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Who You Are: The Science of Connectedness
Why you are more than just a brain, more than just a brain-and-body, and more than all your assumptions about who you are.
Who are you? Are you just a brain? A brain and a body? All the things you have done and the friends you have made? Many of us assume that who we really are is something deep inside us, an inner sanctuary that contains our true selves. In Who You Are, Michael Spivey argues that the opposite is true: that you are more than a brain, more than a brain-and-body, and more than all your assumptions about who you are. Rather than peeling layers away to reveal the inner you, Spivey traces who you are outward. You may already feel in your heart that something outside your body is actually part of you--a child, a place, a favorite book. Spivey confirms this intuition with scientific findings.
With each chapter, Spivey incrementally expands a common definition of the self. After (gently) helping you to discard your assumptions about who you are, he draws on research in cognitive science and neuroscience to explain the back-and-forth among all the regions of the brain and the interaction between the brain and body. He then makes the case for understanding objects and locations in your environment as additional parts of who we are. Going even further, he shows that, just as interaction links brain, body, and environment, ever-expanding systems of interaction link humans to other humans, to nonhuman animals, and to nonliving matter. This may seem an interaction or two too far. But you don't have to take his word for it--just consider the evidence he presents.
Who are you? Are you just a brain? A brain and a body? All the things you have done and the friends you have made? Many of us assume that who we really are is something deep inside us, an inner sanctuary that contains our true selves. In Who You Are, Michael Spivey argues that the opposite is true: that you are more than a brain, more than a brain-and-body, and more than all your assumptions about who you are. Rather than peeling layers away to reveal the inner you, Spivey traces who you are outward. You may already feel in your heart that something outside your body is actually part of you--a child, a place, a favorite book. Spivey confirms this intuition with scientific findings.
With each chapter, Spivey incrementally expands a common definition of the self. After (gently) helping you to discard your assumptions about who you are, he draws on research in cognitive science and neuroscience to explain the back-and-forth among all the regions of the brain and the interaction between the brain and body. He then makes the case for understanding objects and locations in your environment as additional parts of who we are. Going even further, he shows that, just as interaction links brain, body, and environment, ever-expanding systems of interaction link humans to other humans, to nonhuman animals, and to nonliving matter. This may seem an interaction or two too far. But you don't have to take his word for it--just consider the evidence he presents.
376 pages, Hardcover
Published April 28, 2020
18 people are currently reading
154 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 14, 2023
The basic message of this book is that who you are depends on a lot more than your brain or mind. There are connections that tie your identity to your physical body, the people around you, the environment, and the earth itself. The ideas are well supported by research, but the main text does not have any citations in it. You have to look at the notes section to find the citations, which makes it a little extra work for those who want to read further into the topics covered here. The text itself is a bit dry despite the efforts of the author to inject humor into it, but the content is interesting enough to keep you going.
March 22, 2023
Spivey takes you on a fantastic scientific voyage through what shapes who you are. Starting from the brain, he widens up your perspective to how the body, our friends and society deeply affect our identity. Never boring and ever engaging, "Who you are" takes you out of your comfort zone and will stay with you for a long time.
December 29, 2022
The idea of this book is to walk through the scientific discoveries that show how we are connected to the world and universe around us. Actually, the book has a more radical aim, in which Spivey seems to be arguing that each individual person is not just part of these systems and organisms—you as a person are the world. You are the universe. You are everything.
At least that’s how he comes across. He writes “to the earth” as you, the reader. I think it’s supposed to be profound, even though the science seems to suggest much more modest but still often surprising and impactful ways in which individuals connect with things around ourselves. I think Spivey makes strong arguments that we are part of the world or part of the systems that drove the universe and the connections between those systems and processes are moving, but I think it’s a mistake to confuse the part for the whole. He also seems to be trying to convince people to embrace his view as a replacement for religion or spiritual thought, which can come across badly
At least that’s how he comes across. He writes “to the earth” as you, the reader. I think it’s supposed to be profound, even though the science seems to suggest much more modest but still often surprising and impactful ways in which individuals connect with things around ourselves. I think Spivey makes strong arguments that we are part of the world or part of the systems that drove the universe and the connections between those systems and processes are moving, but I think it’s a mistake to confuse the part for the whole. He also seems to be trying to convince people to embrace his view as a replacement for religion or spiritual thought, which can come across badly
October 27, 2025
The author of this book, Michael Spivey, is like some kind of academic cousin or step-sibling to me--we did our PhDs in the same department (about 15 years apart), his primary advisor was on my committee, and one of his former students was a postdoc in the same lab as me and one of my main collaborators when I was in graduate school. I've always liked his academic work. I associate him with a kind of meta-theoretical framework in cognitive science called "embodied cognition," which challenges a tacit assumption in a lot of cognitive psychology that the mind is some kind of encapsulated observer or information-processing system "in here" that interacts with the world "out there"; instead, "embodied" theories of cognition cast the mind/brain, the body, and the environment as forming a dynamic system with no clear, firm delineations.
This book is essentially a general audience-friendly meditation on the implications of that worldview. Each chapter articulates a possible answer to the question of where "you" (basically your sense of self) is localized (e.g., in the prefrontal cortex) and outlines the scientific evidence that complicates or outright disproves the plausibility of that answer, showing that no matter where you try to draw the line to localize the self, currently available empirical evidence shows that you have no choice but to include a bunch of stuff on the other side of that line.
At least to some extent, even though it is not the main goal of his project here, I think it's fair to include this book in a lineage of recent books that, to put it somewhat crudely, argue that the Buddhist view of the self is essentially correct and supported by modern science (though Spivey does not explicitly claim to be a practicing Buddhist and takes some pains to make it clear that you don't need to adopt a Buddhist worldview to appreciate the emerging scientific consensus on this stuff). Other books that fall into this category include "Why Buddhism is True" (highly non-technical, written by a journalist documenting his personal experiences with mindfulness meditation) and "The Ego Tunnel" (much more technical, written by an academic philosopher). I find these books interesting and the basic point--that Buddhist teachings about the nature of the self are consistent with and presaged the modern scientific consensus about the self--seems hard to deny. That being said, a critical part of the Buddhist perspective on all this is that anything you can say about the self or the nature of reality, *including and especially Buddhist philosophy itself*, is only a kind of provisional approximation of the capital-T truth, which is fundamentally beyond conception and ungraspable. A corollary of this is that becoming attached to *any* conceptual understanding will inevitably serve as a vehicle for the self to re-assert itself and create suffering and harm. In other words, understanding these things at an intellectual level is very unlikely to lead to any kind of serious personal transformation. Spivey hints at something like this several times in this book but doesn't directly explore it, though he does repeatedly emphasize that one of the key practical implications of all the evidence he summarizes is that we should be extremely humble and learn to entertain a lot of uncertainty about what we think we know. It's a little bit of a missed opportunity because somewhat ironically it falls very directly out of all the evidence he presents: if the pieces of the cortex that support conceptual awareness are not "you", then you have to accept that "you" are by definition beyond your ability to conceptualize.
On a nerdier note, one thing that I began to notice when I was in graduate school is that most cognitive psychologists have a decades-long habit of rejecting or ignoring frameworks for explaining cognitive phenomena that would force them to cede their ability to have intuitions about those phenomena. For example, theories of cognition that assume that cognitive processes are simply linear combinations of various sub-processes are obviously wrong but stubbornly influential. More parsimonious theories that explain a wider range of phenomena (such as the theories explored in this book that make heavy use of dynamical systems and neural networks) typically require that cognitive scientists give up their ability to have clear, easy-to-visualize intuitions about how the mind works. This is directly related to cognitive psychologists typically not having the mathematical training necessary to use the kinds of models that would allow or force them to loosen their grip on the "boxes-and-arrows" models that have historically dominated the field. Now that various applications of neural networks, such as LLMs and computer vision, have become so profitable, neural networks are now much easier to learn about and use (as recently as when I was in graduate school, building a neural network to model behavioral data required a *lot* of work and exceptionally strong coding skills, whereas now there are Python libraries that can get you up and running in a couple of hours). I'm kind of curious to see if these leads to a paradigm shift in the field where what counts as an "explanation" of a phenomenon starts to change, and where cognitive scientists start to adopt a posture more similar to physicists, where they don't necessarily demand that they have direct intuitions about the underlying phenomenon, but instead have intuitions about some higher-order mathematical characterization of that phenomenon.
Anyway whatever cool book I liked it.
This book is essentially a general audience-friendly meditation on the implications of that worldview. Each chapter articulates a possible answer to the question of where "you" (basically your sense of self) is localized (e.g., in the prefrontal cortex) and outlines the scientific evidence that complicates or outright disproves the plausibility of that answer, showing that no matter where you try to draw the line to localize the self, currently available empirical evidence shows that you have no choice but to include a bunch of stuff on the other side of that line.
At least to some extent, even though it is not the main goal of his project here, I think it's fair to include this book in a lineage of recent books that, to put it somewhat crudely, argue that the Buddhist view of the self is essentially correct and supported by modern science (though Spivey does not explicitly claim to be a practicing Buddhist and takes some pains to make it clear that you don't need to adopt a Buddhist worldview to appreciate the emerging scientific consensus on this stuff). Other books that fall into this category include "Why Buddhism is True" (highly non-technical, written by a journalist documenting his personal experiences with mindfulness meditation) and "The Ego Tunnel" (much more technical, written by an academic philosopher). I find these books interesting and the basic point--that Buddhist teachings about the nature of the self are consistent with and presaged the modern scientific consensus about the self--seems hard to deny. That being said, a critical part of the Buddhist perspective on all this is that anything you can say about the self or the nature of reality, *including and especially Buddhist philosophy itself*, is only a kind of provisional approximation of the capital-T truth, which is fundamentally beyond conception and ungraspable. A corollary of this is that becoming attached to *any* conceptual understanding will inevitably serve as a vehicle for the self to re-assert itself and create suffering and harm. In other words, understanding these things at an intellectual level is very unlikely to lead to any kind of serious personal transformation. Spivey hints at something like this several times in this book but doesn't directly explore it, though he does repeatedly emphasize that one of the key practical implications of all the evidence he summarizes is that we should be extremely humble and learn to entertain a lot of uncertainty about what we think we know. It's a little bit of a missed opportunity because somewhat ironically it falls very directly out of all the evidence he presents: if the pieces of the cortex that support conceptual awareness are not "you", then you have to accept that "you" are by definition beyond your ability to conceptualize.
On a nerdier note, one thing that I began to notice when I was in graduate school is that most cognitive psychologists have a decades-long habit of rejecting or ignoring frameworks for explaining cognitive phenomena that would force them to cede their ability to have intuitions about those phenomena. For example, theories of cognition that assume that cognitive processes are simply linear combinations of various sub-processes are obviously wrong but stubbornly influential. More parsimonious theories that explain a wider range of phenomena (such as the theories explored in this book that make heavy use of dynamical systems and neural networks) typically require that cognitive scientists give up their ability to have clear, easy-to-visualize intuitions about how the mind works. This is directly related to cognitive psychologists typically not having the mathematical training necessary to use the kinds of models that would allow or force them to loosen their grip on the "boxes-and-arrows" models that have historically dominated the field. Now that various applications of neural networks, such as LLMs and computer vision, have become so profitable, neural networks are now much easier to learn about and use (as recently as when I was in graduate school, building a neural network to model behavioral data required a *lot* of work and exceptionally strong coding skills, whereas now there are Python libraries that can get you up and running in a couple of hours). I'm kind of curious to see if these leads to a paradigm shift in the field where what counts as an "explanation" of a phenomenon starts to change, and where cognitive scientists start to adopt a posture more similar to physicists, where they don't necessarily demand that they have direct intuitions about the underlying phenomenon, but instead have intuitions about some higher-order mathematical characterization of that phenomenon.
Anyway whatever cool book I liked it.
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July 12, 2024I left this unreviewed for 3 or 4 years. So take what I say with a grain of salt.
Not really bad, not really revolutionary, but I feel like I would have liked it a lot more had I not read so much on the subject before.
As a popular science book I believe it deserves to be more popular, and I am still glad it opened my eyes to change blindness, which gave me some fun when switching similar looking paintings(stickmen figures doing different sports in a few paint brushes) around at my father's place quite a few times before I eventually started to feel bad about it as it worked too well.
The author takes you on a journey of investigation of where your identity lies and showers you with interesting cognitive science factoids along the way.
I like the concept. Sometimes it still felt a little long winded, and I remember disagreeing with at least one of his interpretations of a study, but this is overall an amiable book. Not certain about its audience.
Even if I only got through it half way, and don't particularly have the urge to finish it any time soon, some of its writing did stay with me through the years.
Not really bad, not really revolutionary, but I feel like I would have liked it a lot more had I not read so much on the subject before.
As a popular science book I believe it deserves to be more popular, and I am still glad it opened my eyes to change blindness, which gave me some fun when switching similar looking paintings(stickmen figures doing different sports in a few paint brushes) around at my father's place quite a few times before I eventually started to feel bad about it as it worked too well.
The author takes you on a journey of investigation of where your identity lies and showers you with interesting cognitive science factoids along the way.
I like the concept. Sometimes it still felt a little long winded, and I remember disagreeing with at least one of his interpretations of a study, but this is overall an amiable book. Not certain about its audience.
Even if I only got through it half way, and don't particularly have the urge to finish it any time soon, some of its writing did stay with me through the years.
April 3, 2025
i really wanted to like this book since i expected to on board with Spivey’s message. while i was on board, his arguments were way more conservative than what i was expecting given the science that exists about connectedness. in fact, this book felt like it took some mainstream science that you learn about in undergraduate cognitive science courses and drew radical conclusions. that’s fine. my issue is that there are whole fields on this topic that are so much more radical and compelling, and not touching on them at all felt like a disservice. the science of connectedness is so much more interesting and rigorous and far-reaching than Spivey gives it credit for. with that said, i think people who might initially balk at his thesis will like this book. he definitely seems to be catering to traditionalists. if i were his intended audience he probably would’ve gotten more stars from me.
July 26, 2023
Would benefit from an editor
January 3, 2024
Well-written and engaging. Draws on a wide array of solid scientific research. Reasonably well-edited for a book of its scope.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews