Now, I'm pretty sure most people here (especially domatron) would agree that the brain controls our consciousness and self-identity; we are self aware because of our brains and what we call a "soul" is merely our consciousness, which is controlled by our brains.
But here's something interesting:
We can all agree that a person with only half a brain hemisphere can live a perfectly normal life with little to no consciousness alterations whatsoever. This has been demonstrated throughout history in epilepsy patients and Phineas Gage (who, incidentally, did suffer a sudden change in personality, but more on that later).
Now, let's say somebody was in a terrible accident far into the future. His body was killed, but half of his brain managed to survive, and was implanted into an artificially-made body. Now, when that man wakes up, we can all probably guess that his personality, assuming his hemisphere was in good shape, would be the same. He would have a completely different body, but his consciousness--his self-awareness--would remain intact and the same as it was before: he would consider himself the same person he was before the accident.
Now comes the kicker:
 Let's take the hypothetical situation up a small level and say both of the man's brain hemispheres survived, but only half could be placed into one body for whatever reason. So one half of his brain would placed into one body and the other half would be placed in the other body.
Now, if both bodies woke up, would they be the same person? You can't be in two places at once. But if the brain is the sole controller of the self, and if half a brain can work just as well as a whole brain, then we'd expect to be self-aware of two of ourselves--a logical impossibility.
This suggests that the brain is not the sole mastermind of the self, as both of the half-brains couldn't possibly make someone doubly self-aware: literally, in two places at once.
Just a neat thing we did in philosophy cIass today.
Log in to comment