When asked some question post surgery, she blurted "I could really use a beer!" She didn't drink, but the young male donor of her organs who died in a motorcycle crash did.
She wrote a book about her experience. Initially, she had bizarre dreams, as if tapping into the psyche of her organ donor. Over time, those stopped.
Mention of this tends to not go over well on HN, though it would be easy enough to google who got the first heart-lung transplant, find her book and read it to confirm if I'm making this up or misremembering it or if it's a true story (at least insofar as me remembering that she claimed such things).
I’d be surprised if most such changes have statistically strong correlation with organ donor personalities.
Thanks.
I’d be surprised if most such changes have statistically strong correlation with organ donor personalities.
So would I.
I'm not talking about most such changes or statistical significance. I'm talking about one specific case that was unusually well documented and highly scrutinized that potentially supports the idea that "souls" -- or something we might describe with that word -- might actually be real.
A high percentage of people go to church or otherwise have some kind of spiritual belief. But some kind of scientific affirmation that this isn't simply adult thumb sucking and there may be something to it seems pretty uncommon.
I found her story interesting from that angle.
But, I mean, if your mind is made up that souls are nonsense, then you are probably not the target audience for my comment.
I'd love to think that my parents and grandparents aren't just gone when they died, that they are somewhere else, alive, functioning, happy. But all evidence points another way.
I don't personally think it's hugely important whether one prefers the framing of self over soul. The woman told a tale that credibly suggested she got something of his consciousness in the exchange, not just his physical organs.
I realize it matters a whole lot to most people which framing gets used. Again, this is why I did my best to qualify it.
The existence of the self, and it being seated in physical organs, is noncontroversial, and in no way particular associated with the spiritual belief of people who go to church. The idea that the self is seated somewhere distinct from the body—the soul—is. So, I think that the “framing” is quite relevant to the connections you tried to draw upthread.
Which isn't to say it's not an interesting anecdote (though, on its own, of very little probative value) either way.
It seemed pertinent to that line of thinking.
There's a fairly rich history of Western Christians who were serious scientists and also sincere believers in God who argued that belief is a matter of faith, God is not provable and there is zero contradiction between being both a Christian and a scientist.
I don't have some personal need to relitigate that point. I'm very aware that some people frame things in terms of religion and some don't.
I don't personally feel it is critically important to pick a camp in order to see the story this woman told as intriguing and potentially casting light upon or at least calling into question some of our current framing concerning brain death being the single most important detail.
I know it's a touchy subject for most people. Whether they believe in a soul and a religious/spiritual framing or not, they tend to feel strongly that the other camp is in the wrong and that this is a really big deal.
I generally agree with the conclusion that "being a believer" is a matter of faith. Some people believe. Some don't.
I believe in souls and reincarnation and so forth. My ex did not. Everyone swore that a marriage could not work if you didn't have the same belief system in that regard.
We both believed in the American Constitutional right of freedom to believe as you saw fit. It was the only thing we didn't fight about in two decades of non stop arguing.
Having different points of view in this matter had no bearing on the decision to divorce.
I think if you’d said “‘self’ is more than just the (brain|connectome)”, a lot more people would agree with you.
Here is a past discussion of a BBC article related to the subject, about 2.5 years old.
When beating heart corpses (technically brain dead but body is alive) have their organs removed, in some cases the bodies go through symptoms of a live human being killed by vivisection. These are generally ignored.
Let's hope our understanding of brain death is fully and completely correct.