Letter to the Committee Saying Why Brain Rejuvenation Should Not Be Essay

Letter to the Committee Saying Why Brain Rejuvenation Should Not Be Allowed - Essay Example Within the context of brain transplant, a person is only identical to the later person if the later person has the entire body as the earlier person, subsequently, brain rejuvenation results to memory duplication whereby a person’s memory can be used by several other persons. Prior to the suggested â€Å"brain rejuvenation† procedure on Nick, Dr. Mathews performed a â€Å"brain transplant† operation on Julia North and subsequently the members of the committee agreed that Julia North’s life was saved. Perhaps we may need to understand a few basics and events that led to this case. Before this operation, Julia North was a young woman run over by a car in efforts to save the life of a child who wandered onto the tracks. Mary Frances who was the child’s mother had stroke while watching the events unfold. The two victims were brought to this facility where Dr. Mathews performed his ‘Brain transplant’ operation which the committee approved an d agreed that saved Julia’s life. It is also important to note that at the time of accident, the survivor, Julia North’s body was dying and the brain was okay and Dr. Mathews transferred her brain into another body. The committee further agreed that it was Julia’s life that was saved since the survivor had memories of Julia based on the being Julia. While arriving at this conclusion, this committee must have been guided by the sophisticated memory account that provides that when a person is numerically identical to a later person if and only if the person has memories of being earlier person that is so caused in the right way. My objection for this matter rests with Cohen’s views on this matter. Julia North had one up until the time of accident, and another body after the operation. This implies that one person had two bodies. Therefore a person cannot be simply identified with a human body and therefore something must be wrong with the view that the comm ittee had adopted on this case as it implies that if a similar operation were to be carried out on brain transplant, then afterwards this person would be a person with new body since the person with that body has a memory of having a similar case as Julia if caused in the ‘right way.’ Right in this scenario has a particular meaning of interest, and must satisfy three conditions; if a subject experiences some event, this experience leaves a trace in the brain of the event and this trace that has been left is later responsible for content of a memory, then in this way we can say that the memory is caused in the right way. Dear members, we are faced with another problem of a new technique called ‘Brain rejuvenation’ yet to be performed on Nick. While adopting earlier propositions to defend approving Julia’s case we are also suggesting that the same logic as earlier proposed would be applicable and as such the committee is justified in saying that Nick w ould be the survivor of the operation , and I quote, â€Å"Nick would be the survivor of the brain rejuvenation procedure because the survivor would have the memories of being Nick and there would be more than one person of being Nick.† But dear members, Nick cannot be more than one person and this do not seems right. Using the same procedure as advanced in this new ‘brain rejuvenation’ process, the committee has argued that saving Nick’s life will be accomplished by replacing his brain with a duplicated brain from someone else and as such his survival are justified on the premise that the same bodies would be of this new person, say Alex and that Nick would then have Alex’s memories and they remember them in the right way. Premised on the duplication theory, when someone