Ted talk

Ramachandran talks about the 3 distinct brain diseases. These diseases were thought to be problem with the mind. The first disease is the Capgras symdrom which makes you can't recognized people faces. The second disease is the phantom limb which makes you feel pain on amputate body parts. And the last disease is the Synthesis. This disease gives mix signal. When they see a number 5 they might see a blue. A weird conditions indeed. All of these disease seems to point toward the fact that mind doesn't exist. That we have no soul but just brain, which is the materialistic view expect the second disease. The first disease is the Capgras symdrom. Ramachandran explains that the disease start in the brain. That the emotional part of the brain got cut from the vision part causing people not to be able to recognize faces. This shows that the brain is the actual part that does the feeling. This leads us to question what is a mind and do we have one. Our feeling is created and control by the brain. If we have a mind and mind does leave the body then we will be robotic in life after death? The argument all point to the nonexistence of a mind and if the mind does exist, maybe we have to redefine it. The second case is phantom limb. Patients who have phantom limb experience pain on the amputated limb. Ramachandran fixs this case by using visual image to trick the brain. He said that phantom limb is created by repeating brain signal failure to move certain parts of the body. After long enough failure the brain remember the lesson and won't move anymore eventhough the area is healed. Ramachandran cure this by tricking the brain into thinking that the amputated limb moves. Once it moves the brain then release from it paralyze and work again. I think this disease argue for the dualism side. What trick the brain? The brain obviously can't trick itself so the only answer seems to be the mind. The last disease is the synthesis. The disease seems to be more metabolically disease which seems to concern with the mind. Ramachandran, though, explain that the disease is cause by the cross wire inside the brain. Something that people in the past used to think happen in the mind. This shows that more and more diseases concerning the mind is actually happen inside the brain. That maybe there is no mind at all. Everything is just the brain, tangible brain.