Death

[mediamogul]

I have no idea what I did with the link there. Sorry about that. I'll try again: http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/200...neas-gage/

As for my take on the mind/soul thing, I've said it elsewhere and often that the mind may be the brain's way of experiencing what it feels like to be a brain from the inside. And cases such as the Phineas Gage one suggest that the soul may be nothing more than our own attempts to understand what it feels like to have a mind. Jeff Dee (iirc) once remarked on the Atheist Experience about a case in which a devoutly religious person suffered a brain injury, after which his personality changed and he was an atheist. This is not to say that atheism is the result of a faulty brain, but the question then becomes what happened to this person's soul? Did he somehow lose his original one and had to be issued with a new, atheist one?

Very interesting article. I had heard of the case before but that is amazing. It never ceases to amaze me what radical changes in behavior and personality can result from even a chemical change in the brain, never mind severe structural damage. I have seen emerging psychotic disorders wreak havoc on a persons otherwise stable functioning. Many psychotic disorders emerge in the late teens and early twenties in people who previously had no symptoms. Fascinating.