I go deep into the biology of the human organism to argue that the psychological features and functions of persons are realized by cellular and molecular parallel distributed processing networks dispersed throughout the whole body. Persons supervene on the computational processes of nervous, endocrine, immune, and genetic networks. Persons do not go with brains.

If personhood is the quality or condition of being an individual person, brainhood could name the quality or condition of being a brain. This ontological quality would define the `cerebral subject' that has, at least in industrialized and highly medicalized societies, gained numerous social inscriptions since the mid-20th century. This article explores the historical development of brainhood. It suggests that the brain is necessarily the location of the `modern self', and that, consequently, the cerebral subject is the anthropological figure inherent (...) to modernity (at least insofar as modernity gives supreme value to the individual as autonomous agent of choice and initiative). It further argues that the ideology of brainhood impelled neuroscientific investigation much more than it resulted from it, and sketches how an expanding constellation of neurocultural discourses and practices embodies and sustains that ideology. (shrink)

Allyne L. Smith, Jr.; Personhood: Beginnings and Endings, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 6, Issue 1, 1 January 2000, Pa.

The possibility of a human head transplant poses unprecedented philosophical and neuroethical questions. Principal among them are the personal identity of the resultant individual, her metaphysical and social status: Who will she be and how should the “new” person be treated - morally, legally and socially - given that she incorporates characteristics of two distinct, previously unrelated individuals, and possess both old and new physical, psychological, and social experiences that would not have been available without the transplant? We contend that (...) this situation challenges linguistic conventions and conceptual binaries, and calls into question the major philosophical approaches to personal identity: animalism and reductionism. We examine these views critically vis-a-vis head transplantation and conclude that they fail to provide an adequate account of the identity of the resultant individual because both neglect the key role of embodiment for personal identity. We maintain that embodiment is central to personal identity and a radical alteration of the body will also radically alter that person, making her a different person. Consequently, a human head transplant will result in an individual partly continuous with the head/brain, and partly continuous with the body donor. We conclude that the resultant person would be different from both the individual whose head was transplanted and the one to whose body the “new” head is attached. (shrink)

Ce texte propose une définition de la conscience de soi et explique en quoi cette capacité naît du monde social. Il est postulé que ce dernier permet un mouvement de recul - une «distanciation » - par rapport à soi, et que le cerveau reproduit ce mouvement grâce à certains processus cognitifs qui en ont été imprimés. Parmi ceux-ci, on retrouve le langage intérieur, qui, par analogie, agirait comme un miroir interne capable de confronter l'expérience subjective à elle-même; de cette (...) confrontation naîtrait le soi. Un argument est présenté en faveur de la supériorité du langage intérieur sur d'autres processus cognitifs impliqués dans la conscience de soi. Le problème de la conscience de soi chez les primates est abordé, et l'article conclut sur diverses réflexions ayant trait à la schizophrénie, la prière, la méditation, et les drogues psychodysleptiques.This text proposes a definition of self-awareness and explains its social origin. It is postulated that the social milieu permits a movement to a more objective perspective for self- perception, and that this movement is then reproduced in the brain by specific cognitive processes. It is suggested that inner speech represents one such cognitive processes, which acts like a mirror to reflect subjective experience back upon itself-, the self would be generated by this reflective activity. It is argued that inner speech has a pre-eminent position among the cognitive processes implicated in self-awareness. The problem of self-awareness in primates is discussed, and the article concludes with ideas concerning schizophrenia, prayer, medi- tation, and psychodysleptic drugs. (shrink)

Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of these thought experiments (...) not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)

This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy brings together an international group of scholars from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and North America, critically to explore whole-body/head transplantation. The proposed procedure raises significant philosophical, ethical, and social/political questions. For example, assuming transplant is successful, who survives the surgery? Does personal identity necessarily follow the head? The contributors to this special thematic issue explore the nature and ground of personal identity, what it would mean to preserve personal identity, given such (...) a significant set of physical changes, as well as the morality of such a procedure. As the authors make clear, careful conceptual philosophical analysis is essential for understanding whether whole-body/head transplantation is a life-saving/life-enhancing technological innovation, or a bioethical morass that should not be attempted. How we come to terms with such conceptual and moral concerns will have a significant impact on the future of medicine and medical technological innovation. (shrink)

Brain transplants have long been no more than the subject of science fiction and engaging thought experiments. That is no longer true. Neuroscientists have announced their intention to transplant the head of a volunteer onto a donated body. Response has been decidedly mixed. How should we think about the moral permissibility of head transplants? Is it a life-saving/life-enhancing opportunity that appropriately expands the boundaries of medical practice? Or, is it a bioethical morass that ought not to be attempted? For the (...) purposes of this paper, I set aside questions regarding the surgical operation’s technological plausibility so as to focus on very basic questions regarding personal identity and the morality of head transplantation. The analysis begins with an exploration of the embodiment of persons. It considers whether persons can be conceptually distinguished from all parts of their body, even if they cannot be physically separated from some parts without loss of personhood. It argues that in most cases replacing body parts with reasonably similar parts will not destroy the conditions for sustaining personhood. However, as I explore, the phenomenology of personhood is such that some physical changes may prove to be too significant to maintain personal identity successfully over time. Given such complexity and the significance of the costs involved, the moral permissibility of head transplantation likely depends on recognizing that persons may give permission to collaborate in common activities, including projects with which others deeply disagree, provided that they only utilize the services and resources of free and consenting others. (shrink)

“ >. Das hiess doch: Wenn du dir gewisse Tatsachen anders denkst,sie anders beschreibst, als sie sind, dann kannst du die Anwendung gewisser Begriffe dir nicht mehr vorstellen, weil die Regeln ihrer Anwendung kein Analogon unter den neuen Umständen haben.”.

I defend the claim that bodily continuity is the primary criterion of personal identity by arguing there is an important sense in which it (unlike rival criteria) is a necessary condition of such identity. This claim is shown to be misunderstood in recent discussions because of a confusion of it with the claim that bodily continuity is a sufficient condition of personal identity. In the course of my argument, I criticize williams, Shoemaker, Puccetti, Quinton, Miri, And others.

When does a human being cease to exist? For millennia, the answer to this question had remained largely unchanged: death had been diagnosed when heartbeat and breathing were permanently absent. Only comparatively recently, in the 1950s, rapid developments in intensive-care medicine called into question this widely accepted criterion. What had previously been deemed a permanent cessation of vital functions suddenly became reversible. -/- A new criterion of death was needed. It was suggested that the destruction of the brain could indicate (...) the death of the organism in the presence of external life support. Soon the so-called brain death became the new worldwide standard. In recent years, however, doubts about this neurological criterion have been growing. Is brain death really our death? -/- This is the question that this thesis seeks to answer. To this end, we shall connect the medical debate about the definition of death to the philosophical debate about personal identity. While we will find that the destruction of its brain does in fact not correspond to an organism’s death, we shall also ask whether the assumption that we are essentially organisms is correct. May brain death be the ceasing to exist of a different entity? -/- Substituting clinical case reports and considerations about human physiology for the use of thought experiments, the thesis takes a novel and philosophically unconventional approach to the problem of what we essentially are. We shall analyse various pathological conditions and their respective effects on the bodily and mental characteristics of our existence. We will conclude that brain death is indeed our death – but for reasons entirely different from those cited in the original justification of this criterion. (shrink)