Brain transplant and soul

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LoganBryce

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If me and you (who ever answers) have a brain transplant (hypothetically obviously) do you think I would be in your body and you in mine or would our soul remain in our original bodies?
 
If your identity lies within your brain would not also your soul?
 
There has never been a successful human head transplant. That’s all I need to know. The ethical implications are daunting.
 
Your soul would follow your brain since it’s our actions that will be judged, not our bodies. But, I think that on resurrection day you would find yourself in your glorified original body since that is the body your soul was created for.
 
I always thought that the brain was the seat of “intellect”, and not “soul”…
 
LoganBryce said:
If me and you (who ever answers) have a brain transplant (hypothetically obviously) do you think I would be in your body and you in mine or would our soul remain in our original bodies?
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We wouldn’t know until we woke up.
 
Me too. But if the intellect was transferred along with memories then you (your concious) would be living with different memories. Kinda weird.
 
Does anyone have a good arguement that it isn’t the person whose brain it is? All memory and stuff is in the brain.
 
Yes. Do you think that the end result of such a transfer would be insanity?
 
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I think it would be probable. Maybe that’s why it’s never been done.
 
Maybe it has been done. The result was insanity so now the patients are in an asylum. That’s a good movie plot.
 
When one considers all the intricacies of the brain (nerve-endings, synapses, spinal column etc), you’d probably end up in a blathering mess after you regain consciousness (if ever).
 
The question presupposes that our souls are in our bodies rather than our bodies being a manifestation of the soul. To get past this, it can be useful to stop thinking of ourselves as “things” and start thinking of ourselves as events and we would have to stop seeing ourselves as being separate from God. If it were to be true that in the same way that a wave is not something separate from the ocean, but is simply what the ocean is doing at the nexus of space and time where the wave is, it could be said that we are simply what the universe is doing in the places where we are sitting. More simply put, as a tree might be said to be blossoming, we could simply be instances of the universe peopling. And if we were to accept that we are not separate fro,m God or other creatures or the world around us, we might imagine that God is simply the fabric into which individual experience is woven and when viewed at the aggregate level, it’s all one thing. So while our brains process individual experience there is no reason to suppose that our souls or consciousnesses are tied to them other than using them as a means to integrate sentient (name removed by moderator)ut with the story line we create together. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that consciousness may be independent of the brain. In short, I don’t see the problem.

All the best!
 
@Sedona

Context: This is not a Catholic answer. Which is fine, but it might be good to say so from the get-go.

Catholicism does not embrace pantheism, for starters.

Also, your theory would seem to suggest there is no such thing as individualization at all. But our very experience contradicts this. At the very least, I know that I am in fact an “I” and not a “you.” If we accept that we have minds — which in fact this whole conversation presumes, no? — then we have to accept that there are individual realities and not really “modes” of one single reality.
 
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Because Thomism is a dominant expression of Catholic theology, I will answer accordingly.

Your spiritual soul is not a substance in its own right — separate from the body, as it were. Rather, it is the form of a single human substance, which is bodily and also has immaterial (spiritual) capacities. In Thomistic language, the “form” is the principle that, when paired with matter, makes an individual reality “this” and not “that.”

There is a sort of hierarchy when we identify the material constituents of a substance (individual reality, like a human). If I lost my right leg, I’d still be human. I’d still be me. I’d still have “form.” Take away all my limbs, and so it remains. Take away my heart, or lungs, or whatever, and I die: So my body no longer remains in its integrated, unified whole-ness. What was my body is no longer informed — with no unifying principle (form).

And I have to go right now, but I didn’t want to delete what I had. Maybe I’ll be able to come back later, or someone else trained in Thomistic thinking can add more.
 
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