Friday, June 16, 2017

Book Excerpt for the Day


    People can survive, even if one brain hemisphere is destroyed.  True, they will usually be paralysed down one side – and if the left hemisphere is destroyed they typically lack speech – but so long as one hemisphere is undamaged, they continue as themselves, albeit with extreme paralysis and related losses.  Assuming that is indeed true, let us deploy a further thought experiment.  You are placed under anaesthetic and your brain is divided, the left hemisphere being popped inside and appropriately connected to a new previously brainless body, Lefty, and the right hemisphere similarly into a different new body, Righty.  Lefty and Righty awake, with partial but different paralyses.  Where are you?


    (from Philosophy: A Beginner’s Guide by Peter Cave)

  7*/10.  The complete review is here.
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