Where do thoughts go when you die? Are they still stored in your brain? Would there be any way to access them?
Or is it just like a light has been turned off forever?
These questions popped in my head as I listened to my Philosophy of Mind professor talk about her experience dissecting a human brain. I thought to myself, as one is cutting into a brain, are that person's thoughts and memories still there? Or do they just disappear? If so, where do they go??? How can they just disappear?
When you die, everything else is still there.. your heart still has its ventricles and atriums, arteries and veins. And just thinking about that.. the brain, as far as I know in my limited knowledge, is the only organ that doesn't have distinct parts. Like, for instance, in the way that a heart or lung does. Yes, the brain has the cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the brain stem.. and the cerebrum is divided into the left and right hemispheres, but.. the cerebrum itself, especially, I am talking about here.. the whole thing is just that wrinkled gray mass. It's responsible for so many different things, but there are really no distinct parts that handle each function.. just "areas".
Someone mentioned in class about something he saw on tv about a woman who lost the left side of her brain. One of the functions she lost was that she couldn't speak anymore, just make a "ta-ta" noise. The professor affirmed this by saying that the left hemisphere is responsible for language, so it made sense that she could no longer speak. But then they later found that the woman could sing. The words, of course, were not perfect, but it was more than a "ta-ta" noise. How is this possible? Well.. the right brain is responsible for more artistic things. So if she can't speak.. at least she can communicate by singing..
It just seems so weird that the brain works that way. But to think of the things we could do if we could only learn how to use our brains...
But these thoughts.. they're stored away, lots of times even though we don't want them to be stored (and sometimes we don't even know ourselves that they're stored there, it's hidden in our unconscious), for the duration of our lifetime. Thoughts are such intangible things.. you can't experience it physically, and certainly no one else can experience any of your thoughts. But they are there.. so what happens to them when you die? This is such an intriguing question to me.
Of course, right now, there's no way to answer that, but.. what if we could find some way to implant one person's brain in another person's body? Would that person with the implant start acting and thinking just like the person who used to have the brain? Or even if we could trade half a brain? Or.. if there was some way to "hook up" one brain to another.. so that we could somehow know, when a person is dead, if their thoughts are still stored there in the way a deserted file cabinet still has its old files left in there.. There is no brain activity, obviously, when the person dies, so no new thoughts could be made, but I'm concerned with the old thoughts.. but maybe, with no brain activity, there's no way to reach them. But.. just because you can't reach them, does it mean that they're not there anymore?
I dunno.. I could go on and on with the questions.. and I think I may at another time, but right now I gotta leave for my stats class..
LJ