Tuesday, March 22, 2005
(3:56 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Matthew Yglesias is Insane
This is the kind of post that makes me mourn the fact that my life has been so impoverished by my failure to study analytic philosophy:I used to study philosophy, so I can't help but gin up a Schiavo-related thought experiment. I'm not a neurologist, but my understanding is that what's wrong with Terri is that her cerebral cortex has been destroyed. For the purposes of this discussion, at least, let's let "cerebral cortex" stand for whatever the destroyed part of her brain is. Now say I go to sleep tonight, and when my alarm starts ringing tomorrow morning my body doesn't wake up. It doesn't wake up because overnight my cerebral cortex has stopped functioning. I've lost the part of my brain that permits for thinking, feeling, consciousness, deliberate control over my body, etc. I'm in, in other words, a persistent vegetative state. But I'll stay alive on my own for a little while now even if nobody gives me a feeding tube or any such thing. At the same time, Terri Schiavo's body suddenly springs to life. A quick examination makes it seem as if her cerebral cortex has been miraculously restored. But upon further examination, that's not what's happened at all. Instead, my cortex had gotten into her head. Terri's body starts speaking, and has Matt Yglesias' memories, opinions, affections, tastes, etc.He can't help but ask such a question; I am sad that such a question would never have occured to me in a million years.
Now what would we say about this? What I think we wouldn't say is that "Matt Yglesias fell into a persistent vegetative state and Terri Schiavo magically recovered from her PVS." The revived Schiavo-body would be me not her. But I think we wouldn't say that Terri and I had switched bodies. I think the right thing to say would be that Terri was dead, the Yglesias-body was in a PVS, and Matt Yglesias now inhabited the former body of Terri Schiavo.
Yes, I quoted his entire post.
