[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:19:51 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Stuart W. Mirsky" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
>
> >> What does that even mean? In what way is having a mental life
> >> different from having a life?
>
>
> > It refers to having subjective (private) experience. After all it
> > is at least imaginable that many living things lack the ability to
> > experience subjectively. What of the jellyfish? The earthworm? They
> > are alive, have lives in that sense, and yet I think there is a
> > good possibility that they are organic automatons (or the closest
> > thing to it).
>
> Terry Schiavo <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_case> was
> alive in the biological sense, yet most people would have said that she
> did not have a life.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
Not having been privy to the stats re: her condition, I would never presume to
say. But certainly one can conceive of human beings reduced to bodies with
their brains substantially destroyed and no possibility of coming back. The
body lives then but the mind is presumably ended. A "mental life" simply refers
to the capacities and abilities associated with having a mind (i.e., an
operational brain in good working order). -- SWM
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