If we are to explore what human conversation and thinking are, we must say something about the neurophysiology that underlies them. The brain, obviously, is involved in human experience and thought, and some people claim that thinking and consciousness can be completely explained as activities of the brain and nervous system. How shall we address this topic?

There are two ways of exploring the physiology associated with thinking. One is to pursue scientific research into the nervous system, to determine its structure and function, its chemical and electrical components and activities, and so on. Immense progress has been made in this project, and still greater advances are anticipated. The second way of exploring this issue is scientifically much more modest, but it has its own importance. It is to discuss how we speak about the brain and nervous system, and how our scientific speech about it can be integrated with our speech about ourselves as responsible speakers and agents. We can easily fall into confusion in this area; we might say, for example, that the brain feels pain, or that my brain recognizes my grandmother, or that the brain causes my thoughts. These statements are confused because it is not my brain but I myself who feel pain, recognize people, and think, just as it is I and not my brain that votes in an election or salutes an officer.