I think Rand might agree with MP in a very general way. He says "I am my body," but he means a conscious body. Rand says that a human is an indivisible being with two attributes: matter and consciousness. She never talks about brains in a metaphysical way, only epistemologically, e.g. the brain integrates sensations into percepts automatically.

In her journals she flirts with vitalism and some kind of spirit, but this never makes it into her published work. She did not like doing armchair science, and in a sense, this would be science.

She does say that the concept of consciousness presupposes a self that is conscious. Consciousness is not a "primary object" unto itself. The self in question she identifies as an animal. (This is before AI got to be a big thing.) So that suggests that she means more than just a brain, but she never offered a definite opinion on the subject.

I am working on an essay to be called "I am not my brain." In other words, I am the whole bodily, conscious person. Just what a person seems to be. I am not appealing to the idea of a soul.

I have very strong intuitions on this subject. I am aware of the arguments on the other side, but I think maybe I can address them.

I think that when we consider personhood and rationality in general we are going to have to deal with borderline cases, and at least some of these will fall into the ethical community. We'll need more that my definition of a person to settle some of these issues.

Some Christian writer was responding to the claim that "I have a soul." He said "No, you are a soul. You have a body." That was the sense of "have" I meant. For this writer the body was not an essential part of the self. My comment was on the fly, so it was awkward. Thanks for the feedback.

Part of my definition of "person" is that one is conceptually conscious, i.e. rational. Some animals seems to have a primitive form of reason, so I suppose they are a borderline case of persons.

I think you're correct in bringing sense organs into the discussion. Brains don't see and feel. Brains working with eyes and flesh as a living unit see and feel. The whole person sees and feels.

No doubt someone is going to bring up the possibility of an artificial eye. I would say that if it is organically integrated in you, it's as much a part of you as a transplanted organ. But if it is just a machine hooked up to your optic nerves, then it is no more a part of you than the blind man's cane.

Excuse me, I forgot a good book I read some time back about why we are not our brains. It's called Out of Our Heads and it's by philosopher-neuroscientist Alva Noe. He dismantles some of the old brain-body dualist arguments with the aid of science and argument.


https://www.amazon.com/Out-Our-Heads-Lessons-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B003D0B83M/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3HAAU6MSMU0TY&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.98JGpD7qfhVLapJsjQ5tRn8ap4zHbrWfAT0FasfA4McA5HE7IAOtSNq8XsNIhLl84y855YBn0dlF9SdyK4FY4mQ303CNfENElEANb5D9B1T1iUISNrn2SCmwLEI_KrUE0HfQK5mWqbNga7Zi8V1H8fJhJwXhQgY0jUXqA6fbD9s4tn9o6SIMKAqqkSGlBtf7S29OfIqwm-aTQ4HD4I8CB_1DqyLgrSm9W4kpCqNohAQ.v9_g46ryJOZM_wDQpasgXLHZx6dQZuJfKwbFYCM14lU&dib_tag=se&keywords=alva+noe&qid=1728448967&sprefix=alva+noe%2Caps%2C83&sr=8-2

I don't "have" a body, because to do so would require that I am separate from my body. I am not the car that I own.

My point of view is difficult to see outside of the context of my whole theory, but I think we have to shift the focus away from minds and bodies to a more comprehensive and substantive entity. That's what I mean when I use the term "person."

You can say things about persons: They're conscious. They have volume and mass. They have physical life functions. They live in a world they perceive directly. Minds and souls aren't entities. They are just grammatical conveniences. The brain is an entity, but it is conceptually, organically, and functionally subordinate to the whole person.

I have provisional answers to the "would I still be me if I had a limb amputated?" question, but I don't have a good formulation, so I'll have to beg off. For now.

A "person" is the true entity that I am. It is the "chunk" that humanity comes in. It's more specific than "being."

Here's my definition of "person": a conceptually, conscious physical unit, living and moving in a directly perceived world with other entities and people.

That might be more of a summary of my theory on the subject, rather than a true definition, but you get the idea. I know it's got a lot of moving parts, and we can discuss them one by one.

A person is a person if they are asleep or if they are in a coma they might wake up from. If they have severe brain damage and can never be conscious again, then they are not a person. I suspect a fetus past a point in its development might count as a person, but I don't pretend to know the answer to that question. In any case, I am not worried about outliers.

What I am concerned with is how people experience emotions, physical activity, sex, eating, etc. All of these things are affected by what you think you are, if you have let it sink in. For example, if you believe you are a soul, created by God and tethered to a physical body, you might believe sex is a sin.

I have been working on these ideas for many years, and I hope to publish an essay on the subject in the near future.