If you take the short snappy title literally the answer is ‘all of it’. So what I mean is, which bit of the common definition of ‘you’ (your whole body) is the sentient bit?
More specific than ‘the brain’. Is there a part of the whole brain that is still ‘you’ if you take the rest away? If you don’t count life support how much of the loose definition of you could you take away before what’s left stops being you/sentient?
Or to put it another way, how small a bit of you could you take out and put in another body (to sustain it as an organic thing) and it still be you?
Would you still be you if you suddenly lost all your past memories?
It seems to me that there is no answer, and that our society agrees on this, and I’m not aware of any society that doesn’t. If I get my pancreas removed, I am still the same human being. If I have a leg amputated, I am still the same human being. Some epileptics have half their brain removed, but they remain the same human being. Alzheimers patients may lose nearly all of their memories, but they are still the same human being. There is no situation where a living human being ceases to be a human being due to the loss of a physical part of a mental ability.
Remember the Terry Schiavo case? Everybody referred to her as “Terry Schiavo” no matter where they stood on the legal issues. Her brain had rotted away to almost nothing, she had no mental functions, but everyone still agreed that the person called Terry Schiavo was still there.
In short, the self must be something that is not grounded in any physical structure or mental function.
Well, it definitely has to reside in the brain. The rest is just life support apparatus and data input bits.
How much of your brain do you need to still be you? That is wide open to question. You have the likes of Terry Schiavo who while physically alive would be argued that “she” was no longer there. Her brain, the higher functioning bits, were mush.
On the other hand there have been people with hemispherectomies (sp?) who had half their brain removed (literally) and live rather normal lives (when it is done to them as a child…their brains seem still able to rework themselves enough).
If you lost all your past memories I would argue that you are no longer “you”. Essentially we are nothing but the sum of our past. That said what are memories? Even people who have lost their abilities to recall the past still seem to retain their personality (or at least they have a personality). While they may not remember the past they obviously function, retain language and other skills so seems a lot of “them” is still in there somewhere. This one is a lot harder to call I think.
I think we have to say the brain is the seat of identity. That’s not to say it can’t be damaged, but it’s still us. If you remove any other portion, it’s still the same person. If you remove the brain, it’s not.
The wrinkle in this is that it’s impossible at the moment to sustain a human brain outside the body, so when the brain is removed, the person is dead, and we keep referring to the body as the person, and the brain as just an organ that was removed. If we get to the point where a brain can be removed and either put into another body or into some variety of robot, then I think we’d say that the brain’s location is now the person, and the old body is not … though the body would still, presumably, be the property of the person (the brain).
Of course, what happens if you could split the brain down the middle, keep it alive, and put it into two separate bodies? Who the heck knows.
I disagree that Schiavo was still “there”. I think that was the whole point of the case. She was not there and allowing this rather soulless shell, almost zombie if you want, was not a good thing. Schiavo as a distinct entity was no longer there. Sure people still used her name but what else would you do? There was no higher brain function at all left in the poor woman. Just enough was left to keep the life support package functioning. Nothing else.
Good point. And there is, I think, a difference between the philosophical definition of a person and the legal definition of a person. If you lost all of your memories, or your brain was turned to mush, you, philosophically, would cease to exist. But, legally, your body is still there, and owns various possessions and is bound by contracts, etc.
I have to disagree here, at least a little. If I lose a finger, Yes, I am still me in the sense I am not someone else. But I have also lost part of me. That part of me has died. I won’t be whole again until I die, too, making me one complete dead guy. Have your brain removed? Well, yeah, you are still you. Just the part without a brain. Which granted, isn’t very useful and pretty pointless, but still the rest of you.
In Purgatory, you’re probably sitting there going “Crap! I’m just a brain floating in the afterlife!” (Probably not.)
Are they? One of the most common things you hear about humans suffering from Alzheimer’s is that they’re not themselves.
That’s not really what he asked. He didn’t ask what makes you a human being, he asked what makes you ‘you’. There are several things I can think of that might make you not be you anymore, and a nice massive loss of memory is one of them.
Well, no, that was the entire problem. Her brain was gone, she couldn’t function, so although she was technically a human being, she really wasn’t Terry Schiavo anymore. That’s why her husband wanted her to be allowed to die. People called her Terry Schiavo because that was the easiest way to refer to her.
Again, no, we have no evidence that the self is anything but physical. We have found lots of things that can alter basic traits against a person’s will, implying that these things are encompassed in something physical. If you have evidence that there is something that makes up or interacts with a human mind that is not at all physical, please present it.
The point I was making is that there’s a consensus on acting as if a person in a case like that still exists alive, even though some people hold in an intellectual case that she’s not. Legally, a person is a person until death. In some cases we may declare them incapacitated, meaning that they’ve lost some of their abilities, but we never declare them to be unpersons. As far as government and business are concerned, a person simply is a person according to that commonly accepted definition. If you’re doing a census, or counting people for any other reason, you count all living people as people regardless of their mental state
Interesting theory. I’d have to agree that if we could scoop the entire brain out and put in a new body, we’d have moved the ‘person’ to the new body. However, that’s all science fiction at the moment, and my personal prediction is that it will never be done. If we define ‘personhood’ by bits of the brain, it does raise certain questions. For example, what do we make of the French dude who lived a normal life with close to no brain tissue?
That’s a tough question for which there really is no short answer. In the course of everyday existence, we encounter various people and don’t generally have trouble identifying an individual. Yet can the definition really be based on mental traits? After all, in what sense can a personality really be said to exist? Any one individual seems to exhibit different personalities in different circumstances. A person behaves differently when drunk vs. when sober, or when sexual aroused vs. when cold, or when tired vs. when alert, or when hungry vs. when full, or when calm vs. when emotionally charged, and so forth. Yet there’s no disputing that a person who goes through all of those states remains the same person throughout.
Short answer: we don’t know yet. Any other assertions, such as there being non-physical components to the self, require evidence, and are not the default response in case the answer is ‘I don’t know’.
Besides, I’ve met plenty of civil servants with tiny itty-bitty little brains.
The “self” is the thinker thinking about, and constantly redefining, itself. It is within those functional self-referential infinitely recursive loops that “you” reside. A self always and most basically in contrast to all that is non-self.
For humans those patterns mainly exist in the neocortex and in particular primarily in the frontal and prefrontal lobes integrating (and imposing expectations upon) patterns of information processed in various sensory cortices. But it is the functionality, what Doug Hofstadter calls a tangled hierarchy or a strange loop, that gives your self its sense of selfness, not the where it resides.
By the time my father died of Alzheimer’s it’s debatable whether he was “still the same human being,” or whether that human being had died a few years earlier. Legally, of course, he had to be considered the same man with the same name as before. But even being with him prior to his death, I had lost the feeling that he was the person who had been my father . . . or even a “person” at all. He seemed to be merely a body that represented or evoked the man he had been.
It was very poignant, a few years before his death, when he still retained some of his personality . . . and he said, “I’m not the man I used to be.”
Some of the responses above seem to be concerned with self-awareness, but are you yourself when you’re not aware? Do you cease being you if you’re asleep? In a coma? Who are you in a hypnagogic state?
I think “you” and “I” are fluid concepts. I’m the same person I was 10 years ago, but I’m not the same. If I lost a leg or my short term memory or my ability to write I would be different, but I would be me.
I think the idea of the brain as the seat of the soul (or of the self/mind/intelligence, whatever we chose to call IT) is as idiotic as the ancient idea of the heart being the same, or any other physical organ.
Sure, the brain is a more likely suspect, being responsible for processing impulses and thoughts, but it is still just a piece of meat.
If one accepts that all there is is “meat”, then yes, is the brain is damaged or gone, “you” are likewise. If one accepts that the mind/soul/self/consciousness exists beyond the physical, then that doesn’t hold true.
The examples of those who’ve functioned more or less fully lacking any brain to speak of(and I don’t just mean George Bush;)) challenge the theory of the brain as the seat of the self.
Would I, personally, want to live in a body with a brain so severely damaged that I was unable to function? Hell no. Nor would I want to live in a body in which any other organ were so damaged as to impair my functioning to such a degree. But that doesn’t mean I exist solely in any of those organs. I exist beyond the physical body. Just my opinion, as requested.
My grandmother, who lived to be 100, told me 15 yrs or so before her death that she felt “the rest of her had already gone, and she was just waiting around to follow.” It drove her crazy that she couldn’t see or hear well and was less mobile than she’d always been. And yes, that she often forgot things after having a great memory and sharp mind her whole life. “SHE” felt trapped in an aging body, but “she” never identified with that body, in fact she was irritated by it increasingly. She felt strongly that “she” would eventually move on and leave the husk behind, her true self free of all this silly nonsence. I hope she was right.
I’m afraid I entirely disagree with that one. People using “Terry Schiavo” to refer to her by no means “everyone still agreed” that person was still there. I used that name at the time, too, but I’m convinced that she was no longer there anymore. It’s a usage of ease, in my case; using the name is a much quicker thing to do than say “the being with lessenend mental activity who used to be Terry Schiavo” every time you want to refer to her. In other cases, it may well be a sign of politeness, or a wish to avoid offense. You really can’t assume universal or even majority agreement that she was still Terry Schiavo just from the use of the name. In short, your conclusion is rather flawed.
As far as the OP goes; i’d say I am composed of many things, which could be taken away to make me a different person. Even if I lost a leg, I would argue that I am no longer the same person, since I imagine that loss would affect me quite considerably. Change my brain’s physical makeup around, and I would not be the same person. Rob me of my memories, either totally or partially, and I would not be the same person. Give me alcohol to alter my perceptions and bodily inputs, and I would not be the same person. Taking parts of me away does not necessarily make me any less of a person; if I lost my memory but could continue to form new ones, then I would still be a person, just a different one. OTOH, take away my brain in its entirety and there’s no person there at all. To use an example brought up upthread, scoop out my brain and bung it in another person’s body and I would, over time, gradually become quite a different person thanks to the differing inputs i’m getting. Even me in my own body for that amount of time would result in a changed me. There are many things that add up to make us who we are, and which, to differing extents, would make us a different person were they changed.
