the brain’s components are scattered in a way that will prevent the unity of agency. The emergentist account of the soul may claim that when a single brain is not involved with producing a soul but is split and each cerebral hemisphere transplanted, then there will be two souls. The emergentist claims the soul is where the brain is, perhaps something akin to an extended simple (Zimmerman If (2010). the parts of the brain are separated from each other, they won’t together produce a single soul. When they are together, the cutting of the corpus callosum and the loss of a pathway results in not two souls but the one emergent soul being restricted in certain functions. The single brain produces a single soul, it is just that the soul can’t do what it did before. The emergent dualist view seems suspect when we consider non-overlapping parts of the brain that could each produce consciousness. If the split brain can give rise to thoughts cut off from each other, then transplanting those cerebral hemispheres into two disjoint bodies should do the same. Unlike the case of the split brain in one body, the two disjoint bodies would seem to be distinct agents. Moor and Korsgaard note that the split brain in a single body rarely produces any frustration of agency that one would expect if there really were two persons connected to a single body. But there would clearly be two distinct agents after the cerebral hemispheres were fissioned and transplanted. Yet prior to the fissioning and transplant, the hemispheres can’t produce emergent souls or there will be two people where we want just one. So the presence of an adjacent cerebral hemisphere must somehow serve to prevent each hemisphere from giving rise to a soul. Yet this prevention must not prevent the soul from thinking the thoughts that are realized in the entire brain. This prevention puzzle of the emergent dualist provides some additional reason to think that God would instead provide the needed soul(s) for the transplanted hemispheres as well as the original soul of the earlier undivided brain. Secular philosophers with dualist sympathies might opt for Unger’s view of particular souls being disposed to be connected with bodies or brains. He thinks there is just one soul disposed to
the brain’s components are scattered in a way that will prevent the unity of agency. The emergentist account of the soul may claim that when a single brain is not involved with producing a soul but is split and each cerebral hemisphere transplanted, then there will be two souls. The emergentist claims the soul is where the brain is, perhaps something akin to an extended simple (Zimmerman (2010). If the parts of the brain are separated from each other, they won’t together produce a single soul. When they are together, the cutting of the corpus callosum and the loss of a pathway results in not two souls but the one emergent soul being restricted in certain functions. The single brain produces a single soul, it is just that the soul can’t do what it did before. The emergent dualist view seems suspect when we consider non-overlapping parts of the brain that could each produce consciousness. If the split brain can give rise to thoughts cut off from each other, then transplanting those cerebral hemispheres into two disjoint bodies should do the same. Unlike the case of the split brain in one body, the two disjoint bodies would seem to be distinct agents. Moor and Korsgaard note that the split brain in a single body rarely produces any frustration of agency that one would expect if there really were two persons connected to a single body. But there would clearly be two distinct agents after the cerebral hemispheres were fissioned and transplanted. Yet prior to the fissioning and transplant, the hemispheres can’t produce emergent souls or there will be two people where we want just one. So the presence of an adjacent cerebral hemisphere must somehow serve to prevent each hemisphere from giving rise to a soul. Yet this prevention must not prevent the soul from thinking the thoughts that are realized in the entire brain. This prevention puzzle of the emergent dualist provides some additional reason to think that God would instead provide the needed soul(s) for the transplanted hemispheres as well as the original soul of the earlier undivided brain. Secular philosophers with dualist sympathies might opt for Unger’s view of particular souls being disposed to be connected with bodies or brains. He thinks there is just one soul disposed to
SplitBrainsNoHeadacheForSoulTheorists.docx