Also, bias and racism are separate, to be sure. I think boiling everything down to racist vs. non-racist is a terrible way of proceeding. It stifles the real issue, which is that many well meaning people (me and you perhaps) aren't always fully self aware, and we make decisions based on many factors besides those of which we are fully conscious. If that was O'Brien's point, then its a good one that was made in a poor way. As to the other point, there are philosophical dangers in implying the brain does a lot of things. Certainly we would be psychologically devoid if not for an extremely well developed cerebral cortex. However, I do fundamentally disagree with the notion that the brain is indeed the seat of consciousness. Consciousness can only be ascribed to an organism, not a brain. One can have a perfectly intact brain and lose consciousness due to, say, kidney disease. The brain as an organ has the indispensable role of coordinating all of our organ systems, providing a means for cognition and cogitation, sensing pain, etc. That doesn't make it conscious. We are conscious as people, not as vehicles for our brains. I certainly grant you in advance that I'm probably not in the majority on this. Sometimes "the musings of a philosopher" do outweigh scientific studies. If we can't interpret data in a coherent way--and certainly saying that "our brains trick us" is nothing if not incoherent--then the data are useless. I think neuroscience is at a point where collecting data is a lot easier than doing anything with the data. All of these tools like fMRI, PET, CT, etc. are very new, and I think in the rush to collect data, some people have lost sight of what the data actually mean.