What Does The Nonbranching Proposal Say About Split Brain?

What Does The Nonbranching Proposal Say About Split Brain P

What does the nonbranching proposal say about split-brain patients? Are there two people present in the one body? If so, is either identical with the person who occupied the body before the operation? (complete after reading 4.3) You need to write at least 300 words discussion article. BELOW THAT YOU NEED TO ANSWER THIS PERSONS ARTICLE WITH 100 WORDS. WRITE ANSWER : According to the non-branching theory, identical persons are those who are psychologically continuous with one another and whose causal connection has not branched.

Personal identity cannot consist in psychological or physical continuity because identity is a relation that can hold only between a thing and itself. There is an argument that says that the patient has two streams of consciousness. Each hemisphere competing with the other when it comes to attending to an object. Within a normal person, competing streams of consciousness is nothing unusual, but the difference seems to be that the Split-Brain patient cannot coordinate the two competing streams into a fused state. The right brain is effectively uncontrolled by human being after the split and will be ready for takeover by another human that does not really belong to.

If that happens, there will be a second personality, and conflicts. If another being does not take over the right brain, it will drift along for the ride, more or less manageable according to the training it gets. The whole thing about left-brain is logic and right brain is creativity is plausible. The hemispheres are important for certain tasks, but overall, the whole left-brain-right-brain thing is overgeneralized and exaggerated. Our brains are far more complex than that.

One person cannot have two separate streams of consciousness, for each stream of consciousness, there must be a separate person. A split-brain patient, is more than one person. If you repaired the patient’s corpus callosum, you would not be destroying a person, in severing the patient’s corpus callosum, you would not be creating a new person. The split-brain patient, before having their corpus callosum severed and after having it repaired is more than one person. NO PLAGIARISM. IT IS NOT A ARTICLE OR ESSAY. IT IS DISCUSSION PARAGRAPH. ANSWER SHOULD MATCH WITH BOOK "Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments / Edition 5"

Paper For Above instruction

The non-branching proposal on personal identity emphasizes psychological continuity and causal connection without any branches occurring in the individual's identity. When applied to split-brain patients, this perspective suggests that despite the apparent presence of two separate streams of consciousness—one in each hemisphere—the individual's core personal identity does not split into two persons. Instead, there remains a singular person whose consciousness may be fragmented or divided but not entirely duplicated. In the context of split-brain surgery, the severing of the corpus callosum separates the hemispheres, disrupting direct communication between them, which leads to different behaviors and possibly conflicting experiences. However, according to the non-branching view, this does not entail that there are two separate persons inhabiting one body. It instead indicates that one person may have multiple, competing streams of consciousness or experiences without losing their fundamental identity. Unlike views that argue the existence of multiple persons, the non-branching theory maintains that personal identity depends on psychological continuity and causality, which remain in unbroken form. Therefore, even if two hemispheres act independently after a split, the individual still holds onto a single personal identity because these streams are seen as parts of a larger, unified psychological process. In this respect, split-brain patients are not two separate individuals but rather one person with a divided conscious experience. The debate about whether this division results in multiple persons hinges on whether one accepts that conscious streams equate to separate persons, which the non-branching theory refutes. Thus, in light of this theory, split-brain patients do not become two persons but continue to be one unified individual, albeit with a complex and fragmented conscious life.

Answer

The non-branching theory argues that personal identity depends on psychological continuity and causal connection, not on having a single stream of consciousness. In split-brain cases, although two hemispheres may seem to have separate consciousnesses, the individual remains one person because these fragments are part of a unified psychological process. The theory holds that no new person is created by severing the corpus callosum; rather, the person’s identity persists despite the division of conscious experience. Consequently, split-brain patients are not two individuals but one person with a divided consciousness, reflecting a complex but singular personal identity.

References

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