Thread: A man is cut vertically in half...

I believe that it would create two consciousnesses of that man. Although that disregards pretty much every religion known to man, that's what I think would happen. Ignoring the fact that certain areas of the brain have different abilities, there were pretty much be two of that man. Each half would be thinking something separate.

Originally Posted by Venomblood

I believe that it would create two consciousnesses of that man. Although that disregards pretty much every religion known to man, that's what I think would happen. Ignoring the fact that certain areas of the brain have different abilities, there were pretty much be two of that man. Each half would be thinking something separate.

There would be two consciousnesses in a sense, but neither would be identical to the unsplit man, nor would they be identical to each other. What you would have is a diverging of a formerly unitary consciousness along two separate tracks. It's a subtle difference, but I think gets at the root question of "which one's the man?"

Asking which one's the man doesn't really matter. There's two of him now. Neither one is the same as the unsplit one, as you said. It's just two different half-people.


Another question to ask, what if the sides were reattached? How would two consciousnesses go into one?


By the way, I asked my dad this question "So the question is basically, which half does the man feel like he is in?". After a while of thinking, he pointed to his right side and said "This half".

Originally Posted by Soldier

your kidding, are you serious? thats really possible!!???

No I'm not kidding.
It is crazy. I live near John Hopkins University here in Ohio. One of the first procedures was done here. It is called hemisperectomy?. Usually for seizures or tumors.
Like Belesarius pointed out, the side that is removed effects movements from the other side.
I don't know a lot about the specifics.

I can't understand the reasoning behind the posters thinking that this would create two different consciousness? It just does not make sense to me.
We are one conscious that perceives. The closets thing to two different consciousness from one individual I guess would almost be what you would call a clone, one in the same with different reference points.

Think about missing limb syndrome. Phantom limb. The limb is not there but our psyche still sends signals that it is.
OR the opposite of that, situations that a person feels that they have a limb that does not belong. To a degree for some they wish it to be removed.

Edit} I just looked up some specifics. - Functional Hemispherectomy

There is also a neat article in March's issue of Scientific American

Originally Posted by Howie

I can't understand the reasoning behind the posters thinking that this would create two different consciousness? It just does not make sense to me.

The reasoning is, if you can remove either hemisphere and still have a functioning, conscious person, then if both hemispheres survive, you have two functioning consciousnesses.

if you took out 1/10th of a person's brain from their body, they would still feel like they were in they're body, but what if you took out 4/5 and attached it to another body, would their consciousness remain in their body or move with the greater part of their brain?

Originally Posted by Taosaur

The reasoning is, if you can remove either hemisphere and still have a functioning, conscious person, then if both hemispheres survive, you have two functioning consciousnesses.

Each hemisphere holds certain attributes. Speech, memory etc. It is realized the brain can be much more adaptive than we had ever thought. With one of the two types of hemisperectomy the entire hemisphere is removed. That one cuts the Corpus Callosum which connects the two hemispheres.
The procedure would have to keep in tact some integral parts of the brains anatomy and ability to function at all would it?

Your theory would support that if you performed one of these procedures and kept both hemispheres on life support they would both still exist. As awesome as that sounds I would not believe it until I found some science to back that up.
If the half taken out is to be discarded then why would they not have attempted to put the other half on a life support system to see.

The TRUE split personality.
Would you be thinking of your self in the third person?

Originally Posted by sephiroth clock

if you took out 1/10th of a person's brain from their body, they would still feel like they were in they're body, but what if you took out 4/5 and attached it to another body, would their consciousness remain in their body or move with the greater part of their brain?

I think you are hitting the mark imo. What is left will reside the conscious. Not in two separate places.

Amazingly, there have been experiments done on this kind of thing, and the results are just insane. They are normally taken to show two separate consciousnesses, but there are multiple theories. Check this out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo

One thing that wasn't covered in that video is that the patients often seem to think they know why they choose to draw something. For example, in one experiment the right showed a chicken and the left showed snow. The patient drew a shovel for the snow with his left hand (left vision and left hand are both controlled by right brain), but when asked why, he said he drew a shovel because you use a shovel to clean out a chicken shed (right vision and speech are both controlled by left brain).