Split Personality

Imagine your brain was suddenly and neatly partitioned into two separate minds, neither of which could communicate with the other. Each contained aspects of ‘you’ - that is to say, the ‘you’ of present. One half possessed your visual cognition, empathy, and human emotions. The other contained your capacity to reason, the better part of your access to past memories, and perhaps your love of chocolate. Which half would be ‘you’? If they were later reunified, which half would the recombined ‘you’ identify with, remember having been? In the process of reunification would something of the individuality of each half be destroyed?

It doesn’t really matter how one imagines such a division. The important feature of this proposition is that a chunk of your consciousness has been cleaved off from the rest. While this might appear to be little more than a silly thought experiment with little application to reality, it isn’t. If we let go of our naiveté and embrace the physicality of the mind for just a moment, it is readily obvious that consciousness is not a binary quantity like ‘on-ness’ or ‘off-ness’. It is possible to become less conscious or more conscious. People with neurological disorders like Alzheimers experience some cleaving of their consciousness, usually irreversibly, every day.

Returning to our thought experiment, we are immediately confronted with many questions concerning the nature of consciousness. For one, does it exist only in moments or does it exist continuously through time? Both possibilities present serious problems. The problem with a consciousness that exists only in moments should be obvious. Nothing happens instantaneously in the brain. Memory retrieval, thought processes, all take time and for a sufficiently short period of time can’t accomplish anything. The problems with a continuous consciousness, one which remains intact in some way from birth until death, seem equally insurmountable. Over the course of one’s life, almost all the physical matter in one’s body changes several times over. Any such consciousness would then not be a function of the material in the body but only of the information in it. Consciousness becomes an abstraction, comprised only of information and processing capabilities.

Now, say instead of splitting the brain into halves A and B, which operate simultaneously, one turns of A, leaving B running, in control of the body. Is B the same person as the whole? Our society tends to side with this interpretation. An Alzheimer’s patient is generally treated as though they are the same consciousness that always interfaced with the world through their body. They are acknowledged to be sick, but seldom are they considered to be truly different people. Unable to perceive directly anything besides one’s actions, our social interaction is almost entirely built upon a strictly behaviorist notion of who someone is - one which anchors a ‘person’ to his corporeal form.

The truth, however, is likely very hazy and unsatisfying. There is probably no discernible point at which one is officially a different person. And there is probably no way to say that the same ‘person’ at two separate points in time is actually the ’same person’. Something about this strikes me as profoundly wrong, although I am quite assured of its truth. We all like to imagine that there is an actual thing called ‘I’. That it has more concreteness than, say, the terms ‘America’ or ‘Coca-Cola Company’. But it probably doesn’t.

The implications of this interpretation on the mandate with which we can talk about consciousness, and therefore ‘human life’ are far-reaching. For one, if consciousness can never be more than a nebulous abstraction with no clear boundaries or corporeal form, nothing can ever be said concerning consciousness that isn’t similarly nebulous and devoid of concrete meaning.

Many philosophers, it seems, make the undeniably foolish move of substituting society’s pragmatic behaviorist simplification of reality for an actual notion of what consciousness is. Some people actually go so far as to consider the Turing test a true measure of having created a thinking machine. The problems with this sort of behaviorist thinking should be apparent to anyone with even minor exposure to computer science. Implementation details and performance exist on different layers of abstraction. For example, a computer program that sorts a list can be implemented in many radically different ways. Some of these ways, while wildly different from each other, exhibit identical performance. Similarly, behaviorist thinking sheds no light on what consciousness is. Even if one continues to act consistently throughout his life, it can never be assumed that this represents one consciousness acting over the entire duration.

Returning to our consciousness fragment B, what would he experience upon reunification with the formerly severed parts contained in A? Acknowledging that I - whatever ‘I means’ - am limited in answering this question by the meaninglessness of ‘consciousness’, I can comment authoritatively on what B would experience, to the extent that anyone can.

Recently, I suffered an immune-mediated freakout in which my brain was attacked, severely altering my memory, ability to reason, visual/spatial cognition, and emotional capacity. Gradually, since subduing my immune system, I have ascended back towards something that increasingly resembles my former cognitive capabilities. Several questions concerning my metamorphoses have plagued me.

As I get better, am I surrendering something of what ‘I’ am now, to the whole that I am becoming? As a thought experiment, imagine two separate people who merge to become one. Each would surrender his individuality to that combined existence. To the extent that ’survive’ is a term that means anything, would either person ’survive’ in such a fusion? Apply that logic to our split brain, A and B. Does B losing anything in the requisition of A? I’m reminded of the Borg in Star Trek, who surrender their individuality to collective mind. While I instinctively want more than anything to continue to get better, intellectually I actually find it far more difficult to make a case for getting better than I do for either not caring nor not wanting to get better.