All intents and purposes

Robert Barton has the strange blindness to brute facts that afflicts other neuro-reductionists ("Evolutionary battleground", Letters, 29 March). As Steven Rose points out, there is more to a human being than a brain (and a body). A person takes part in society; even a living brain in a jar could not. A person also carries out meaningful actions, such as writing to the THE; contractions of muscles alone do not.

David Booth, University of Birmingham