Are Persons Just an Illusion? - Neuroscience and philosophy clash.

Reason ^ | April 27, 2007 | Ronald Bailey

[Socratic]

LOL

[RightWhale]

‘I am a Strange Loop’ is an entertainng recent publication by the author of ‘Goedel, Escher, Bach’. Addresses this very question as well as explains very well, best yet, Goedel’s destruction of Positivism.

[dragonblustar]

"knowing that one part of our biological system for identifying persons is automatically entrained and subject to error should make us more cognizant of its operation and more skeptical of its output as we engage in the countless moral decisions we make each day."

[little jeremiah]

Later read.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

If it wasn't for me, the Boston Red Sox would not exist.

[mtg]

You mean the Democrats may not be real after all?

[Tench_Coxe]

sophistry: a deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone

solipsism: The theory or view that the self is the only reality.

Navel-gazing (slang): Excessive introspection, self-absorption, or concentration on a single issue

[grey_whiskers]

"Suppose your brain was disassembled into all its neurons, with each neuron kept alive in it's own separate test tube, spread among many different laboratories, and with all the test tubes hooked up by wires or tiny tubes or whatever, so they could still communicate with each other via their axons and dendrites just as they do normally. And suppose you were still conscious after all this. Where would 'you' be?"

Suppose we try the experiment on Mr. Hofsteader first.

Then, when it fails, there's one less of these bloviating jerkoffs to annoy us and to succor the wicked.

...or if it works, he can *tell* us using proprioperception.

Cheers!

[PsyOp]

These include attributes such as rationality, memory, ability to self-reflect, intelligence, and a concept of self.

5 out of those 6 eliminate most elected democrats. Dems have way to much "concept of self" and an absence of all the rest.

[GOPJ]

Dang! I remember getting into stupid conversations like this when I was 19 and in college.

LOL - I knew there was a strange ring of familiarity about this...

[FreeKeys]

we can use our rationality to figure out which entities count as persons and which do not. ... In the end, Farah and Heberlein are wrong, persons are as real as mountains, diseases, weeds, pets and daylight.

Farah and Heberlein are letting themselves get caught in the same old "fallacy of the stolen concept" as did René Descartes. You CAN'T think UNTIL you are. Thinking BEFORE you are is, uh, as exaggerated as the first reports of his death that Mark Twain made such famous fun of. Self-awareness may require certain neurological entities and processes, but they are NOT those entities and processes.

[wentali]

Right, agree. First things first. No Hardware, no software. It is so simple and yet, not understood.

[Dumb_Ox]

If Farah and Heberlein have correctly identified an innate personhood network in our brains, they will have helped free us from its mandates, just as other natural scientists freed us from our misconceptions about the sources of disease and rain.

This does not follow. The sources of hunger are relatively well understood, but in ordinary circumstances everyone is bound to fill its mandates.

We are not just slaves to our brains' personhood networks -- we can use our rationality to figure out which entities count as persons and which do not.

Why must these alleged personhood networks be enslaving and irrational? They might even be aspects of the regular functioning of human reason.

I get the sense some are trying to trade mind-body dualism for personhood-body dualism.