The surgeon has a dilemma before her.
She may either take out the brain of someone and so demonstrate that this individual will no longer think,
or,
she may not take it out and the person will still think that the mind is the ghost in the machine.
Either she will demonstrate that an individual needs the brain to think and it will kill the person or she will not demonstrate it and the person will live.
What is right and what is wrong with this dilemma?
If she takes out the brain and the person dies it doesn't mean that a person thinks with his brain. It's like taking out the heart assuming someone thinks with his heart. Irrelevant. If someone dies, you can not tell if it is proven.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, if she doesn't take it out and someone still thinks the mind is in the brain, that fact is already telling that the thought process is out of there. It was never in. If you observe something is becacuse your consciousness is out.
That's what I was thinking, regardless which organ the surgeon removes then what does that demonstrate?
DeleteOf course, what is known now about the heart and the brain, then it's reasonable to say one functions to pump blood and the other functions in terms of memory and reflection.
It would be intriguing to see what neurosurgeons would say about this, even those in the past as Wilder Penfield. Penfield discovered by happy accident that when stimulating a region of the brain, patients could recall in detail past events.
That physical evidence, connecting the brain to memory, would appear to be weighty.