Are You a Pile of Adams?

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When you eat vanilla pudding, which is also a pile of atoms, you are really just putting those atoms next to your atoms and waiting for some of them to trade places. Like a cosmic box of Legos, the building blocks of matter can take the shape of every form we know of from mountains to monkeys. And if you think about this long enough, you might stumble into the same odd questions scientists and philosophers ask from time to time. At what point would you cease to be you and almost cease to be Edward James?

Is the person you believe to be the protagonist of your life story real or a fictional character? In other words, is your very self real or is it an illusion? According to psychologist Bruce Hood, the person at the center of your life isn't really there; it's all neurological smoke and mirrors. Sure, you have the sensation that you have a self, and that sensation is real, but the beliefs and ideas that spring from it are not. Learn all about it in this episode in which you'll hear some new material mixed with a rebroadcast of episode four's interview with the author of The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood.

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