Consciousness and Split Brain

[sbu]

Originally Posted by DysonSpheres

The mind is intinsically unified. I cannot imagine my own mind split in two because I am simply aware of what I am aware of. I can only have one mind. Could another mind split off from my own? I doubt it.

I wonder what it is like to be a split brain patient. Forget about simple tests of their behavior. I want to know what they subjectively report.

We can't know anything about their inner states (qualia). It's Searle's chinese box argument coming into play. Are they truly the same person as before or are they someone new? If their personality fully survives such a severe surgical procedure I think it's a severe problem for any neural network kind of explanation of consciousness.

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by DysonSpheres

The mind is intinsically unified. I cannot imagine my own mind split in two because I am simply aware of what I am aware of. I can only have one mind. Could another mind split off from my own? I doubt it.

I wonder what it is like to be a split brain patient. Forget about simple tests of their behavior. I want to know what they subjectively report.

They notice nothing whatsoever. They feel exactly the same as everyone else. The 2 streams of consciousness were only discovered after these highly contrived experiments were devised.

So we can rule out the notion that the mind is split so that each stream of consciousness is only half of the original. It's not like that at all, otherwise they would notice!

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by sbu

We can't know anything about their inner states (qualia). It's Searle's chinese box argument coming into play. Are they truly the same person as before or are they someone new? If their personality fully survives such a severe surgical procedure I think it's a severe problem for any neural network kind of explanation of consciousness.

Yes their personality fully survives.

[sbu]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

Yes their personality fully survives.

Your claim is contradicted by this statement in Sniffys original thread:

An atheist is entitled to ask how this evidence can be reconciled with dualism. Clearly, in these split-brain patients, the different halves of their brain have access to different information and may even hold differing opinions. But under the soul hypothesis, this is much more difficult to explain.

If there suddenly are two streams of consciousness in the brain which one is then the 'real' personality?

[Interesting Ian]

Originally Posted by sbu

Your claim is contradicted by this statement in Sniffys original thread:



If there suddenly are two streams of consciousness in the brain which one is then the 'real' personality?

It doesn't contradict what I said. The 2 personalities only appear under highly contrived testing. Split brain people are no different from we are. If they have 2 streams of consciousness, then so do we.

I'm guessing the stream of consciousness operating through the left hemisphere is what we identify as us. The right one might be responsible for behaviour on autopilot.