Der Trihs made this comment. He said that when a brain surgeon does brain surgery he is TOUCHING your personality.
Is the brain the actual personality?
Now before strawmen get introduced. I am not asking:
I am asking if the brain IS the personality.
My argument is that it’s not. The basic crux is that when a person is dead you can still touch the brain, but the personality is no longer there.
You’ve restricted the argument too much.
In effect, you’re asking: Is the (physical object) the ACTUAL (non-physical concept) This is a non-answerable question.
The brain certainly contains the personality IMO - witness the documented personality changes that can occur after a brain injury. But that’s not what you’re asking, so meh.
Exactly. You are saying exactly what I said. I am merely moving an argument that I find to be rather silly from the Pit to GD to be debunked. The brain contains the personality, which I have no argument with, but a brain surgeon is not touching your personality because the personality is not a physical piece of matter, it’s an emergent process that comes from the result of the functioning of that matter.
So the question is, ‘Is a brain surgeon touching your personality?’
What Euphonious Polemic said regarding the brain. The brain isn’t the personality, but it is contained therein - more or less.
I’d submit that feelings rely on some strange biofeedback of chemicals affecting our bodies, our bodies reporting to the brain, and then we realize (or not) a feeling… there is an odd loop there that can be ignored at times.
Let’s not leave out the influence of hormones on “personality.”
Yes. Just as an image in a painting is an emergent property of the pattern of paint molecules that make it up, but if I reach out and touch it, I’m touching the image.
Does the painting serve any other functions other than present an image?
What if they are touching the visual cortex? Are they touching your sight?
Either way you answer that… you negate your broader assertion.
(Deet dee, dah dee dah!)
That’s an interesting word. I am not sure how well it applies in this case. Any thoughts on that?
Thank you for introducing me to a new word though.
Metonymy is a figure of speech where we use a related concept as a metaphorical placeholder for another concept. When we say “The White House held a news conference today.” we don’t mean the physical building, we mean the people it contains.
So using “personality” to mean “the organ which produces your personality” is an entirely reasonable rhetorical construction.
Unless of course we began to argue it and stick with it. If I said, “The White House is not the same as the President.”, most reasonable people would agree with me without a second thought.
I think arguing that a Brain Surgeon is ‘touching your personality’, is taking metonymy too far.
It seems reasonable to me. Presumably Der Trihs was merely pointing out that your personality is entirely an emergent property of your brain and has no supernatural component.
He didn’t really make a distinction. It was also out of the blue.
But what’s reasonable? To say that the surgeon is touching your brain or to say that it’s taking Metonymy too far?
Nitpick: It’s an emergent property of the body, with a heavy contribution from the brain…
The hardware is not the software.
Depends on the painting.
Well, some of it. It’s spread out, and includes more than the surface of the visual cortex. They are also touching part of your visual imagination.
Explain please ?
Pochacco is correct, and it wasn’t out of the blue. It was a response to an attempt to claim that the soul exists because you can’t touch the personality.
But the software is made of hardware. We just make the distinction for practical/design purposes, not because they aren’t both the same thing physically. What’s the software in a computer, except a pattern of electrons ( or whatever, depending on it’s design ) in the hardware ?
The distinction between mind and brain is about what level you are looking at the system, not an objective one. It’s easier to speak of the mind when it comes to psychology, for the same reason it’s easier to talk about lines of programming when it comes to software instead of the positions of electrons in a semiconductor. They are the same thing, fundamentally, but one view is more abstract and simplified.
It may or may not be your visual imagination. I think it’s merely the screen on which the movie plays - not the projector itself. And I think science bears that out.
I was submitting that if you said that you touch sight, then you aren’t touching personality. If you say you aren’t touching sight, then a person doesn’t touch personality. The brain is a modularized (generally) tool. Some parts only serve the personality and do not feed into the emergent personality, imo.
As to the spirit of what you hope to convey, I agree. The personality, like the mind, is an emergent aspect of the brain. I do want to not confuse the medium for the information.
I guess I’m only arguing for a different metaphor, not a different point. There are other complex structures that create an emergent, more abstract, thing. A computer works well for a metaphor for a brain at a simpler level. Long term memory, short term memory, processors, video card, sound, operating system, applications (skills)… they seem a better way of explaining it. But… I could be rather weird in that respect. In my experience, the hardware, software, and the altogether configuration can create a very different “personality” to a machine.
sigh
I’m tired. And not making a solid point.
Splitting hairs. If you pick up a disk with a game on it, are you touching the game? I think it’s obvious you are, even though you aren’t actually physically touching the bits that comprise it.
In the same way, the neurons of the brain comprise our personality, and touching them, the parts that do anyway, is effectively touching our personality. You’re talking about touching a physical object that contains a non-physical concept. To the best of our knowledge, our brains completely contain our personality, as well our honor, love and hate. They are what we are.
This whole argument is just semantics.
I’ve always thought of the mind/personality as something that the brain does. (And the other things besides the brain contribute to.) Sort of like saying that your feet (and the rest of your body) dance, but that your feet aren’t the dance.