• Kyrgizion@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    I posit that the human mind is made up of dozens, or perhaps even hundreds/thousands “smaller agents” that work together to create consciousness as an emergent property of the whole, which makes it impossible to isolate and say “this, THIS right here IS concsciousness”. That does not mean each of those has their own personality, per sé.

      • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        It is proposed that it is possible that a person may develop two separate conscious entities within their one brain after undergoing a corpus callosotomy.

        So unless you’ve had your brain cut in half to treat your epilepsy then you’re probably alright

        No conclusive evidence of the proposed phenomenon has been discovered.

        • Final Remix@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          The one thing I can think of that approaches support for the idea is “Joe, the split-brain patient”'s case. You can show him stuff on the right side of his visual field, and he’ll tell you what it is. Show him something on the left side of his vision, and he can draw it and react to it, but can’t name it. The speech center of his brain is disconnected from the right hemisphere due to that procedure.

          • smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            A disconnect doesn’t necessarily imply two separate conscious entities though, right?

            • fishos@lemmy.worldEnglish
              01·
              4 months ago

              In those experiments, the speaking portion of Joe has no clue what the other side is experiencing. Like they show it to him on the wrong side and say “can you see this?” “No”. Then they ask him to draw it, and to his amazement he does. It’s not just being unable to vocalize certain thoughts - they’re not even there to vocalize at all to that part of the brain. But the other half is happily chugging away with that info