subject: What Determines What A Human Is? [print this page] What Determines What A Human Is? What Determines What A Human Is?
If you had a liver transplant, or even an artificial implant, would you still be the same person you are? Some flippant people may want to test this conjecture, but the vast majority of us would respond with a resounding yes.
Well, what if you received a brain transplant, or, heaven tremble, an 'artificial' brain? Would you be the same person then? I feel a moment of uncomfortable silence followed by a dismissal that such a thing is 'merely science fiction.' But an artificial brain will probably someday become science fact, and at this very moment crude computer chips that work by mimicking the synapses of a neural network are in development. Seen from the other direction, chips implanted in the brain that can upload and download data and programs are actually in the works.
We all somehow feel that it is our brain that makes who we are. But is that really true? The brain is as far as science dares to tread, and even the doubting Thomas' among us know that science has nothing to say about the realm of the soul, spirit, or metaphysic. For in that realm it is out of its league by its own definitions.
Certainly the brain is where we store all our memories of events, people, and emotions. Emotions themselves have been proven to activate (or to be activated by depending on one's point of view) specific parts of the brain and certain levels of brain chemicals as well. From all these memories and emotions occurring in the brain, one is constantly redefining and identifying 'oneself.'
But is that all we are? A bunch of memory data activating chemical reactions that cascade down electrical wires called nerve cells? To quote a famous verse, 'Fear not those that kill the flesh; better fear the one who can steal your soul.' I have no scientific evidence to back that, but it seems to make much more sense to me than the former proposition.
