Commissurotomy and multiple minds
Perry, C.
Ethics in Science and Medicine 7(3-4): 171-177
1980
ISSN/ISBN: 0306-4581 PMID: 7274209 Document Number: 162351
When a person announces that he is of 2 minds about a particular subject, no one understands him to mean that he is the manifest embodiment of more than 1 mind. Similarly, dual embodiment is not the obvious interpretation when presented information concerning the possession of multiple personalities characteristic of certain forms of schizophrenia. Yet such an interpretation with regard to the surgical treatment of intractable epilepsy. Commissurotomy, or the surgical bisection of the corpus callosum and other cerebral commissures, leads to behavior argued to be evidence that one's physical presence may be the embodiment of more than 1 consciousness. It is the contention of some authors that, in virtue of the concomittantly independent and even contrary behavior put forth by the cerebral hemispheres with respect to the same stimuli, there obtain multiple persons subsequent to the commissurotomy. It is argued that if cerebral bisection does produce multiple persons, then the physical criteria for personal identity is inadequate.