The answer to the OP, I don’t know.
The title of the movie, I do know.
The scientists were not able to reconnect the spinal cords, so the heads remained alive, briefly, on completely immovable bodies.
There was speculation at the time that this would one day be done on human beings (therefore that movie, which title escapes me, where someone’s head is attached on another man’s body next to his own head). That idea has been dropped because of the less than desirable results (to put it mildly) of such a process.
ICXC NIKA
“The Thing With Two Heads” LOL (70s movies, gotta luv 'em)
It is my understanding of Catholicism that the person is the unity of body and soul, not just the soul The idea that the soul alone is the person is Plato’s idea. In Phaedo he discusses the soul’s journey in the afterworld and it’s subsequent rebirth in a new body. In that dialogue, the friends of Socrates suggest the body is to the soul as a coat is to the man. The character of Socrates expresses the Platonic idea that the soul is immortal, but the coat analogy still holds true for the Platonic vision. Catholicism does not see the body as a coat, but as an essential part of the person.
Of course, I don’t think any Catholic would argue that you are not the same person anymore if you lose a finger. How can your soul be affected by the loss of that body part? Yet medieval theologians argued whether or not, when your body were resurrected at the end of time, you would have the missing finger or not. I don’t know a lot about these arguments, but I’d be interested in learning more if anyone knows.
But I believe the OP is asking where we would draw the line. Ultimately this discussion is about the brain because we wouldn’t tell someone who lost an arm that he wasn’t a person, nor a person who lost two arms, nor a person who lost two arms and a kidney, etc.
Once we are talking about the relationship between the brain and soul, we could rephrase our question to allow atheistic participation in the discussion: What is the relationship between the brain and personhood? If all the parts of your brain are replaced, are you still the same person? Are you even a person at all?
I think of the violence done to people in the past through frontal lobotomies, or the damage done to people’s brains from injuries and illnesses, where they do not seem to be the same person anymore. Then there is the case of people in comas who can never come out, people whose brains no longer work, but who are breathing. It is my understanding that the RCC does not approve removing respirators or feeding tubes from these patients. This would seem to suggest that the RCC considers the soul to be united to the body even though the brain is dead, or as good as dead. The brain is apparently still doing something, for the autonomic nervous system still functions, but consciousness is absent.
Personally I think the presence of consciousness is necessary to a definition of personhood/ensoulment. And I do not think it makes sense to consider consciousness totally divorced from a body (as in the robot example). Here, we might imagine the presence of thoughts and feelings, the awareness of self, but what sort of thoughts and feelings would occur to a being without a body? Descartes would answer “I think; therefore I am.” But what thought would occur next? Everything I think and feel is based on the physical world or utilizes metaphors based on the physical world.
If an entire body were artificial (but the brain is still you), what would your experience of the world be like? What use would the body be other than locomotion? You couldn’t see, hear, taste, touch or smell? Or would your robotic body send signals to your brain that created the illusion that you were seeing, hearing, etc.? Or is that what our flesh and blood bodies do anyway?
Okay, now my head hurts. Or at least, I think my head hurts.
