I noticed that you edited your post and added more to it while I was replying. I'll try to respond to what you added. True. Who I am is the result of my functioning brain. If I were to die, my dead brain (and the rest of my body) would just be what once belonged to and sustained the "person" I was. Basically, a brain functions if it is working correctly. We've all seen those colored images of active brains. If you looked at a dead brain using the same instrument, there would be a noticeable difference. I am not a brain expert, but however a brain operates, through impulses or whatever...that's what decides if it's functioning. I think modern science can explain how a brain works, somewhat. I do agree that energy is needed for a person to be "alive" as well as the body. However, I don't view energy as what makes a person a person. It's more like, when energy is applied to a brain, the brain enables awareness, pain, etc. thus making the creature a living, thinking, being. Ultimately, it's like energy is everywhere and is a source required to basically do anything. DEVICES, (animals, tvs, radios) harness the energy and do something with it. Humans really are just devices. If you put energy into a radio, you can listen to it. If you put energy into a brain (by means of the body), you end up with a conscious being. The capacity of the brain is what determines how "alive" something is. As I said before, it's like a scale. So although energy is needed for life, I do not view energy as BEING life. If that were true, why isn't your tv alive? The answer is the BRAIN, as I've been saying all along.
To All: I have made a great case for my beliefs throughout this entire thread. I would like to see someone challenge me and provide a "better" set of beliefs than mine. YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO DO IT! SUMMARY: Food/energy enters the body. The body turns the food into energy to power the brain. A powered brain creates thinking/consciousness/"human life." When your brain has no power/energy going to it, it can not function, therefore "you" do not function and don't exist. Ultimately, the body (brain included) is just a device that turns energy into consciousness/"life."
consciousness: Precondition for a living thing? How do you know something's consciousness, Pain Measurement? how can you measure something's level of pain. On a more basic level claiming a response to a stimulant, is not the most efficient way of measuring life. Centuries ago it was routine to bury narcoleptics alive thinking they were dead. As our technology advances our definition of life and intelligent life expands. Brain teaser: If we have the technology to replicate every single atom within your body, and we go ahead a replicate these atoms and organize them in exactly the same manner in which your atoms are organized who is this new being? Is that being you? What if I store this perfect map of you and replicate you 100 years after your death, what then? If I perform a lobotomy on you and remove 90% of your brain function leaving only, the ability to digest, breathe, and react to stimulants are you dead or alive? What about if I only remove 50%? How about 10%? Self is a tough nut to crack. further reading, not for you zombies out there. http://people.advanced.org/~jaron/zombie.html
If we had the technology where you could walk into some machine and it would copy exactly what was in it, you would still be you, but there would also be a copy of you that was the same. If you were replicated 100 years after you died, the copy would not be "you" (the one that died), but it would be another version of you that is exactly the same. It is known that the brain stem is responsible for basic life functions (breathing, etc.). Therefore, IMO, the part of the brain that makes you, "you", is not the brain stem. So, if you were to take out pieces of my brain, only leaving the brain stem, I would say what is left is "part of what once belonged to me." It would still be my body, but my personality would not be there anymore. If you removed fractions of the other parts of my brain (not the brain stem), say 50%, then I would say that what is left is 50% of me.
In 1848 there was a raliroad worker by the name of Phineas Gage who suffered from an accident that sent a 13 1/2lb~~3ft long metal rod thru his brain. He lived even know a chunk of his brain was blasted thru the back of his skull! What is even more amazing is that the mans personality was almost completely different. He was no longer the Phineas that his friends and loved ones once knew. Phineas retained his full memory of his past and could perform complex tasks that he had learned prior to the accident, but when all was said and done there was a different personality accompanying Phineas Gage. This baffled scientists for a very long time, this case is still widely studied to this day... There is a neurobilogist by the name of Antonio Damasio that studied this case for a very long time - along with a lot of other neuro-trama and lobotomie cases... Damasio with the help of this case from 150 years prior, basicaly shattered the 'myth' of The Cartesian Split... He makes a brilliant case that a person is the entire organisim and not soley the brain, (a case chock full of scientific observations -- unlike Descartes) and that the notion of "Cogito Ergo Sum" was nothing more than mythology and piss poor mythology at that... The brain cannot function without the body and spirit and most importantly IMO the outside physical and social environments alters the functions of the mind... In other words we are not a seperate entity then life and the universe itself -- like Descartes and much of the 19th Avant Garde "scientific" parade sold us... Essentialy what he did was bring us back to Ancient Eastern and Greek understanding of nature and the mans part within it -- much the same way as Quantumn Theory is doing everyday... He wrote an entire book entitled "Descartes Error; Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain"... I suggest you read it PEACE, Commisso
I actually have heard about that before. Maybe I saw it on a Discovery Channel type show. Anyway, although it is amazing that the man lived, how it changed him does not surprise me at all. As we know, some people commit suicide by shooting themselves in the head. Although rare, it is possible that the action may not kill you. It probably depends on what part of the brain is damage by the bullet. I believe different areas of the brain do different things. When the object went through the railroad worker's head, if it did not kill him, I would suspect that his personality/ability to think/awareness of surroundings would change in some way. As your story claims, a difference was noticed by people who knew him. I remember seeing another documentary show on TV. It was about a plane hijacking. While the plane was on the ground, some of the passengers were told to stand on the edge of the plane with the door open, and the hijackers shot them in the head. They then fell off the plane to the ground. The day of this incident, one of the victims was not killed by the gun shot to the head. She said that after she fell to the ground and realized she was still alive, she played dead. She was eventually rescued and she survived. I saw this woman speak on TV years after the incident and although she can still function, some things are just not quite right. For example, she said that her vision is impaired. None of these incidences conflict with my beliefs.
I do not think I quite made my point clear... Phineas's reason, emotion, personality, were all radicaly different then what he was prior to the accident... There was no real 'brain-damage' per se, because he was still able to function very much the same way he did prior... He could still perform complex calculations, tasks, yada yada yada... He also retained his memory of all his past experiences, he knew he was still the one they called Phineas Gage and yet he was not the Phineas Gage that everyone knew him as prior to the accident... If Phineas is the brain, and Phineas is still here, then who was this person with a completely different personality inside Phineas Gages body??? The mans brain had been completely altered and now functions in a different manner than it once had, but he is still Phineas... What the book does is look at the human mind and intellect in regards to the entire organism... Not as the brain functioning as a seperate entity, that is powered by some 'mechanical body' -- which is then powered by some mechanical universe... It takes a more of a organic view of the WHOLE and it does it in a very scientific and methodical way... Anyway if you want to know of the under pinnings of the mind and its relation to the body and the outside objective world then this is a great place to start... I know you are alergic to the metaphysical/spiritual so I thought I would rec something such as this, instead of say Heraclitus, Lao-Tzu, The Uppinshads, or even Nietzshe....
Of course there was brain damage. Just because he could still do math, etc. does not mean he did not have any brain damage. It just so happens that the part of his brain that was damaged was not the part that did math. Instead, the part of the brain that was damaged was the part which was partly responsible for his personality. Easy. The person was the same person minus a piece of his brain. Of course he wouldn't be exactly the same way. What will be different depends on what part of the brain is damaged. For example, let's say you're an easily angry person. Somewhere in your brain there is something different than someone's brain who is not easily angry. If a bullet goes through your head and happens to blast out a portion of the part that makes you angry and you still live, you are still "you" but your brain now has to operate with what it has and maybe your personality will be different.
Hey what can I say GG, but that you are a genius! You have not only managed to figure it all out in regards to Phineas (while Neuro Scientists are still studying this case 150 years later) in 20 minutes, but it seems as though you have solved the riddle of our condition, the very question that has plagued mankind for all time! Who are we really? We are the brain! Seems simple enough to me PEACE GG and congrats on possessing as you put it "the most clarity that a human being can have at this point in our evolution. "!!!