The Brain Can Be Split, but Not the Mind | EvolutionNews

I wonder if there is evidence that tissues compressed in such a way retain any of their functionality.

Here is what Michael Egnor has to say about hydranencephaly his book:
Also, again according to Egnor, the term refers to the complete loss of both hemispheres of the brain, but other structures still exist.

He discusses a whole variety of interesting conditions of this sort which all seem to imply that people (and animals) do have a non-material part to their being, which he calls the soul.

Remember that I am not a Christian, but do find that the DI produces a lot of fascinating scientific evidence that is otherwise pushed to one side.

I would encourage you to read his book, because much of it is very interesting and obviously well informed. However, once he plunges into his Christian views he becomes infuriating!

There are many scientific books from members of the DI that barely mention Christianity, it is a pity he does not follow that style.

David

As we discussed in an earlier thread, I find your attempt to separate the pseudoscientific ramblings of the DI from Christianity flawed. I won’t repeat those arguments here, but I would find your position much more convincing if you simply assumed theism. On their own, the arguments are quite weak.

For example, I find it quite a stretch to take external cues or reflexes as signs of consciousness. By that logic, my smartphone’s startup chime or my cat chasing a laser pointer would count as evidence of higher awareness, too. When a child with hydranencephaly smiles or startles, it’s far more likely that we’re seeing the brainstem running some basic, hardwired routines, not a hidden mind trying to break through.

Also, I suggest looking up David Chalmers’ philosophical zombie for reference as to why Egnor’s position is on thin ice here.

As we discussed in an earlier thread, I find your attempt to separate the pseudoscientific ramblings of the DI from Christianity flawed. I won’t repeat those arguments here, but I would find your position much more convincing if you simply assumed theism. On their own, the arguments are quite weak.

"Pseudoscientific ramblings"? I have seen far more scientific reasoning on Evolution News than I ever have from a single Darwinist.

They do have category on "faith and science" but outside of that, they do not link their statements to their religious beliefs at all.

The arguments are not "weak" at all, considering that there is more than one example of people missing part of their brains having mental functioning, whether normal or impaired.

You seem to flip-flop between believer in the paranormal, and hardline Materialist often enough... or perhaps you have no idea what you actually believe...?

For example, I find it quite a stretch to take external cues or reflexes as signs of consciousness. By that logic, my smartphone’s startup chime or my cat chasing a laser pointer would count as evidence of higher awareness, too. When a child with hydranencephaly smiles or startles, it’s far more likely that we’re seeing the brainstem running some basic, hardwired routines, not a hidden mind trying to break through.

And these "basic, hardwired routines" have been identified by whom, exactly...?

It seems clear to me that they are conscious individuals reacting as a child would ~ no matter how the state of their brain may impair them.

Also, I suggest looking up David Chalmers’ philosophical zombie for reference as to why Egnor’s position is on thin ice here.

That has nothing to do with arguments on hydranencephaly, as far as I can see...? How about explaining what you mean, instead of presuming?

@Laird I wanted to delete this post, and I thought there was a functionality to do that - has it vanished?

Testing: does the delete button appear for this test account on its own post?

[Laird]

@Laird I wanted to delete this post, and I thought there was a functionality to do that - has it vanished?

It was a MyBB bug that I'd fixed previously on our board but the fix for which I'd not filed on MyBB's GitHub repository, so the bug was reintroduced on upgrade. I've now filed an issue (#4961) and corresponding PR (#4963). Hopefully, it's merged before the next release.

As we discussed in an earlier thread, I find your attempt to separate the pseudoscientific ramblings of the DI from Christianity flawed. I won’t repeat those arguments here, but I would find your position much more convincing if you simply assumed theism. On their own, the arguments are quite weak.

For example, I find it quite a stretch to take external cues or reflexes as signs of consciousness. By that logic, my smartphone’s startup chime or my cat chasing a laser pointer would count as evidence of higher awareness, too. When a child with hydranencephaly smiles or startles, it’s far more likely that we’re seeing the brainstem running some basic, hardwired routines, not a hidden mind trying to break through.

Also, I suggest looking up David Chalmers’ philosophical zombie for reference as to why Egnor’s position is on thin ice here.

I suppose I'll reply with a longer quote from Egnor:

I have cared for some of these children. Although they are quite
handicapped, they are certainly conscious and interactive, with a
full range of emotions—laughter, crying, glee, fear, and such.
In fact, today the condition is often not even diagnosed until
several months after birth when the child fails to meet
development milestones, thus prompting a neurological
examination.21 Complete destruction of the cerebral hemispheres
appears to be fully compatible with basic sentient consciousness.
Hydranencephaly is rare and not widely studied, so there is not a
large amount of clinical research from which to draw conclusions.
We do know that such children have a short life expectancy. The
medical literature records survival up to nineteen years22 and
twenty-two years.23 However, one enterprising neuroscientist found
a way to have a closer, on-the-ground look at their lives. In
2004, Swedish neuroscientist Björn Merker, preparing a research
paper, spent a week at Disney World with five families who each
had a child with hydranencephaly. The children, ranging in age
from ten months through five years, showed considerable basic
awareness: “These children are not only awake and often alert,
but show responsiveness to their surroundings in the form of
emotional or orienting reactions to environmental events.”24 As
science writer Bruce Bower explained, “They reacted to what
happened around them and expressed a palette of emotions. A
3-year-old girl’s mouth opened wide and her face glowed with a
mix of joy and excitement when her parents placed her baby brother
in her arms.”25 Similarly, Merker observed that at home, the
children recognized familiar faces and preferred some situations,
toys, tunes, or videos over others. Surprisingly, their hearing
was generally good despite the lack of an auditory cortex. Merker
concluded from his findings that the brain stem supports a basic
form of conscious thought.26 In 1999, pediatric neurologist D.
Alan Shewmon and colleagues published a report on four children
between five and seventeen years old who showed “total or
near-total absence of cerebral cortex.” The subjects nonetheless
showed some awareness, “for example, distinguishing familiar
from unfamiliar people and environments, social interaction,
functional vision, orienting, musical preferences, appropriate
affective responses, and associative learning.”27 While no one
disputes that these children have serious handicaps, Shewmon’s
team concluded, among other things, that their development may be
hampered by a “self-fulfilling prophecy.” We don’t try what
we are sure will fail—but that’s not experience; it’s just
assumption. The Dilemma Consciousness Poses Consciousness in
hydranencephalic children raises some interesting questions about
human consciousness in general. Even though it is central to our
human experience, it’s a nebulous concept, devilishly difficult
to define. For example, we are conscious in our dreams, yet
“unconscious” when we are asleep. Most of the current theories
popular among neuroscientists28 propose that consciousness is the
by-product of the processing of neurons in the cerebral cortex.
Yet that’s the part of the brain that is completely missing in
quite conscious children with hydranencephaly. So here’s the
dilemma: Although the cerebral cortex is considered by researchers
to be the “thinking” part of the brain, some basic thinking
occurs with no cortex at all. Pointing to such children as an
example, University of Cape Town neuropsychologist Mark Solms has
instead made a case for a close relationship between human
consciousness and the brain stem, the “primitive” part of the
brain that we share with vertebrates generally, including
goldfish. For instance, he noted on a 2021 podcast with me, if
even a small part of the brain stem’s reticular formation—a
network of neurons in the brain stem—is damaged, consciousness
disappears. But it’s different with kids with no brain
hemispheres. “These kids are conscious. There is something that
is like to be them, that they have qualitative experience,
there’s a content to their minds, and yet they have no cortex at
all.”29 When Solms says that there is something that it is like
to be them, he is applying philosopher Thomas Nagel’s famous and
widely accepted way of understanding consciousness: If there is
something that it is like to be you, you are conscious.30 Using
his criterion, consciousness can be usefully distinguished from
intellectual ability. Consciousness can also be distinguished from
arousal. Arousal is a state of alertness and heightened
interaction with our environment, which arises from the reticular
activating system. As we will see in the next chapter, however,
people in the deepest level of coma, who show no sign of arousal
whatever, may be quite conscious. When brain-scanning equipment is
used to communicate, they may be quite capable of understanding
others and even answering complex questions. We agree with Solms
that arousal is generated by the brain stem; consciousness, on the
other hand, is a much more slippery concept. It’s not even clear
how we can define it, let alone explain it. The whole research
area has become highly controversial. In 2018, a reporter for the
Chronicle of Higher Education, attending an academic conference on
the topic, found himself asking, “Has Consciousness Lost Its
Mind?”31 In 2023, charges of “pseudoscience” were levied by
over a hundred neuroscientists and philosophers—many of them
prominent worldwide—against the leading theory of
consciousness!32 More on that later. At any rate, there is no
evidence that consciousness resides in any specific area of the
brain. What the Neuroscience Tells Us So Far So far, neuroscience
has shown us that the human mind is a unity. It can adapt not only
to a surgically split brain but also to a variety of brain
absences, even radical ones. But now let’s range a little
further: Can the human mind function when the whole brain is
deeply comatose? What about when the brain is afflicted with
senile dementia or dying? Let’s look at the remarkable and
unexpected things neuroscience can tell us about that. 32 CHAPTER
3 The Mind Is Hard to Just Put Out WHEN I WALKED INTO Beth’s
room in my clinic, I was running a bit behind, and I hate to keep
patients waiting. So I expected this visit to be brief—just a
quick recap of her progress. Beth had lapsed into a coma following
her brain hemorrhage. We had succeeded in surgically removing the
blood clot, and after a couple of weeks of coma she was awake and
had been in rehab for several months. She had been making a very
good recovery. Three months out from her surgery, she had a normal
neurological exam. Sometimes the brain tolerates bleeding and
surgery quite well, especially if the hemorrhage is in a
relatively safe area. Beth told me that she was pleased with her
progress. I reminded her that she had been through a lot—a brain
hemorrhage, catheters stuck in all sorts of places in her body, a
breathing machine for ten days, and major brain surgery. I quipped
that, of course, she was unaware of any of this—after all, she
was comatose. It was really her family who had the toughest time,
watching all of these things happen to her and worrying about her
prognosis. They had to go through all of this fully awake! “I
was awake too, kind of, at times,” she replied. Really? I had
heard patients say this before. I asked her what she meant. “I
remember hearing things. I couldn’t see, but I remember some
conversations in the room, about my condition, my medications, my
vital signs, things like that.” As I left, I made a mental note
to remind my team in the intensive care unit to always be careful
what they say in the room of a comatose patient. We often think
that because they are in deep coma and hooked up to an imposing
array of machines, they don’t know what’s going on around
them. Nurses, however, and old neurosurgeons like me, know that
comatose people sometimes are aware of their environment. That is
why it is a maxim in intensive care nursing to never say anything
in the room of a comatose patient that you wouldn’t say to that
person wide awake. Patients sometimes even recount what they heard
while in coma after they wake up. I have a colleague who was
chastised by a formerly comatose patient for telling a joke in her
room that was in poor taste! A more serious problem is that
patients’ vital signs

David

As we discussed in an earlier thread, I find your attempt to separate the pseudoscientific ramblings of the DI from Christianity flawed.

Well the DI is focused on Christianity so it explores flaws in current science that it sees as relevant! If you read Egnor's book, you will find rather a lot of references to Christianity, but they aren't hard to skip. Better still, you can try to reinterpret them in terms of whatever mystical ideas (if any) you are more comfortable with.

When I get round to writing to him, I want to point out that he has omitted all mention of psychic phenomena except a brief reference to NDE's. I guess he finds that topic uncomfortable because the typical NDE doesn't confirm Christianity. I want to remind him about the reincarnation research, and verified psychic readings for example.

Some of Egnors observations relate to conjoined twins. Some of them report that they are aware of each others' thoughts without using words. That sounds awfully like telepathy. I dare say some of them would be happy to do research on this topic. Unfortunately, I get the sense that most scientists steer clear of anything of this kind.

The book is cheap on a Kindle - I do urge you to read it.

David

Hydranencephaly is extremely rare, with an incidence of less than 1 in 250000 births in the us and most affected children do not survive long after birth.
Given this, Egnor’s claim that he has “cared for a number of these children” who survived long enough to display meaningful behavior is highly questionable. Even for an experienced neurosurgeon, encountering more than one or two such cases with prolonged survival would be extraordinary.

This is not the first time I have suspected that Egnor have dificulties sticking with facts. When discusing Wilder Penfield’s research he underplays the frequency brain stimulation triggers memories. But Penfield and his colleagues documented numerous cases in which electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes reliably evoked vivid, specific recollections, sensory impressions, or emotional experiences in awake patients. This was not a rare or fluke occurrence, but a reproducible phenomenon observed in a substantial proportion of patients during these procedures. Penfield himself described these responses as being so consistent and striking that he used them to map out memory-related regions of the brain. 

I suppose I'll reply with a longer quote from Egnor:


David

Could we, uh, have some paragraphs...?