Identity (Identity)

by David Turell , Sunday, February 07, 2010, 15:15 (5402 days ago) @ David Turell

An article in The Guardian last week described how doctors in Belgium have communicated with a man believed to have been in a vegetative state for seven years, since suffering a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. Using a hi-tech scanner, they were able to ask him questions and monitor his brain activity. 
> > However, such discoveries once more highlight the question of what constitutes consciousness and identity. Here is a man whose brain is so badly damaged that he cannot move or actively communicate anything. And yet he has memory, he can respond to questions, and at will he can summon up specific images which spark off chemical reactions that can be monitored. It may be argued that the relevant sections of the brain must have remained undamaged, but what is this "will"? And what constitutes the identity of the person that directs the will that directs the mind to form such images, if the will, memory and mind exist only as material cells?-I cannot answer your questions, but before scanners, eye movements identified patients in a so-called 'locked-in' state. Blink once for 'yes' and twice for 'no' sort of games. It appears to me the whole personage of his consciousness is inside, locked-in, but functional. Moving physically is in the 'motor strip' on both sides. That is not where personality hides or thoughts are processed or memory recovered.