Paradoxically, the deeper I got into neuropsychology, the less interested I became in the details of my own inner workings. I’m not sure why. It certainly is not because I arrived at any great insight or understanding. What happened, I think, was a shift—let’s imagine a neural switch somewhere in the frontolimbic circuitry—from one preoccupying question (What am I?) to another (What should I do?). It left me less inclined to bother about self-understanding than to consider the value of things, moral and aesthetic. But here’s a nagging thought: Might those two preoccupying questions turn out to be one and the same, like the evening star and the morning star?

Paul Broks, in “Unshrinkable”