I dream of giant squirrels.

[i_am_the_owl]

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Main:
How many components can one remove from a human being and still have them be a person? It's pretty safe to say that an individual who has lost their hand is still a person, and beyond that, not 95% of a person, but a person. Thus a human is not simply a sum of their parts or they could be more easily quantified. Even without lungs, a

Comments

[bondage_siren]

I think the brain makes a person a person, as you speculate, because of the things it can control and do. The brain can make you emote, eat, slap someone, etc..

Isolated, even if technically alive, it doesn't really serve a purpose. It has no function. So maybe it's function that makes a person a person. It makes sense, seeing as how there's debate about 'if a person is a vegetable, are they really alive?' sort of thing.

Also, if you took said brain and put it into any other living or nonliving thing, it would not make that thing a person.

[i_am_the_owl]

I dunno. I know plenty of people who I would say "serve no function".

If the brain is the "essence" of a person as you speculate, then why would it not make a person out of another thing?

[bondage_siren]

Well think about it. If someone put a human brain inside a lamp, would you then consider it a person? It wouldn't function as a person, and it probably wouldn't function as a lamp anymore either...

It'd just be a fucked up lamp.

Again, I think it's more the control the brain can have rather than the actual brain that makes the difference

[i_am_the_owl]

And if the brain retains its life, memory, and personality?

[bondage_siren]

How do you know it can contain any of those things unless it is within something that can convey it to you?

I mean, can a brain alone retain all its information if separated from its person for a long period of time?
We've got cryogenics and wishful thinkers, but where's the proof?

Personally, I don't know the answer. Even if a brain retains the life of a person...what is it without the person? It cannot do anything. It can't answer any questions. It's like a book that no one can translate. Yes, it has the potential to be useful, but it is not useful unless that potential can be realized and actualized.

[supahtonto]

So a person is only a person if it is somehow "useful"? Useful for what? Useful for society?

If I am in a coma, am I not still a person? Still feeling, there are still reactions to environment. Rationalization is limited, but arguable, even without the ability to outwardly control a body, is that not still a person?

Do we go out of existence (in the "being a person" sense) while we sleep?

Identity over time is a strange question, because we're not exactly sure how to answer it. I sure as hell don't really know. I know the brain is the central piece. I don't know if my body is at all necessary.

And besides, for all we know we are all brains in vats already. No body necessary to exist in this presupposed body-ful reality, amirite?!

[i_am_the_owl]

To your last question, the answer is "yes" if you accepted postmodernity's update on Kant.

[bondage_siren]

I wasn't talking about coma patients, I was talking about the brain isolated from the body.

I think coma patients are still persons, but I find then that it's a question of whether they're really alive, not if they're people.

What kind of standard of living is being completely unaware of your surroundings and hooked up to machines to breathe?

[i_am_the_owl]

So? The analogy works.

But we've already concluded that upon death, someone ceases to be a person.

What does your standard of living have to do with being a person?

[bondage_siren]

A person should be treated as a person; not as research or simply a vessel easily manipulated and disposed of

[i_am_the_owl]

Save your moral outrageous for when it's pertinent.

[i_am_the_owl]

Communication is not required for being a person. We've already been through this.

Can it? If the brain is kept in a living state, it serves to reason that it retains everything within it. You don't need proof for hypothetical situations, just rationalization.

So? Does use translate into being a person?

[bondage_siren]

I think the brain in use can make a person a person, yes.
But it's not necessarily the only factor

Keep in mind this whole time I've been talking about 'if the brain was by itself would it be a person?'
Bringing in coma patients and all that is something in another direction

[i_am_the_owl]

Other factors include ... ?

How so? The "brain dead" still have a living brain.

[bondage_siren]

I'm not really sure...but it can't only be the brain! It just can't. That seems so cynical. Perhaps it is less tangible things that also make a person a person. Love, compassion, thirst for knowledge, etc

That kind of opens a new debate, though

Living brain, yes. Functioning brain, not so much. Plus there's the opportunity for brain damage, memory loss, what-have-you during a coma

[i_am_the_owl]

All of your "less tangible" examples are contained within the brain! Stop trying to defy Occam's Razor! A solution can't be wrong for the simple reason that you don't like it.

What new debate? Your inability to accept notions, even hypothetically, that contradict your feelings?

It's not functioning? Vegetables don't dream? Ex-vegetables don't retain memories from when they were in their comatose states? Their internal functions aren't governed by the brain?

Memory loss makes someone not a person? At least people with amnesia won't remember to contradict you.

Brain damage makes people not people? Does that mean that retards aren't people? What about old people with Alzheimer's?