Choice: Mind or Body?

I was ruminating over a topic regarding the body and the mind - and was thinking about how to frame it in a way that this comes across in a synthesized manner for our discussion.  I thought it might be best to position it as a choice for you to make.

In order to make this choice, you will need to think of a scenario.  Most recently, I was in a nursing home for the terminally ill and I saw many, many, many patients who were on their last legs.  For the purposes of this scenario, I would like you to think of someone near and dear that might be in a precarious situation healthwise.  Two requirements though, as you think of such a person:

i) You need to have an emotional connection (the reason being, that we have the tendency to easily abstract away - eg.  Tsunami in Japan or Sri Lanka.  We are empathetic, but not necessarily distraught)

ii) Choose an example that does not cause you discomfort either (this is a philosophical exercise after all, and not meant to put you off).

Here is the choice:

Choice A:  

Similar to the technology that Stephen Hawking utilizes, where he is able to communicate although totally paralyzed and has had a life of highest achievement - he occupied the Newton Chair at Cambridge and was also awarded the U.S. Presidential medal of Freedom.

One can conceive of even more advanced technology for communication (holography, voice recognition, wireless communication, nanotechnology) that allows the mind to communicate with the outside world.

Now imagine the near and dear person having access to such a technology.  The person's body ages and becomes not so functional.  Yet we have the technology to access the mind and let it communicate with the outside world.

With sufficient financing we are able provide this terminally ill patient access to this technology and although physically incapacitated, have access to their memories, their mode of thinking, their associations and their advice, guidance and wisdom and companionship.

Choice B:

The mind is struck by Alzheimer's disease, the memories and associates are irretrievably lost.  But technology exists today, to keep the body comfortable health and active through prosthetics, organ transplants.  Even the brain's motor functions are kept healthy through medicines can actively control the body.  It is just that through a disease like Alzheimers, the memories and learnings have disappeared.

Now, it is the very same person - the person who you have had an (emotional) association for a long period of time.  Looks the same, feels the same - it is the same 'body'.

There is enough financing, to allow medicine to make this person physically healthy.

Question:

With this person, who you care about as an individual, not in the abstract, but in reality - which is your choice?  

An easy out is to say one of the following:

- I don't believe in interfering with nature - let nature take its course.  I choose neither.

- If there is enough advance in technology, I will choose both.

Both of the above, are obvious choices, but prevent you from thinking about a vexing philosophical puzzle that has existed since before Aristotle, through Descartes, to modern neurobiology.  I have put the choice in stark terms so that it is not an abstract problem, but a real one.

When I was in the nursing home - I was looking at a very real example of what I would dearly wish to have.....

What would your choice be?

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Note 1 - some terrific reading on this subject:

1.  The Mind's I - Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett

2.  Infinity and the Mind - Rudy Rucker

3.  The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins

4.  The Tao is Silent - Raymond Smullyan

5.  Total Recall - Phillip Dicks (made into a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger)

6.  The Conscious Mind - David Chalmers

7.  The Mystery of Consciousness - John Searle

8.  The Tell-Tale Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

9.  The man who mistook his wife for a hat - Oliver Sacks

10.  The Emperor's new mind - Roger Penrose

11.  SYNC - Steven Stogratz

12.  Solaris - Stanislaw Lem (made into a movie by Steven Soderbergh)

Note 2 - my view on this topic

I am a fan of 'emergent phenomena'.  Emergent phenomena are not directed by a central logic or director.  Rather it emerges in nature.  Think of bird formation in the air.  There is a good reason for it (bird's conserve fuel) - but no one person is directing it.  The formation emerges out of birds flying.

Similarly, we have neurons.  The mind emerges from it.

So in my 'belief' - no brain, no mind.

This might lead you to get a sense for what my choice might be....

Note 3 - irreducible puzzle.

But this creates an irreducible puzzle.  Who am 'I'?  In other words, fine, let there be neurons and let there be minds - but what has that got to do with this feeling of 'me'.