What is a Person Anyway?

            When you break it down, and I mean really break it down, what constitutes a person. There is of course the physical body, but that is pretty easily described as a collection of organs dynamically reacting to various stimuli. But then there is the brain. The brain is, of course, still an organ, and it still reacts to stimuli. But we cannot predict the outcome like we can with other organs. It blurs the lines of simply reacting, by the veil of what we call consciousness.

By contrast, take the heart. When the body begins exerting greater than usual energy, the heart is presented with stimuli that cause it to react. The heart responds by beating faster to provide greater blood flow, and ultimately more oxygen. The heart behaves predictably in this way. The heart is not assessing the situation and weighing its options in order to determine the best course of action. The heart is not concerned with outcomes. The heart is simply reacting to stimuli based on how it was “programmed.” Programmed being a metaphor for the evolution of organs to include specific combinations and arrangements of cells such that energetically driven chemical reactions result in evolutionarily favored outcomes.

But the brain is different, you say. The brain does weigh options and consider outcomes and that is what leads to interpersonal differences within humanity. But what if it is not. What if everything the brain does is predictable just like the heart, lungs, and every other organ. Think about the heart again. The heart can be conditioned. If you engage in aerobic exercise for sixty minutes a day, five days a week for five years, your heart will physically change and beat more efficiently. The way it responds to the same stimuli from five years ago will be different due to its conditioning. The brain is no different. The brain can be conditioned. In fact, the brain is apt to be conditioned, and even small changes can result in noticeable intrapersonal differences.

So maybe the brain is still just reacting to stimuli in a predictable manner, but individual brains are just too different from one another, or even from themselves just five minutes ago, that we cannot figure out the equation. So, what is a person really, but a collection of conditioned organs dynamically reacting to various stimuli… exactly as they have been “programmed” to do.

-AMS