(June 29, 2013 at 1:43 am)Undeceived Wrote:(June 29, 2013 at 1:25 am)pocaracas Wrote: What sort of evidence is there that hints that it is?There is the conceivability argument, the divisibility argument, and introspection argument, among others. The divisibility argument in a nutshell:
Why would anyone think that it is?
Quote:Descartes position on this argument is recalled by Lowe as follows: ‘This is that he, as a subject of experience, is a simple and indivisible substance, whereas his body, being spatially extended, is divisible and composed of different parts.’[5] This suggests that if we were to lose a part of our body that would not necessarily affect our mental states, purely our physical states. It seems to follow from this that if you were to say lose an arm in battle, you would like to believe that you were the same person before and after the amputation, regardless of whether your body was slightly different, suggesting that physical states must be different from mental states. If this holds true, then it would appear that a change in your physical state doesn’t mean a change in your mental state, which means they are two different substances and should not be identified together.http://vincentwooding.wordpress.com/tag/...-argument/
Here's another thought experiment along the same lines. Suppose you get a heart transplant, lung transplant, frontal lobe transplant and so on until you have replaced every cell in your body. Are you still you? In the process of all the transplants, have you died at some point or continued to exist?
Laughable examples of the mind-brain duality.... -.-'
You should know better!
Here's an update on those: Brain damage leads to personality change!
The one most famous example happened in the 1800's, but it's been observed on other people:
Quote:Phineas Gage was a 25 years old construction foreman who lived in Vermont in the 1860s. While working on a railroad bed, he packed powdered explosives into a hole in the ground, using tamping iron. The powder heated and blew in his face. The tamping iron rebounded and pierced the top of his skull, ravaging the frontal lobes.in
In 1868, Harlow, his doctor, reported the changes to his personality following the accident:
He became "fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his customs), manifesting but little deference to his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans for future operation which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible ... His mind was radically changed, so that his friends and acquaintances said he was no longer Gage."
In other words, his brain injury turned him into a psychopathic narcissist.
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art20845.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
Read about others:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prof...nge-part-i
http://www.nasponline.org/publications/c...njury.aspx