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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3450 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: When does a human cease to be a human?

You know, given everything I've learned about how memories are stored somatic-ly (what IS the adjective) in the body, and how memories, emotions, perception, awareness isn't just brain, it's also sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system, it's muscle memory, it's hormones, it's adrenalin, it's proprieception and so forth. I'm not entirely certain that a brain removed and put onto a new body would be the same person, per se.

I may be wrong and misunderstanding, of course. "The Body Remembers" is the primary book behind my guess.





caeli  ·  3450 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You might also be interested in work on "embodied cognition", the idea that the body is integral to our higher-level cognitive functions. Andy Clark has a good book on this called "Supersizing the Mind".

user-inactivated  ·  3449 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Nice. Very relevant, and a good follow-up. If anyone else is interested, here's the wikipedia article on embodied cognition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition

(One of those nifty wikipedia pages that branches off into many other interesting topics.)

deanSolecki  ·  3450 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The idea that the human body is an organism isn't problematic scientifically or philosophically, it's only a problem religiously.

What is the brain of a computer? The CPU? The CPU and the GPU? The CPU, GPU, and RAM? etc, etc.

It makes much more sense to assume interdependence in an organism than some sort of weird "operational independence" or however you'd like to phrase it. The computer as a poor analog is easy enough to appropriate to approach thought experiments.

user-inactivated  ·  3449 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Very good analogy, thanks. Much better way of framing what I said in my first comment.

I'm thinking in future ages, people will look back at how primitive we were assuming that the pinnacle of human intelligence and personhood was contained in the brain. Much like we look back on people in olden times who thought emotions were situated in the heart.