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[LordBucket]

Do you have any evidence that organs other than your brain effect your mental personhood?

Yes

I have faith in your ability to read through that list of search results and pay selective attention to only the ones that match your worldview. Nevertheless, the reports that don't match the "I am my brain" worldview are sufficient that I am not willing to dismiss them simply because it would be convenient to do so.

[10ebbor10]

Do you have any evidence that organs other than your brain effect your mental personhood?

Yes

I have faith in your ability to read through that list of search results and pay selective attention to only the ones that match your worldview. Nevertheless, the reports that don't match the "I am my brain" worldview are sufficient that I am not willing to dismiss them simply because it would be convenient to do so.

Sadly, statistics are on your side when you ask google to confirm your opinion, and hence that is not a valid argument.

Valid arguments would be the fact that some organs, other than your brain, produce hormones, and that these do influence your brain. To what extent is debatable, but there's an undeniable link.

[GlyphGryph]

Especially since that link basically amounts to a page full of tabloids surrounding a single jstor article. A page full of tabloids supporting your argument is effectively evidence against it!

And the JSTOR article seems to state that yes, it can involve a personality change - but all evidence points to it being a side effect of the trauma of the life altering nature of the event. (Having a working heart instead of a crappy one can certainly change your worldview, and being in a very-nearly-lethal accident can do the same)

[LordBucket]

1) It's not very important to me to try to convince you guys of something that I'm uncertain about, and only consider a viable possibility.

2) You obviously didn't look very hard given that there were only six minutes between my posting the search result link you the two of you replying to complain about the evidence.

Valid arguments would be the fact that some organs, other than your brain, produce hormones,
and that these do influence your brain.

EDIT:
On second reading I've begun to suspect that you might not have meant this in the way that I first interpreted it.

[alexandertnt]

My body is merely vessel for my brain, and I belive that consciousnes sexists solely in my brain. As such, I am very loose with restrictions on what I would do with my body as I have no particular emotional attachment to it. As long as it continues to do what I want it to do, im happy.

I would be totally fine with anything that has been proven safe. Anything from life-saving implants (be them organic, robotic, or whatever), to the ultimate in DNA-altering* cosmetic surgery. If I could alter my body with a few clicks on my computer like 3d modelling, that would be awesome, and I would have zero moral issues with that.

*standin for some unknown process of sufficiently-advanced-technology.

[Gentlefish]

Your brain isn't everything.

[weenog]

Please note, from previous experience, this is starting to look like yet another bay12 pointless argument about a specific hypothetical case blown completely out of proportion that descends into pages and pages of stupidity as people forget the original context.

To be fair, news media and politicians do this all the time, too.  We might be just getting a preview of what we'll see when somebody gets this technology off the ground and does something big with it.

[alexandertnt]

Your brain isn't everything.

It apparently still is when it comes to consciousnes.

Although its influence is far-reaching, the second brain is not the seat of any conscious thoughts or decision-making.

[LordBucket]

It apparently still is when it comes to consciousnes.

Don't ignore the significance of observational input to a conscious system.

[Gentlefish]

Oh man, conscious thought, because that's totally where everything matters. There's so much more unconscious thought that goes into life that affects mood and personality. Like, everything.

[alway]

So basically they're device drivers. For your gut.

And in fact we see similar things in the optic nerve; it does quite a bit of pre-processing on visual signals. These include things like motion and edge detection, and various basic image recognition tasks like them. And, as it turns out, by duplicating these tasks in software we can create bionic eyes which have much better quality/function even with hardware kept constant.

[alexandertnt]

Here is how I see it:

Someone becomes blind.
That person's concious and unconcious thought process is now altered because of the change in stimuli.
That same person gets a new set of fancy, half-robotic-half-organic eyes.
That person's concious and unconcious thought process is now altered because of the change in stimuli.

Someone wants and gets a fancy set of half-robotic-half-organic laser-shooting eyes.
That person's concious and unconcious thought process is now altered because of the change in stimuli.

i.e. I believe it will change my mind, but as long as its still my mind (replacing the brain itself might be an issue, for example), and the change to stimuli is good,  it strikes me as a good thing I am all for.

[Gentlefish]

I'm gonna use my favorite word here: Umwelt.

[LordBucket]

i.e. I believe it will change my mind, but as long as its still my mind (replacing the brain itself might
be an issue, for example), and the change to stimuli is good,  it strikes me as a good thing I am all for.

And how would you classify a change in which an organ of your body no longer produces nor responds to hormones? Or in the case of a donor replacement rather than a mechanical one, produces and responds to hormones with different but unknown-until-implanted sensitivity? Would you consider that a good or bad change?

Using the heart as an example, looking it up, we get...Atrial Natriuretic Peptides. There you go. A hormone produced by the human heart that influences a surprisingly long list of bodily functions, as well as the production of yet other hormones from other glands.

Think of the state change you experience when you see a pretty girl. Think of how your conscious experience is altered when you watch a horror movie. Think of how you feel when you see a kitten. Various organs in your body are involved in the production of and reaction to various chemicals that are involved in the experiencing of these experiences. Consequently, your body, your genetics...has a particular way of experiencing these things. Somebody else's organs, and certainly a plastic organ would not necessarily have the same sensitivity to, nor ability to produce the chemicals that are involved and would therefore probably tend to generate a different experience.

[alexandertnt]

And how would you classify a change in which an organ of your body no longer produces nor responds to hormones? Or in the case of a donor replacement rather than a mechanical one, produces and responds to hormones with different but unknown-until-implanted sensitivity? Would you consider that a good or bad change?

I would consider it brilliantly wonderful compared to the alternative.

Somebody else's organs, and certainly a plastic organ would not necessarily have the same sensitivity to, nor ability to produce the chemicals that are involved and would therefore probably tend to generate a different experience.

Possibly. But I personally dont have a problem with that. Its not like I am being forced at gunpoint against my will to like/dislike different things. If my likes/dislikes change, then... well... yeah. They change. *shrugs*. But I suppose I could understand why other people may have an issue with this.