiment of that law. Similarly, when a particular set of neurons in my brain gave rise to my intention to throw that ball, those neurons were merely involved in a physiological activity underlying that intention. That does not mean that this particular of set of neurons is the intention itself. My MP3 player tells me that exceeding a certain volume level may harm my hearing in the long term. By indicating that this man-made device is “telling me” something, I use here language that anthropomorphises an artefact. I could have said instead that a warning message is displayed on the music player's screen. But I use