like the brain is literally encased in the body so how can it be separate? like if you go around licking lamp posts you’re going to pick up some germ that’s gonna make you feel like crap and you get insomnia or fever and your brain will definitely be impacted. and so you’ll have short temper and that’ll get you into trouble.
I put it like this: if you replaced any other part, or even all your other parts with machines, you’d still be (what you think of as) you… because your brain would still be in there.
There is, however, no replacing the brain. If your brain goes, you go with it. You are your brain.
Are you talking about consciousness? As this is separate from the mind. It would disappear from being encased within the body without a mind just as it would without a heart being that the body without these elements is not capable of reaching consciousness because it’s not capable of sustained living.
Note: it has not been scientifically proven yet that the consciousness resides in an exact spot in the brain hence they speak of consciousness and mind as separate.
Note also that there have been people who lived their entire life missing about 80% of their brain (or more https://www.sciencealert.com/a-man-who-lives-without-90-of-his-brain-is-challenging-our-understanding-of-consciousness ) without even realizing it
One case where the brain was only a crust within the scull bone and still had an operating consciousness.
But if we cut the bridge between the two brain hemispheres that allows them to communicate with eachother - the corpus callosum - it still feels subjectively like “you” remain unchanged. Yet there are ways to communicate with each hemisphere independently, as shown in the so-called split-brain experiments. The findings show that the two hemispheres often give different answers to the same questions. They also show that if you tell the left hemisphere to perform an action and then ask the right hemisphere why it did it, the right side will invent an excuse. So the question is - which hemisphere are you?
My answer to that is that it’s neither - there is no “you.” The sense of there being a center to consciousness is an illusion. There’s only consciousness and its contents. If we could perfectly copy your brain, that copy would also subjectively feel like you.
You could replicate material but what animates it isn’t assured simply by replication of some material
There’s also theory that consciousness is radio wave that could find or caught by hosts. So maybe you just created a host.
Another theory is that everything is conscious to exist in the dimension of space time and well it can get deeper as to say none of this exists at all. Or is a simulation. We simply decide that replication =reality of the meaning we give it.
but that’s not true tho, if you replaced my hand I’d be like “well I AM one handed now”, there won’t be a two handed me anymore so i’ll be a new me. and like if this was true, then transgender folk would have a hell of a easier time i think.
Yes it is true, very much so. You took one part of the argument and reflected it.
So how about the other part of that comment.
Do you believe you would still be you without your brain?
The real flip side of your question is: do you think you’d still be you as a “brain in a vat” without any body?
Ultimately this whole discussion boils down to challenging the definition of “you” or “I”. Biologically every “singular” person is the result of many living things working together, so the concept of “I” is an illusion. Physically, there is no “I”, but only “us”.
This makes the discussion easier. If the hand is removed, then of course “we” are different because “we” lost a piece of “us”. This would also be true if “our” brain was removed.
Nevertheless, there have been cases of brain dead people’s body adapting to the lack of central nervous system, so the body is more independently alive than we tend to give it credit.
We’re they on life support, or do you have an example of it happening without any outside assistance?
Being able to biologically adapt to a different control mechanism is cool, but it’s not necessarily ‘alive’ depending on your definition. The biological mechanisms may still fire, but that doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything more than keeping a meat sack functioning while it otherwise atrophies.
You are correct, the person was on life support. But they grew and went through puberty like any other normal functioning human. (I believe the person was born brain dead, and the wealthy parents couldn’t let go so they kept the person on life support at home).
Cells are living things by definition. So it is alive, though the body functions more like a tree than a mammal at that point. But a decentralized nervous system grew around the different vital organs.
Why not? When I am asleep, I consider myself to be me but asleep.
All language breaks down under scrutiny.
Oh please. Nice words and all, but if you fall into a ditch, you don’t say “well, shit, we’re fucked!” like Gollum. You feel like a single entity in trouble. You don’t say “my dear neurons, gut bacteria and anus cells, let’s work together to get out of this mess!!”
You truly believe the semantics of the English language disproves the point? English and the way it defines “I” is greatly affected by things seperate from biological definitions (one being the spiritual concept of the “soul”)
Also, there did exist languages in other cultures that did not have the same concept of “I” as the English language. Your counter-argument is very weak.
I used an example in English because we’re discussing in English, not because of semantics or language rules. My counterargument is fine.
But you made me wonder, is there a human language on Earth in which an individual refers to themselves as “we” instead of “I” - or yo, je, ich, watashi, etc? That would be fascinating.
Or what are those other languages that have a different way of using “I”, which I’m assuming you’re referring to as the pronoun to refer to oneself?
that’s kinda a pointless question because we can’t verify?? you have a brain when ur born but obvs it’s a different kind of brain when ur old. the brain changes too so what is the “me” here? like my brain is different already from when i started writing this.
It can easily be verified. Find someone without a head and ask them. Are they the same person just without a head?
no but go and find that head and ask the same question lmao
He said “things are cool baby”
So what you’re saying is… the brain is its own thing, then.
lol no? what do you think happens when you speak to a head without a body? or a body without a head?
Neither acknowledges my interesting stories and that makes me sad. You’re right. They’re nothing without each other.
Ship of Theseus