« Revisiting Versus Overruling | Main | Just In Time News »
Philosophy Fun
I used to study philosophy, so I can't help but gin up a Schiavo-related thought experiment. I'm not a neurologist, but my understanding is that what's wrong with Terri is that her cerebral cortex has been destroyed. For the purposes of this discussion, at least, let's let "cerebral cortex" stand for whatever the destroyed part of her brain is. Now say I go to sleep tonight, and when my alarm starts ringing tomorrow morning my body doesn't wake up. It doesn't wake up because overnight my cerebral cortex has stopped functioning. I've lost the part of my brain that permits for thinking, feeling, consciousness, deliberate control over my body, etc. I'm in, in other words, a persistent vegetative state. But I'll stay alive on my own for a little while now even if nobody gives me a feeding tube or any such thing. At the same time, Terri Schiavo's body suddenly springs to life. A quick examination makes it seem as if her cerebral cortex has been miraculously restored. But upon further examination, that's not what's happened at all. Instead, my cortex had gotten into her head. Terri's body starts speaking, and has Matt Yglesias' memories, opinions, affections, tastes, etc.
Now what would we say about this? What I think we wouldn't say is that "Matt Yglesias fell into a persistent vegetative state and Terri Schiavo magically recovered from her PVS." The revived Schiavo-body would be me not her. But I think we wouldn't say that Terri and I had switched bodies. I think the right thing to say would be that Terri was dead, the Yglesias-body was in a PVS, and Matt Yglesias now inhabited the former body of Terri Schiavo.
March 22, 2005 | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2110370
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Philosophy Fun:
» The Uses of Philosophy from Opiniatrety
I believe Yglesias is showing off the value of a philosophy education. Those sound like the points of someone who's familiar with Hobbes and the post-Hobbesian literature. [UPDATE: And then there's this.]... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 22, 2005 11:20:33 AM
» Para que servem os nossos diarinhos mesmo? from Filisteu
O Solon está com um bom post sobre o caso Schiavo, com alguns links. Tenho que complementar apenas o que ele escreve sobre a cobertura do caso feita pelos blogs. Mr. Brochado diz que: (...) descobri que, em certos momentos,... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 22, 2005 7:52:43 PM
» Matthew Yglesias is Insane from The Weblog
This is the kind of post that makes me mourn the fact that my life has been so impoverished by my failure to study analytic philosophy: [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 22, 2005 8:45:52 PM
» "What a terrible thing it is to lose one's mind" from A Level Gaze
Matthew Yglesias' fascinating thought experiment, in which his higher brain function is nefariously swapped with that of Terri Schiavo, inspires me to take a new perspective on the pro-life mind. [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 22, 2005 11:58:47 PM
Comments
You need to get out more. It's a nice day. Take a walk.
Posted by: Pudentilla | Mar 22, 2005 11:08:56 AM
As Dan Dennett says, a brain transplant is the only operation where it's better to be the donor than the recipient.
Posted by: Thad | Mar 22, 2005 11:09:22 AM
Aha! Would you then be a woman or a man? Answer carefully.
Posted by: Roxanne | Mar 22, 2005 11:11:40 AM
Well, it's better than cloning.
Posted by: Nick Kaufman | Mar 22, 2005 11:17:32 AM
Now I know why I skipped philosophy. Matt, you've lost it.
Posted by: John Kubie | Mar 22, 2005 11:18:08 AM
I assume the upshot of all of this is to argue that Terri Schiavo is dead, even thogh her body is still functional? Not that I disagree...
Posted by: Kevin Brennan | Mar 22, 2005 11:20:20 AM
You need to get out more. It's a nice day. Take a walk.
Or post on someone elses weblog.
Posted by: WillieStyle | Mar 22, 2005 11:24:24 AM
Prof. Pryor would be proud. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch 12 Monkeys again and see if I can remember how he refuted fatalism...
Posted by: B | Mar 22, 2005 11:27:47 AM
Not to get wierdly religious, but where is the soul in all this? I mean, I suspect Matt doesn't believe in them, but is Matt's soul in Terri's body (seems right), or is it in Matt's body (seems wrong), or is it in both of them (also might be right)? Remember, souls don't have to follow normal rules of physics. Also, where's Terri's soul? One reason I have a living will, among many, many good reasons, is that I worry that the end of my brain functioning wouldn't be sufficient to end my soul's connection to my body. I wonder if the soul would stick around until the body was dead too. That would be hideous. Personally, I'm somewhat excited about being incorporeal.
Posted by: MDtoMN | Mar 22, 2005 11:28:08 AM
Schiavo is like a car permanently without a drive train. The essence of a car is movement. Is such a car still a car?
Posted by: Michael7843853 | Mar 22, 2005 11:29:18 AM
I like this pitch (I see a good tie-in with the CSPAN-clock radio people). What are you thinking of for a third act? Tom DeLay (Powers Boothe) trying to get you to switch back?
Who do you see as "Matt"? House number: Jason Lee.
Posted by: Delicious Pundit | Mar 22, 2005 11:30:07 AM
Neuroscience thought experiments are more useless than most. Resolving neuroanatomical distinctions (our starting point here) with their associated functional distinctions is a difficult proposition and questions related to it are unlikely to be resolvable by intuition.
Posted by: tom | Mar 22, 2005 11:32:01 AM
Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom have, I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, invironed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.
Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, ch. 36
Posted by: Anderson | Mar 22, 2005 11:32:20 AM
Damn italics.
Posted by: Anderson | Mar 22, 2005 11:33:29 AM
Assuming that the Terri-body with the Matt-cortex woke up with a bunch of smart things to say about Social Security and political strategy, with a strong desire to write Clash parody lyrics about US Iraq policy, and with memories of yummy popcorn chicken, I'd say that the person named Matt Yglesias was occupying the body of Terri Schiavo.
Posted by: Ethical Werewolf | Mar 22, 2005 11:36:41 AM
You are suffering from the fallacy of the software analogy. If personality were software applications, we could run the Matt spreadsheet on the Terri OS just fine. But the accurate analogy would be more like each application and OS driver is a separate hardware part of the CPU that has to be programmed for years. And the hardware modules are so densly connected with the rest of the CPU that replacement is impossible. Destruction, but not replacement. So your hypothetical is no different from asking about Terri waking up with a heart transplant from you.
Even if you believe in a soul distinct from the body, it needs a physical substrate to exist. At least that was Aquinas's view. A materialist might say that the illusion of consciousness is there for good evolutionary reasons, like the illusion of a continuous visual field without the easily demonstrated blind spot.
You may now return to your Chinese Room.
Posted by: Roger Bigod | Mar 22, 2005 11:37:25 AM
Well, MDtoMN, I suppose that it would depend on whether your soul thinks like you or has its own opinions.
I wonder why the parents don't push for Schiavo to be cryonically frozen. If they really think there is any chance in hell of someone coming back from a loss of a cerebrum in some far future, they should take steps to preserve as much of it as possible.
Posted by: Tim H. | Mar 22, 2005 11:37:59 AM
Thought experiments can be fun, but this one, under the circumstances, strikes me as being in bad taste -- or even a bit worse than that. Speaking as someone who teaches the subject for a living, I wish that philosophy did more to encourage a humane sensibility and a bit less to encourage conceptual puzzle-mongering. Let the woman RIP.
Posted by: Tcatch | Mar 22, 2005 11:39:40 AM
As I understand it, while the cerebral cortex controls higher level cognitions, one’s emotional reactions are mediated by more ‘primitive’ parts of the brain, like the amygdyla. So the new Terri (you?) would probably have some mix of Matt’s thoughts and Terri’s emotions.
Posted by: RC | Mar 22, 2005 11:40:38 AM
I think even in the social construct identity is a little more complicated than this. We do not equate identity completely with the contents of the cerebral cortex. Should you suddenly lose your memories of Norfolk, you are not a partial Matt Yglesias. Reagan after Alzheimers was both Reagan and not-Reagan.
I revolt over this creeping Neo-Descartianism! My big toe is not less "me" than my memories or affects. I am nothing but a body with an illusion of conciousness. Ask "epistemology"
"Terry Schiavo" has some posthumous rights over the "Terry Schiavo" that is not really "Terry Schiavo". We actually don't know what we are talking about.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Mar 22, 2005 11:41:54 AM
italics off!
What Roger said, although I said it first, but type more slowly.
And true bad taste would involve a Chianti and fava beans.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Mar 22, 2005 11:45:14 AM
Well, Bob, I think that if I lose my memories I am a partial Matt Yglesias.
Posted by: Matthew Yglesias | Mar 22, 2005 11:45:51 AM
Sounds like an awful hybrid of one of those typical Hollywood "switched" movies and a horror movie about an a transplant taken from a terrible deceased criminal taking possession of the transplant recipient. (Although I'm not fond of this post, and do agree with the first commenter that Matt would benefit from a good, long walk, I'm not trying to suggest that Matt is guilty of blogcrime.)
Posted by: Bragan | Mar 22, 2005 11:47:43 AM
Who needs the damn brains when they pump all that yammy stuff right into your stomach? You don't even have to chew. That's life!
Posted by: abb1 | Mar 22, 2005 11:51:20 AM
If only it were so.
Off. Off, damn you!
Hopefully, TypePad gets the idea now.
Posted by: Thad | Mar 22, 2005 11:51:36 AM
Are you a Vampire in hiding?
One body per soul, please!!
Posted by: jimw | Mar 22, 2005 11:53:06 AM
I have just one quibble with your account of both the thought experiment and the real Schiavo case. (This quibble is sure to further bug readers who dislike these philosophical inquiries.)
I would say that Terry Schiavo no longer exists; but she is not dead. Human persons typically cease to exist by dying. And after they die we say they are dead. But that is not that is not the only way in which they can cease to exist.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we understand the difference between a human body that is alive and one that is dead. A person is not identical with a human body; but the existence of every human person is sustained or embodied by a living human body. For any given person, that is the body we call "her body". We continue to call it "her body" even after that body is dead, because it is the body which formerly embodied that person's existence.
A person dies when their existence comes to an end as a consequence of a transition of her body from living to dead, and the body thus ceases to sustain the person''s existence. This is the normal way in which people cease to exist. And again, once a person dies we say they are dead.
But there are other ways - short of dying - in which a body could cease to sustain the existence of a person. I would say that in the real case of Terry Schiavo, and the hypothetical case you mention, Terry Schiavo no longer exists, but she is not dead. Nor is she alive. The body that formerly sustained and embodied her existence no longer embodies that existence. That body is still alive, so Schiavo has not died. But that body no longer embodies her existence, so while the body is alive Terry Schiavo is not alive. Schiavo has ceased to exist in a non-standard way which does not involve dying.
Posted by: Dan Kervick | Mar 22, 2005 11:53:56 AM
I have just one quibble with your account of both the thought experiment and the real Schiavo case. (This quibble is sure to further bug readers who dislike these philosophical inquiries.)
I would say that Terry Schiavo no longer exists; but she is not dead. Human persons typically cease to exist by dying. And after they die we say they are dead. But that is not that is not the only way in which they can cease to exist.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we understand the difference between a human body that is alive and one that is dead. A person is not identical with a human body; but the existence of every human person is sustained or embodied by a living human body. For any given person, that is the body we call "her body". We continue to call it "her body" even after that body is dead, because it is the body which formerly embodied that person's existence.
A person dies when their existence comes to an end as a consequence of a transition of her body from living to dead, and the body thus ceases to sustain the person''s existence. This is the normal way in which people cease to exist. And again, once a person dies we say they are dead.
But there are other ways - short of dying - in which a body could cease to sustain the existence of a person. I would say that in the real case of Terry Schiavo, and the hypothetical case you mention, Terry Schiavo no longer exists, but she is not dead. Nor is she alive. The body that formerly sustained and embodied her existence no longer embodies that existence. That body is still alive, so Schiavo has not died. But that body no longer embodies her existence, so while the body is alive Terry Schiavo is not alive. Schiavo has ceased to exist in a non-standard way which does not involve dying.
Posted by: Dan Kervick | Mar 22, 2005 11:54:43 AM
Half of Terry Schiavo would be dead.
"Terry Schiavo" (the woman walking around on the street) would be half Terry Schiavo and half Matt Yglesias.
"Matt Yglesias" would be half Matt Yglesias and half dead.
We can call this the John Breaux compromise approach to ontology.
Posted by: JP | Mar 22, 2005 11:56:52 AM
sdfdsfdf
Posted by: sdfds | Mar 22, 2005 11:57:02 AM
These are some persistent italics
Posted by: JP | Mar 22, 2005 11:57:49 AM
Italics off?
Posted by: Tim O'Keefe | Mar 22, 2005 11:58:43 AM
Posted by: j.scott barnard | Mar 22, 2005 12:00:12 PM
you're not the first to have tried...
Posted by: tom | Mar 22, 2005 12:00:12 PM
XX
Posted by: John Emerson | Mar 22, 2005 12:00:49 PM
Posted by: j.scott barnard | Mar 22, 2005 12:01:09 PM
Terry Schiavo's brain stem has taken over Matt's ASCII.
Posted by: John Emerson | Mar 22, 2005 12:01:41 PM
Ah, they used "em", not "i" for italics. Tricky.
Posted by: j.scott barnard | Mar 22, 2005 12:02:24 PM
No, the Schiavo with your memories would not be you because bodily continuity is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for personal identity (pace Locke).
As Bernard Williams showed, if Schiavo with your memories were you and if Frist started to have Yglesias'memories too, we would not say that you are identical with those two people.
Posted by: Phersu | Mar 22, 2005 12:05:01 PM
Her cerebral cortex is not completely gone, if I understand correctly. Some have argued that therapy could help. Her husband has never allowed therapy.
Posted by: j.scott barnard | Mar 22, 2005 12:08:23 PM
[Deckard picks up paper unicorn.]
Gaff's voice: It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?
Deckard : Gaff had been there, and let her live. Four years, he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me Rachael was special: no termination date. I didn't know how long we had together. Who does?
Posted by: Deckard | Mar 22, 2005 12:16:28 PM
"Some have argued that therapy could help. Her husband has never allowed therapy." - "Some," i.e. a few quack doctors who haven't actually examined her. In fact, her husband pursued therapy quite aggressively in the first few years.
Posted by: Andrew | Mar 22, 2005 12:24:27 PM
Terri-Matt: "Matt-Terri, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."
Posted by: Bragan | Mar 22, 2005 12:28:58 PM
Thank you, Scott Barnard!
Posted by: Anderson | Mar 22, 2005 12:29:25 PM
I had trouble understanding Matt's philosophical question. Then I replaced "Terri Schiavo" in the text with "John Malkovich," and it all made sense.
(Plus it allows me the opportunity to imagine Tom Delay being dropped onto his head on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike, and that makes me smile a little.)
Posted by: diddy | Mar 22, 2005 12:37:32 PM
I understand Tcatch's feelings about maintaining some sense of decency in the discussion of this sad case. I also speak as someone who teaches the subject of philosophy for a living. But I think that it is precisely at times like these that the consideration of philosophical puzzles such as Matt brings up is most important and valuable.
My former teacher Fred Feldman was moved to write a book on the philosophy of death by the loss of his teenaged daughter to leukemia. In his preface, he discusses how we should respond to death. He says something like this: whatever might be the appropriate response of people in general, as philosophers we have no choice - we must seek to understand death. I always admired the way in which Fred moved beyond his private grief by calling on his own painful experiences with death to fulfill his vocation and offer something of value to humanity. The vocation the philosopher is to advance understanding.
It is precisely when these complex cases are before us, that the need for philosophical discussion of the issues is most pressing. The puzzles of the sort Matt considers are not just a game, but part of an effort to articulate and sharpen our obscure conceptual grasp of the circumstances surrounding death by asking how our concepts should be applied in hypothetical cases in which phenomena that ordinarily occur together are detached.
I think the public discussion of the Schiavo case shows there is a tremendous amount of conceptual confusion and perplexity surrounding the topic. Hypothetical cases like Matt's help move the process of clarification forward.
Posted by: Dan Kervick | Mar 22, 2005 12:42:25 PM
I understand Tcatch's feelings about maintaining some sense of decency in the discussion of this sad case. I also speak as someone who teaches the subject of philosophy for a living. But I think that it is precisely at times like these that the consideration of philosophical puzzles such as Matt brings up is most important and valuable.
My former teacher Fred Feldman was moved to write a book on the philosophy of death by the loss of his teenaged daughter to leukemia. In his preface, he discusses how we should respond to death. He says something like this: whatever might be the appropriate response of people in general, as philosophers we have no choice - we must seek to understand death. I always admired the way in which Fred moved beyond his private grief by calling on his own painful experiences with death to fulfill his vocation and offer something of value to humanity. The vocation the philosopher is to advance understanding.
It is precisely when these complex cases are before us, that the need for philosophical discussion of the issues is most pressing. The puzzles of the sort Matt considers are not just a game, but part of an effort to articulate and sharpen our obscure conceptual grasp of the circumstances surrounding death by asking how our concepts should be applied in hypothetical cases in which phenomena that ordinarily occur together are detached.
I think the public discussion of the Schiavo case shows there is a tremendous amount of conceptual confusion and perplexity surrounding the topic. Hypothetical cases like Matt's help move the process of clarification forward.
Posted by: Dan Kervick | Mar 22, 2005 12:43:28 PM
Sorry about the double-postings all. I don't know what's up.
Posted by: Dan Kervick | Mar 22, 2005 12:44:25 PM
IMDB: All Of Me. Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Victoria Tennent.
Posted by: bjd | Mar 22, 2005 12:50:12 PM
Instead, my cortex had gotten into her head. Terri's body starts speaking, and has Matt Yglesias' memories, opinions, affections, tastes, etc.
Now what would we say about this?
That her condition had deteriorated further?
(*rim shot*)
Posted by: Swopa | Mar 22, 2005 1:11:02 PM
j. scott barnard:
By all acounts Michael Schiavo was quite diligent in getting Terri therapy in the first years after her injury. She received aggressive speech, occupational and physical therapy. Micheal even moved her to California and stayed with her there for several months so that Terri could receive experimental brain stimulation therapy.
On the question of whether there are any new therapies that might help Terri, the Florida courts granted the Schindlers a second trial to adjudicate this very subject, and the Schindlers again lost at all levels. The 'doctors' who are claiming this are indeed quacks.
Posted by: RC | Mar 22, 2005 1:17:01 PM
Matt: This thing about your being brain-dead? I thought you were presenting a hypothetical...
Come on, Matty, intellectual masturbation isn't your style.
Posted by: jim | Mar 22, 2005 1:26:20 PM
"Her cerebral cortex is not completely gone, if I understand correctly."
Do you ever, J. Scott?
Posted by: John Emerson | Mar 22, 2005 1:40:24 PM
Matt, seriously, that is not a very good interesting thought experiment. What profound wisdom are you trying to get at? Seems to me you need a walk and some sleep.
Btw did you know that there are crooks in washington? no really, i kid you not! now go find me something interesting about them instead.
Posted by: Tomas | Mar 22, 2005 1:43:53 PM
Do you ever, J. Scott?
He sure knows his XHTML tags; that's better than nothing.
Posted by: abb1 | Mar 22, 2005 1:48:47 PM
So, what was it? Mushrooms? LSD? Grass? Metampsychosis?
Posted by: Jeffrey Davis | Mar 22, 2005 2:14:33 PM
John Emerson,
Please stop stealing all my tricks; I have so very few.
Yours,
Mr. A
Posted by: Mr. Ad Hominem | Mar 22, 2005 2:53:25 PM
This post, to put it as politely as I can, is in extremely bad taste.
Posted by: Andrew Boucher | Mar 22, 2005 3:32:15 PM
That wasn't an ad hominem, Mr. A., it was an insult. You of all people should know the difference.
Posted by: JP | Mar 22, 2005 3:34:23 PM
The commenters who think this post is in bad taste are wrong. Until now. How would Matt's cerebral cortex in Terri Schiavo's body affect his(?) dating life? Which part of the brain, the Matt cerebral cortez or the Terri brainstem, controls? Would Matt be attracted to men? To women? If to women, would he then be a lesbian? (Not that there's anything wrong with that?) And what if he stayed home and dated himself -- which he may be doing anyway?
Now THAT's bad taste.
Posted by: C.J.Colucci | Mar 22, 2005 3:57:06 PM
After puzzling over this long enough to give the cat a good petting, all I can say is that any girlfriend of Matt's will have to have a very good, and slightly bent, sense of humor.
Posted by: serial catowner | Mar 22, 2005 5:35:13 PM
Ah, but Matt, the real question is: what if your cerebral cortex stayed where it is, but a duplicate of it -- with your memories -- ended up in a brain-dead person's head (or simply sprang into existence, as would have happened regularly with the Star Trek transporter if it didn't mysteriously but conveniently destroy the transportee's original body whenever it "copied its pattern" and manufactured a duplicate at the other end)? Which brain would contain your continued original "consciousness" or "personal identity", and why? Most people would say the original brain -- but why? Just because that brain had retained its original atoms? But our brain cells regularly totally replace their original atoms through normal metabolic processes, despite which we regard ourselves as retaining a continued personal identity. So which twin would have the original Matt's continued personal consciousness?
These, contrary to some of the smartass comments in the above thread, are genuine and important philosophical problems -- which means that they are also genuine and important scientific problems, since philosophy, like the natural sciences, does deal with the attempted description of reality. And they're connected to others among the most important philosophical problems, such as the question of why we know (or at least assume) that other bodies which behave like ours contain consciousnesses like ours.
I gather that Richard Hofstadter of "Godel, Escher, Bach" fame has written a book, "The Mind's I", on exactly this subject, which I must get around to erading. My own suspicion is that -- for reasons involving quantum physics -- it is absolutely impossible to construct a precise physical duplicate of a person's physical brain state at any moment, and so the question of a double personal identity never really arises. I also suspect that this same cause explains another of the central philosophical problems: why do we know (or at least assume) that we are usually sane -- that is, that no outside force is seriously scrambling our internal mental processes and our moment-to-moment memories? To believe that, we have to believe that -- for some physical reason -- it is virtually impossible for outside forces to thus scramble our internal thought process in any but crude ways. But there's nothing in our CURRENT physical scientific knowledge and theories (including the current extent of our quantum physics theories) to support such a belief. This is yet another of the areas where the physical sciences butt unavoidably head-on into philosophical problems -- and I suspect that a growing mass public awareness of such problems, as improving biological and computer technology make more and more ordinary people aware of them, will be one of the unpredicted wild cards of the 21st century.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw | Mar 22, 2005 6:53:28 PM
God knows - she does - that I wish I still had an interest in whatever that good weed is that Matt has... ;)
Posted by: weboy | Mar 22, 2005 6:53:37 PM
Ooops sorry. I think all of us who actually think about this kind of mind-alteration really would call it Switching Bodies.
In any case, would the non-vegetable person be Matilda Schiavo or Terri Churche or something?
Posted by: MNPundit | Mar 22, 2005 8:11:39 PM
I gather that Richard Hofstadter of "Godel, Escher, Bach" fame has written a book, "The Mind's I", on exactly this subject, which I must get around to reading
It's Douglas, not Richard (who was the historian who wrote The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and who I believe is not related to Douglas). The Mind's I is a collection of essays by (mostly) others, with commentary by Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett, who is himself one of the premiere philosophers of consciousness. GEB and Mind's Eye are both from around 1980; since then Hofstadter has had a couple of books of his Scientific American column published, as well as one on the philosophy and practice of translation; Dennett has a publication list as long as my arm. They are among the very few whose books I buy in hardback the instant I see them.
Posted by: DonBoy | Mar 22, 2005 9:20:20 PM
I used to study philosophy,
If this is the result you would have done better to sign up for woodworking.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov | Mar 22, 2005 10:20:38 PM
After you play the personal identity game, then I recommend you try out the "Battlefield God" game.
Posted by: Jackmormon | Mar 22, 2005 10:36:30 PM
Oh, please tell me that closed the tag. How embarrassing. And that's "paradigm" not "paradism" in the vast blueness above.
Posted by: Jackmormon | Mar 22, 2005 10:38:46 PM
There is something Cartesian about this blog that bothers me. I can see that mind/body dualism are alive and well.
In fact, I would think that Terri Schiavo could become an historical synecdoche of the entire argument.
Posted by: fear is the mind killer | Mar 22, 2005 11:20:12 PM
I don't think it's at all obvious that it's you who wakes up. Eric Olson has an excellent book arguing that Terri now thinks she's you and you die, starting from the point that what we are is organisms, and the organism that's her is still around with a new cerebral cortex (or whatever it is). I'm not sure if I agree with it, but it seems to me at least as plausible as the view you think is absolutely obvious. I don't think a psychological criterion of personal persistence is going to cut it unless you have a soul anyway, and then it's not the psychology per se that makes you survive but the soul.
There's dispute within the medical industry about whether that's what's wrong with her, by the way.
Posted by: Jeremy Pierce | Mar 22, 2005 11:57:28 PM
DonBoy is, of course, right about Hofstadter's first name, and thanks for his additional information -- although I'm rather suspicious of Dennett's habitual arrogance. (I mean, anyone who writes a book entitled "Consciousness Explained"...)
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw | Mar 23, 2005 12:00:44 PM
pharmacy online yiu can trust order
propecia free shipping
Posted by: order propecia | Dec 5, 2005 3:19:24 AM
