Page 35 - Monocle Quarterly Journal Vol 3 Issue 2 Spring

The iron rod – which was over a metre long and weighed
personal behaviours. Since this instance, there have been hundreds of cases where an illness, accident or trauma to the brain has significantly altered the thoughts and behaviours of individuals in strange and unexplainable ways, with particular kinds of epilepsy making people more religious, for example; certain cases of Parkinson’s making people lose their faith; and the medication for Parkinson’s subsequently turning patients into compulsive gamblers.
Similarly, when we ingest drugs or alcohol, we may act in ways that are said to be “out of character”, or we even claim that “we were not ourselves” when perpetrating certain unfavourable actions. But what exactly is it then to be you? If you can become “not you” through a forced change in your physical and chemical makeup, either permanently or temporarily, then surely the conception of our own being is artificially created, beyond the realm of physical observances – as some abstract, unchangeable and incorruptible version of the “I”.
This theoretical conception of our own being has a long and complicated history in Western thinking, with the 17th Century French philosopher René Descartes proposing a type of metaphysical dualism that separates the world into physical and non-physical states. For Descartes, the abstract workings of the mind – such as thoughts and feelings relating to love and our ideas of morality, for example – belonged to the non-physical realm, as core characteristics that make us who we are.
close to six kilograms – shot straight through Phineas’ skull.
Without the buffer of the sand or clay, the gunpower wasignitedandthesubsequentexplosionpropelledthe javelin-like tamping rod from the narrow hole, like a bullet from a gun.
The iron rod – which was over a metre long and weighed close to six kilograms – shot straight through Phineas’ skull. According to several accounts, although unlikely verifiable, the rod landed tip first over 20 metres away, covered in blood and an oily layer, presumably from the fat-rich cells of the brain. The force had thrown Phineas Gage onto his back and yet, even with the rod passing through the front left part of his brain, he miraculously survived. Even more remarkable was the fact that he never lost consciousness, sitting up and talking as he was taken into town by his co-workers, and even greeting the arriving physician, as recorded in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, saying, “Doctor, I have some business for you.”
The case of Phineas Gage has lived on in university text books for decades as a favourite example amongst lecturers across a broad range of disciplines. What was special about this case was Phineas’ dramatic change of personality after the accident. Where before he was described as a gentle and considerate soul, after the accident Gage was fitful, irreverent and prone to the crudest profanities. And although making a miraculous recovery in all cognitive abilities of memory, language, motor skills and reasoning, Gage had changed on a personal and social level, as was attested to by close friends and family. So drastic was this negative change to his personality that the railroad company that hired him turned him away after the accident, despite Gage displaying full functionality in all physical and mental endeavours related to his work.
As the first medically recorded incident of this type, the case of Phineas Gage marked a turning point in the study of the human brain and its relation to who we are as human beings. Whilst retaining basic motor and cognitive functions, the damage to Gage’s frontal lobe caused a radical change in his higher cognitive functions that relate to social interaction and inter-
Thus, although our physical bodies may change, there still remains an incorruptible essence
THE MIND AND THE BODY
that constitutes what it means to be “me” or “you”, as a unique
being that cannot be replicated.
Thus, although our physical bodies may change, there still remains an incorruptible essence that constitutes what it means to be “me” or “you”, as a unique being that cannot be replicated.
How unduplicatable this consciousness is, however, is up for debate. Certain fields of modern neuroscience research, for example, aim to digitally map and replicate every neural connection and interaction of a living organism, to begin to better understand, among other things, how our consciousness operates. One such
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