“The Last Hippie”, I think, is a perfect example of our class discussion about wheather or not you are your brain. It’s such an interesting debate. Deadhead Greg is a patient Sacks writes about here, describing his memory condition. What he can and cannot remember and how and when he makes new memories.
Is he his brain? By being capable of creating new memories it would be arguable that his brain is his personhood. Therefore, he IS his brain.
Or is he not his brain? It is also arguable that personhood has nothing to do with the brain and that you do not need it to be “who you are” as it were. So with this argument, he is NOT his brain.
It gets so confusing and one could go around in circles non-stop over which argument is true. We may never know.
I agree, in our class discussion I felt as if we were going around in circles. The conversation was hard to wrap my brain around! ha.
The question still remains, are we our brain?
Things that come to mind are cases in which a person has no function of his or her body, yet their brain is still active. It is like being trapped inside of a doll, which to me seems torturous. Our brains are very intelligent things and I find myself spacing out and getting stuck inside my head sometimes, but I can always jump back to reality. I cannot imagine the feeling of being trapped by your own thoughts and never being able to move or express these thoughts.
A case that always interested me was the Helen Keller case. How can someone who cannot see or hear be able to speak and read and write? We all know the story and I have read it many times and yet, it still puzzles me. It goes back to describing what color is to a person who is colorblind.
How does one who cannot hear create sounds? Are they able to hear inside their head? We speak inside our mind and to me it sounds like my own voice is speaking in my head, but, is this really happening? Or am I simply imagining my voice because I have heard myself speak? My brain hurts trying to wrap my head around these topics. My mind is opened up to so many questions which may never be answered. I still want to know what it is like to be a bat!
Kaitlyn, we definitely were going in circles in class! It got very confusing, fast. I’m also interested in the way Greg’s parents reacted to his situation. Sacks writes that Greg’s father commented that Greg seemed “like he was scooped out, hollow inside” (44). Greg’s brain had been severely affected by the tumor at that point; and although his body was physically able to function (barely, but he was still alive!) he was not himself as his parents had known him before. After they transport Greg to the hospital, Sacks comments on the fact that Greg’s parents, “so estranged from him when he was rebellious and well, came daily, doted on him, now that he was helpless and ill” (50). This complete turnaround in his parents behavior suggests that Greg was an entirely different entity because they treated pre-tumor Greg and post-tumor Greg very differently. Clearly, he was NOT the same person to him.
So this begs the question, is your brain your personhood? Is your body? Is the persona that you construct and portray to the outside world? Or is it the environment – your location, your peers, your parents – that determines YOU? I believe that if we look at Greg as a single isolated case study without taking into account everything else (other patients, science, etc.) we can argue that it is ultimately Greg’s brain that is the seat of Greg. His parents don’t recognize him as the son they knew and raised after his brain has been severely damaged by the tumor.
But then again, this is one person’s story written by an observer who happens to be a scientist but writes like a poet. And one case does not determine the answer to such a complex question.
I wasn’t there for the last class but all I can think of is: Can one exist without the other? Are they separate? Are they together? Like everyone else, I agree, who really knows? If I can be my own person without being my brain then shouldn’t there be no brain activity at all? I am thinking that I am my own person…and using my brain to think the thoughts about what I really am so can it really be detached? Maybe if we didn’t use our brains and has a consciousness outside of it, if that is the case, let’s say that the rain doesn’t exist at that point. We just exist as ourselves and we have a consciousness and emotions, thoughts, complexity and we make decisions. But what if it were the opposite? What if we were just a brain? All we did was carry out functions, send signals, move a hunk of body around and exist within a skull to produce for something else and not ourselves as a brain? I probably made that way more confusing than it needed to be. Maybe there is just the happy medium of having a brain as a person and a being a person with a brain.
It’s so easy to get stuck in the circles–are we or are we not our brains? But there are some other ways to think about it: To what extent do our brains shape our experiences? What roles do our brains play in the making of self or identity? What other factors are fundamental to self? How do different people–or different cultures–understand the relationships between brain, body, world, and self?
What I actually believe is that “Are you your brain?” is the wrong question and leads to circular thinking–but it’s a pervasive question. We’ve got it on the table. Now we can think about ways to move beyond it.
I honestly enjoyed the conservation we had in class. I believe that we do need our brain in order to function. Without a brain I wouldn’t be alive but without other important organs in my body I won’t be alive either. I believe that with self consciousness we can function. Out of all the stories we have read in this class by Oliver Sacks, The Last Hippie was my favorite. A few of the classmates felt bored with Sacks but I didn’t, I enjoyed his story telling and I like every detail.Grey story was very heart touching because it reminds me of my grandmother who has Alzheimer. I would visit her and have an enjoyable conservation but if I leave her room for two second and return she would ask who are you and why are you here? Greg is stuck in the past, he doesn’t remember anything that happens in his future. Jessie, I am afraid that we will never know what it is like to be a bat or any other species. One thing that I do know about bat is that they can see better than us in the dark.