Not coming to a store near you any time soon.
I'm back! After a few weeks living in my brain while I finished the latest draft of my novel, followed by a week running my body ragged in rural Scotland, I'm pleased to see that this week's thought experiment is the perfect exploration of that natural dichotomy we fall into when speaking about ourselves. Let's use our eyes to take a look. (Or use your ears to listen if you have a computer read to you.)
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When Ceri Braum accepted the gift of eternal life, this was not quite what she had in mind. Sure, she knew that her brain would be removed from her body and kept alive in a vat. She also knew her only connection with the outside world would be via a camera, a microphone, and a speaker. But at the time, living forever like this seemed like a pretty good deal, especially compared to living for not much longer in her second, deteriorating body.
In retrospect, however, perhaps she had been convinced too easily that she was just her brain. When her first body had given out, surgeons had taken out her brain and put it into the body of someone whose own brain had failed. Waking up in the new body, she had no doubt that she was still the same person, Ceri Braum. And since it was only her brain that remained from her old self, it also seemed safe to conclude that she was, therefore, essentially her brain.
But life just as a brain strikes Ceri as extremely impoverished. How she longs for the fleshiness of a more complete existence. Nevertheless, since it is her, Ceri, now having these thoughts and doubts, is she nonetheless right to conclude that she is, in essence, nothing more or less than her brain?
Source: Chapter 3 of The View From Nowhere by Thomas Nagel (1986)
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 112.
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What do you think? Is there a single component that makes you, you? Is there something that, when all else is removed, can still be identified with your identity? I'll think about this some more and get back to you on Friday.
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When Ceri Braum accepted the gift of eternal life, this was not quite what she had in mind. Sure, she knew that her brain would be removed from her body and kept alive in a vat. She also knew her only connection with the outside world would be via a camera, a microphone, and a speaker. But at the time, living forever like this seemed like a pretty good deal, especially compared to living for not much longer in her second, deteriorating body.
In retrospect, however, perhaps she had been convinced too easily that she was just her brain. When her first body had given out, surgeons had taken out her brain and put it into the body of someone whose own brain had failed. Waking up in the new body, she had no doubt that she was still the same person, Ceri Braum. And since it was only her brain that remained from her old self, it also seemed safe to conclude that she was, therefore, essentially her brain.
But life just as a brain strikes Ceri as extremely impoverished. How she longs for the fleshiness of a more complete existence. Nevertheless, since it is her, Ceri, now having these thoughts and doubts, is she nonetheless right to conclude that she is, in essence, nothing more or less than her brain?
Source: Chapter 3 of The View From Nowhere by Thomas Nagel (1986)
Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 112.
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What do you think? Is there a single component that makes you, you? Is there something that, when all else is removed, can still be identified with your identity? I'll think about this some more and get back to you on Friday.
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