(September 9, 2011 at 4:25 pm)Rhythm Wrote: We cant observe the effects of a lobotomy by collecting data pre/post? We have to ask the patient if he feels different? A friend of my wife, for example, had surgery for a brain tumor, there is no one among us who can say that he is the same person. Not just how we percieve him, but even the way in which he signs his name has changed. Now, my one example would be insufficient to draw a conclusion. Fortunately we have many such examples, and this has of course been a productive area of nueroscience. We've even had an example of such experiments recently discussed on this forum of how changes in environment, even without changes in the brain) can cause changes in self (measured by observations of behaviour and activity) in the case of monkeys, rape benches, and the "pit of despair".
All very emotional instances, but the problem still remains, observation of mind is not possible, only observation of behavior, physical activity and subjective experience. A very simple analogy is a broken radio, if you can't hear the radio station is it correct to assume it is no longer there?
