On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: > >> "The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe >> cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary >> movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand from >> an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected hand. >> In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened considerably, >> and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context of >> feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb or its >> movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, >> involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum plus >> dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical areas. A >> patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is reported >> and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of >> posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less associated >> with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and >> callosal-frontal counterparts." - http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full > > > This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to contradict > functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, then > it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as estranged > from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie in > which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no damage to > the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt to > be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your > sensations. > > This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to > encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic > substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would the > brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would fail > to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still > learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own > articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way > street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness and > merge with it.
This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness is generated by something other than the brain. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
