Subject:
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Thinking for your self, whoever that is (Was Re: Personhood )
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 16 Nov 2001 22:39:10 GMT
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Viewed:
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1524 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, James Simpson writes:
> An even hairier one:
>
> Person X's brain is cut in half, as is Person Y's. One pair of lobes is
> swapped between the two of them (Person X's right lobe is fused with Person
> Y's left lobe, etc.) What has become of their singular personhoods? Do the
> persons transmute into something entirely different? Have the original
> persons, in effect, ceased to exist? This is a sticky one for those of us
> who believe in souls.
There is a body of evidence--not really conclusive, but
provocative--gleaned from the study of epileptics who have had the corpus
callosum (the goop connecting the two hemispheres of the thinkbox) severed.
Studies have shown that in some cases there appears to be a form of
consciousness at work but trapped within the non-verbal portion of the
brain, and that consciousness is literally cut off from the ability to
articulate itself. This is offered as one of the explanations for the
so-called "alien hand syndrome" in which one's hand (typically the left, I
believe) seems to act violently against the individual, going so far as to
choke the person or try to steer a car off the road. It is suggested
(again, inconclusively) that this might be the trapped consciousness trying
desperately to express itself or at least make itself known.
Here are a few links from less than board-certified sources:
http://www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk/aliensyn.htm
http://www.rense.com/politics6/hand.htm
http://www.idea-tv.com/scientia/eng/scientia_archive/may_16.html
The contingent theory is that in a wholly connected brain, the two
hemispheres are sufficiently mingled that they are able to coordinate verbal
and non-verbal activity into useful action. But an implication of the
theory is that in all of us there reside two-count-em-two consciousnesses
rather than one, even further complicating the where's my soul issue (or
even who's my self?).
So we might get Person X's non-verbal consciousness trapped in the skull
of Person Y, who remains verbal, or Person X's verbal consciousness might
wind up in Y's melon instead. Even worse, if X's verbal and Y's non-verbal
were merged (assuming it were possible), what kind of weird chimera would we
have then?!
Dave!
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Peronhood (was One of my issues)
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| (...) An even hairier one: Person X's brain is cut in half, as is Person Y's. One pair of lobes is swapped between the two of them (Person X's right lobe is fused with Person Y's left lobe, etc.) What has become of their singular personhoods? Do the (...) (23 years ago, 16-Nov-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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