easylogic:

I thought I would seek your opinions on the famous Mind body problem.

The question is,is our brain just physical or there is a Mind which creates our personhood.

Many scientists are materialists and hence believe that our brains are solely responsible for our consciousness,character's and personhood. Theists are dualists,i.e they belive that humans are made of a soul and body.

I believe there are many problems with the view that we are simply material objects.but my main concern is the following problem.

Let us imagine that indeed we are material objects with no such thing as the soul.

It is the year 2097,and scientists have  discoved a way of doing brain transplants.Did you know that a human beings can succesfuly live with half a brain?

Now Lets say Tom becomes paralyzed from Neck to Toe.Doctors perform a brain transplant and take one half of Toms brain and puts it Body A,and then they take the other half and put it in Body B.

Body A and B both gain consciousness.Body A goes to live in Chicago,and body B goes to live in Egypt.Now the big question is Where is Tom?

Remember I'm not asking where is tom's body,am asking,where is Tom the person.
Is he in the new body A or new Body B?is he in both?

But he can't be in two places at a time.And yet we can't say whether he's in Body A or B since a persons character,consciousness,memory etc are stored in both parts of the brain.

If materialism was true,we should be able to tell all the facts about a given material object.But here is a clear example of a situation where  we can not know a particular information  simply from material facts.

The implications of this is enormous.It reinforces the Duality of man.For a non-materialists,the answer as to what happened to tom depends on where his soul is.Unlike the materialists where Tom's brain is in two different bodies,the soul cannot be split,and hence can only be in one body.And so no dilemma for the dualist.

I welcome discussions.lets keep it civil and mature,

easylogic:

@ Tudor, it's not a question of what will be the outcome of the experiment. I am not even concerned on what physical or chemical processes will take place.Mine is a far more deeper question.A philosophical question.

In short,my argument was this,If materialism is true,we should be able to know all the facts about a material object.If tom is a purely a material object,then we should be able to know what would happen to Tom's personhood.

I sought to show that here is an example where we have all the Material facts about Tom,but we still cannot know what/where is Tom the person.

If that question can't be answered now,then it can't be answered in 2097 either!

Ofcourse we can't know the exact details of how the brain will be split,which chemical or nuorological processes will take place etc until we perform the experiment.But that is not my concern.

easylogic:

You are aware that there is a difference between a scientifìc query and a philosophical one?

My question deals with the philosophical topic of the SELF.If the SELF is simply a result of brain activity,then what happens when such a scenario as described above occurs.

You said that maybe tom could have both personalities.Are you saying that Tom the person would be in two different bodies?

And one more question,why are your posts so combative?I thougt we would have a civil discussion devoid of snide and unnecesary emotional connotations.

[size=16pt]The Ship of Theseus[/size]

The "problem of change and identity" is generally explained with the story of the Ship of Theseus:
In ancient times, there was a ship, called the "Theseus" after its famous former owner. As the years wore on, the Theseus started getting weak and creaky. The old boards were removed, put into a warehouse, and replaced with new ones. Then, the masts started tottering, and soon they, too, were warehoused and replaced. And in this way, after fifty years, this ship now has all new boards, masts, and everything. The question then arises: Is the ship in the harbor, now called S2, the same ship as the ship that was in the harbor, fifty years ago (called S1, for convenience)? In other words, is S2 really the "Theseus"?

sauer:

I think this is an intriguing question. But, if it isn't really just for experimental purposes, it is most unlikely that when humans become so advanced, halves of brains should be exchanged. Rather the brain itself may simply be repaired or some parts replaced with electronic chips. Perhaps, whole brains will simply be exchanged.
It's possible there'll be a double personality in Tom and his friend, but easylogic this is not out of place at all. Even now, we record certain cases of people who have dual personalities, schizophrenia, etc. and these people are being treated. It will merely be a new challenge for psychology. My guess is Tom will be reschooled on who he really is and his memories will be updated on his personality. Perhaps even basic treatment methods used for split-personality patients now can be employed.
Generally, I don't think this poses any challenges. Also, drop "Tom the person" as Tom can easily become a new person and live his life on his real, concrete new ideas as his new self. Take for instance, people who do a nose job or bosom job, do they get a feeling of their old self trumping on their new self? The answer is no. Actually they feel better and livelier. Tom will be reschooled to feel better.

That's my take

Tudór:

Me thinks who you are is shaped by your experiences and what you've been taught through life. All these which are stored in the brain.

In Such a scenario the brain will construct with whatever memories and experience available to it in that reworked brain and make something of it.

Whether the end result would be a sane or extremely crazy individual is a whole 'noda matter.

easylogic:

Thanks all for your interesting replies.

When we speak of a person, we generally mean an individual who has the capacity to think.how we think and behave sets us apart from other people.

Even a pair of twins seemingly having similar behavior are two distinct persons with two different streams of consciousness.

Now Tom is a person with a distinct consciousnes and self awareness.
If you take a loaf of bread and split it into two,and someone asks you,What happened to the loaf?you will say half a bread is here and the other half is therd.

When it comes to Tom's brain,the answer is very simple.Half of Tom's brain is in Body A,and the Other is in Body B.
The big question is What happened to tom.not his brain.What Happened to that particular stream of consciousness that made up a self aware Individual person called tom.

We can't say Tom is half in A and B.People or Persons are never in halves.Would A feel pain if B is pinched?

It seems there are 3 plausible answers as to what happened to Tom.

1.Tom is in Body A.
2.Tom is in Body B.
3.Tom no longer exists.

All the above are equally plausible.Remember that Body A and B have consciousness now,and they ard two distinct individuals from each other(since they have separate streams of consciousness).

@ Saur and Tudor.Personhood does not simply entail behaviour,it entails identity and Self awareness which are also products of consciousness.

Therefore Saur,i don't see how retraining or counselling the new Individuals A and B answers the question as to what happend to Tom's stream of consciousness or as Descartes put it, Tom's SELF.

And furthermore how will retraining them give rise to Tom's self?

I appreciate your inputs and hope more join this debate.

easylogic:

Tudor,when i speak of a person's stream of consciousnes, i am not talking of character or acquired behaviour traits.These ofcourse help to mould our personality.What i'm talking about is Self awareness.

You see,a cat or a bird will look at itself in the mirror and not recognise itself.Meaning that most animals are not aware of themselves.Babies also exhibit this kind of behavior,when a mirror is placed infront of them,they always try to reach for the mirror as if they are seeing another baby.

This awareness of yourself is what we call THE SELF.

The two bodies A and B will both have consciousness,but who will have Tom's Self.i.e which of the two will be aware that He's Tom.I am not talking of Tom's behaviours or Character,or even Tom's name,am talking of Tom's Self.
To put it more crudely, Who will feel that he's Tom?

Ofcourse these two people A and B might develop new charåters that are radically different from Tom's.

But the question again is,who will have Tom's Self.or none?

easylogic:

But the question again is,who will have Tom's Self.or none?

easylogic:

Tudor,when i speak of a person's stream of consciousnes, i am not talking of character or acquired behaviour traits.These ofcourse help to mould our personality.What i'm talking about is Self awareness.

You see,a cat or a bird will look at itself in the mirror and not recognise itself.Meaning that most animals are not aware of themselves.Babies also exhibit this kind of behavior,when a mirror is placed infront of them,they always try to reach for the mirror as if they are seeing another baby.

This awareness of yourself is what we call THE SELF.

easylogic:

Tudor,when i speak of a person's stream of consciousnes, i am not talking of character or acquired behaviour traits.These ofcourse help to mould our personality.What i'm talking about is Self awareness.

easylogic:

PastorAio, the mirror test has been the most conclusive empirical evidence that most Animals are not self aware.Rubbishing it is like saying all the progress achieved in Philosophy of Cognitive Science is nonsense.

Have you read T.S.S shillab's work titled, What mirror Self-Recognition in Non-humans can tell us About aspects of Self.

Or J.smiths - animal self consciousness.

Deep Sight:

Perhaps i may assist.

It appears to me that the analogy of splitting a brain may have certain problems: and more importantly it has a number of holes through which the escapist materialist may seek to divert attention and ask endless questions.

Let us rather come up with a different analogy:

Again, it is the year 2097, and mankind has discovered a way to make mechanical brains - in much the same way as mechanical parts are made nowadays for hearts, glands, ears or limbs.

Thus Tom's natural brain is defective or has a terrible tumor, or cancer. . .

We take out all the information in the natural brain and transfer it into the mechanical brain - a computer which will be implanted into his head in place of the brain.

Questions –

1. Where was Tom during the period of transfer of information?

a. In the original brain

b. In the machine

c. In between

i. He was not in the original brain as it is being discarded

ii. He is not yet in the machine, as it is just being “filled” with the information

iii. If he is in between, the materialist worldview collapses instantly – as it is thereby shown that the man may exist without a physical brain. . .

2. Let us ask: what if that information is stored for a while on a micro-chip, prior to being placed in the new mechanical brain?

a. Is Tom in the Micro-Chip

b. Is the Micro-Chip Tom

c. Where is Tom?

3. Since it is asserted by the materialist that “the brain is the man” – now that the brain has been replaced by a mechanical computer (or a micro-chip), can we also with equally-footed logic assert that “the computer is the man”[/i] or “the micro-chip IS THE MAN?”

4. If the information passed from the brain to the computer is what defines TOM the man, then clearly that information itself is TOM – Not the brain, and not the computer – but the information. Accordingly and automatically it follows that the materialist assertion that the man is the brain must fail as the man can now exist without the brain. Rather the information stored within the brain is now what is more important, and is transferred to a computer or a microchip which can perform the function of the discarded brain? Once this is accepted, as it per force must be, then it has been incontrovertibly shown that the brain is not the man but that it holds something else which defines the man – and which may be transferred outside the brain!

5. If that information can be transferred outside the brain, then there is no reason to suppose that it cannot be transferred to another brain for example in the form of a baby. . . thus. . .reincarnation?

Se.xy stuff. . .Puristic materialism is a joke. . .

Deep Sight:

Perhaps i may assist.

It appears to me that the analogy of splitting a brain may have certain problems: and more importantly it has a number of holes through which the escapist materialist may seek to divert attention and ask endless questions.

Let us rather come up with a different analogy:

Again, it is the year 2097, and mankind has discovered a way to make mechanical brains - in much the same way as mechanical parts are made nowadays for hearts, glands, ears or limbs.

Thus Tom's natural brain is defective or has a terrible tumor, or cancer. . .

We take out all the information in the natural brain and transfer it into the mechanical brain - a computer which will be implanted into his head in place of the brain.

Questions –

1. Where was Tom during the period of transfer of information?

a. In the original brain

b. In the machine

c. In between

i. He was not in the original brain as it is being discarded

ii. He is not yet in the machine, as it is just being “filled” with the information

iii. If he is in between, the materialist worldview collapses instantly – as it is thereby shown that the man may exist without a physical brain. . .

2. Let us ask: what if that information is stored for a while on a micro-chip, prior to being placed in the new mechanical brain?

a. Is Tom in the Micro-Chip

b. Is the Micro-Chip Tom

c. Where is Tom?

3. Since it is asserted by the materialist that “the brain is the man” – now that the brain has been replaced by a mechanical computer (or a micro-chip), can we also with equally-footed logic assert that “the computer is the man”[/i] or “the micro-chip IS THE MAN?”

4. If the information passed from the brain to the computer is what defines TOM the man, then clearly that information itself is TOM – Not the brain, and not the computer – but the information. Accordingly and automatically it follows that the materialist assertion that the man is the brain must fail as the man can now exist without the brain. Rather the information stored within the brain is now what is more important, and is transferred to a computer or a microchip which can perform the function of the discarded brain? Once this is accepted, as it per force must be, then it has been incontrovertibly shown that the brain is not the man but that it holds something else which defines the man – and which may be transferred outside the brain!

5. If that information can be transferred outside the brain, then there is no reason to suppose that it cannot be transferred to another brain for example in the form of a baby. . . thus. . .reincarnation?

Se.xy stuff. . .Puristic materialism is a joke. . .

toneyb:

Are you basing your entire conclusion on a hypothetical scenario?

toneyb:

Here is this interesting article that was posted by Bindex some time ago when a similar discussion about the soul was on.

This is a very interesting piece about the "soul" that i found online. There is nothing like the soul that exist in the human body everything begins and ends with the brain. All thoughts and actions are controlled by the brain.

It is a common belief among theists (of many religions) that when you die, your soul exits your body and continues on its journey (to Heaven, Hell, or where-ever).
Many people also believe that the soul is the "real you" - your Id in a perfect world. This line of thinking leads people to believe that, for example, when a baby dies it's "real" self will live on, not as a baby but as an adult mind. This makes sense, otherwise all babies that die and go to heaven would still be babies there, which wouldn't be much use, really - knowing practically nothing and not being able to communicate or interact with other souls except by screaming and crying. It seems that no matter what state of development you were in at the moment of death, be it a helpless infant, a severely mentally handicapped person, or an eighty-year old with advanced Alzheimer's Disease, up in heaven you magically acquire all the mental faculties and knowledge you would have had as person in the prime of mental health.

The soul, apparently, must be somehow separate from the brain. There are a number of gaping flaws in this idea (as is often the case with religious pseudo-science). The most obvious one is this: If a person has a major physical change to their brain (due to injury, surgery, disease or oxygen starvation), it will often bring about a major change to their personality. Many people who suffer accidents that cause brain injury also undergo a personality change. It used to be common practice to lobotomise (surgically remove the frontal lobes of the brain) dangerously violent people as this brought about a dramatic change in their personality - they became much more subdued and docile.

There have been several cases where a person went into hospital for an operation, something went tragically wrong, perhaps with the anaesthetic, and the person suffered massive brain-damage as a result. Healthy, thinking, reasoning person before the operation, and a vegetable afterwards. What happened to the soul? Did the material drugs damage the immaterial soul?

Sometimes a baby is starved of oxygen during birth, and suffers irreparable brain-damage because of this. Is this evidence that God, for some reason, installs a "damaged" soul into the baby, coincidentally at the same time that the baby's brain is being starved, or is it evidence that your mental state is inextricably related to the physical state of your brain?

This begs the question: how can a change to a person's physical being have such a large effect on that person's non-physical being - their soul / personality?

Maybe the brain is just the soul's connection to the physical world? That is, the soul floats along inside our heads and use the brain the drive all the various muscles etc. that express the soul's desires and feelings. In that case, why do we have such a large brain? Mice and other small mammals get along quite well with a brain the size of a pea, so why can't humans? A mouse has a similar set of bodily organs and muscles to a human. Many dinosaurs had large bodies and tiny brains, so a big brain is not required to move big muscles. Why do we, with our average-sized body, have such a disproportionately large brain? Does a complex soul require a large brain to connect it to the physical world, or is our intelligence due to the hundreds of trillions of neural connections inside our heads?

Are memories stored in the brain or the soul? Some people partially lose their memory when their brain is injured. This implies that the brain stores memories, in which case how does your soul remember anything after brain-death? Does it take a copy of your memories and store them somewhere? If so, why can't it do this before death, giving us all perfect memories throughout our lives? What happens to those memories that are forgotten or lost? Does the soul somehow retrieve them so that you have a complete memory of every single second of your life, or does it only get those things that your conscious mind can normally remember?

If the brain is the soul's connector, why do other animals have brains at all? Do they have small, simple souls? Many religions teach that only humans have souls, and yet many animals are able to express their desires and feelings quite adequately (ask any cat-owner at feeding time). If a soulless animal can obviously express happiness or fear, is this caused purely by its brain or by some sort of mini-soul acting via the brain? If animals have some sort of soul, do they go to Heaven when they die, or is their existence simply extinguished (just as if their personality was indeed caused by the brain)?

If the brain is simply a link-point for the soul, then how can drugs affect the state of the soul? If you take some mind-altering drugs, the chemical balance in your brain will be altered, but how can chemicals have any effect on the immaterial soul floating along with the brain? How do antidepressant drugs stop a nonphysical soul from feeling depressed? Why do souls need sleep? Why does your soul cease to be aware while your brain slumbers? The answer is quite simple, and not to the liking of theists. Your personality is a direct product of that physical organ in your head, your brain. If your brain is altered, your personality (your "soul" is altered. When your brain dies, your soul dies with it.

Nothing else makes sense and, as usual, the theistic explanations only raise more problems than they solve.

Link

Pastor AIO:


The question now is, can pure information exist without it being encoded on some sort of material or the other. I mean, the mechanical brain, the microchip etc are all material and so the information exists in some material form still. What about purely abstract information?