Please Try and Help Terri...... 4105

Liam Slider

If I might be able to tie Terri Schiavo to IMAX theaters in the South for a moment, let me make one quick point:

The Catholic Church basically officially endorses evolution (that's the IMAX tie-in), but it is quite clear that this does not mean it's acceptable to believe that the "soul" or consciousness originates through the physical phenomenon of the brain.

So, if I understand it correctly, the Catholic Church disputes (and by extension, in theory, all good Catholics should dispute) that the brain is what makes you a person or a soul.

Add to that all the philosophy clbuttes where the subject of discourse is something like "what is the relationship between the mind and the brain?" (and where people genuinely disagree), and I think it should be considered debatable that activity in the brain is the source and reason for existence of the mind and its consciousness.

So, of course, that makes this whole thing even more complicated, but do try to realize that some people really do believe that consciousness may not be an effect of the brain (although most people would probably agree that it is closely correlated with the brain somehow). I have heard some very good arguments (most notably one called "The Brain Prosthesis Experiment" in the back of an Artificial Intelligence textbook) that the mind is an effect of the brain, and while I cannot logically refute that argument, on an intuitive level I remain pretty much totally convinced that if I could build a working model of a brain, it would just be a machine with no subjective sensation of consciousness like I (as a human) have. Or at least I cannot understand how putting together chemical reactions (and-or electrical signals) could create the same subjective sensation I experience.

- Logan