Personal Identity: Anyone, nobody or someone

Technology is invading and pervading our lives as never before. How will this affect our minds? Will technology change our notion of identity? The human brain is highly sensitive to external events: they leave their mark on the brain in the highly individual pattern of connections of neurons. The personalised way we interpret our surroundings is due to our unique perspective on the world, and in turn related to our unique narrative as we live out our lives.

In Western societies our sense of identity tends to stem from associations with objects and events denoting our status: the “somebody scenario”. Another option is that of fundamentalism, where the concept of individuality is suppressed in favour of a collective, public identity – the “anybody scenario”. A third option comes from the pervasion of technology, leading to an increased passivity to the overload of information that bombards us: the “nobody scenario”.

None of these scenarios is particularly attractive. The ‘somebody” offers individuality, but not fulfilment: the endless race to own the designer trainers or special kitchen that ‘says something about you”. The ‘anybody scenario” by contrast could offer fulfilment, but at the cost of individuality, whilst the ‘nobody scenario” offers neither – merely a passive here-now experience which replaces thinking. We shall explore a fourth alternative that offers both fulfilment and a sense of individuality in terms of creativity, the eureka moment, and see how it can be maximised through an understanding of the processes leading to creativity in the brain.

Event organised by:
The European Dana Alliance for the Brain and the Royal Institution of Great Britain

Speakers

Baroness Susan Greenfield, Royal Institution of Great Britain

Chairman:
Clive Coen, King's College London