Epigenetics, Existentialism, and Mind-Body Dualism (Khan)

On my previous post regarding the ethical implications of epigenetics research, Aileen Kennedy provided a thoughtful comment on how this might relate to the concept of mind-body dualism. Instead of writing a short reply to Ms. Kennedy, I decided to devote a full blog post to how our developing understanding of epigenetics might alter how we think about the relationship between biology and identity.

Among modern philosophers, Descartes stands out for his elucidation of the Platonic concept of mind-body dualism. Descartes theorized that the body was simply like a machine and that what truly defined one's existence or true identity was the immaterial mind (recall his famous dictum: “cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am”) which controls the body. In other words, the body is simply a coalescence of flesh (like a mindless Golem) that has little to do with defining one's essence outside of purely material or aesthetic considerations.

Of course modern medicine and neuroscience have rejected this Cartesian notion that the mind is purely immaterial and not connected to any physical tissue. However, in its stead modern medicine has established its own mind-body dualism of neural tissue being the repository of our individual identity and the rest of our body being purely functionary but not defining our essence. Indeed, neuroscience has located different areas of the brain (e.g., the amygdala as the seat of emotion and social learning and the pre-frontal cortex for self-control and goal-setting) that can grossly said to be related to one's personality or identity. For instance, if someone has their frontal lobe damaged by physical trauma or prenatal exposure to alcohol, doctors can predict that person will exhibit problems with impulse controls among other issues.

Further, we can see this mind-body dualism manifested in a variety of ways, such as private cryogenics providers offering to freeze simply one's head but not the rest of the body (because the brain is all one really needs to preserve the immortality of one's existence) with the hope that this head can be reattached to a donor body in the future. We also see in it in modern bioethical regulations. Consider the UK's ban on allowing human-animal chimera embryos to develop past 14 days. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6524883.stm Why 14 days you might ask? The reason is that shortly after 14 days in human embryos the primitive streak (beginning of spinal and brain tissue) starts to form and the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into neural crest cells begins. The ethical argument is that before “generic” stem cells (which are actually unique in terms of their DNA) differentiate into neural cells, there is no potential for the putative organism to develop any individuality. Ergo, human individuality (identity) stems from neural tissue--other human (body/corporeal) tissue is irrelevant in this regard.

However, there has always been anecdotal evidence that non-neural cells can also exhibit “memory” or fundamental markers of one's unique identity. There are numerous case reports of heart transplant recipient all of a sudden being endowed with the artistic skills or peculiar dietary preferences of their deceased organ donors. In other words, the existential or lived experiences of the heart donor seems to have been imprinted upon their non-neural tissue and appears to be “talking to” to the cells in its new host body. Before one relegates this concept of “cellular memory” to sensationalist new-age hucksterism that one might find on daytime television (yes, I'm calling you out Oprah for giving credibility to “The Secret”) consider that Dr. Gary Schwartz of University of Arizona has documented 70 cases where transplant recipients have inherited fundamental personality traits of their donors (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-381589/The-art-transplant.html#ixzz13mkpSZg9).

While these case reports are not definitive proof that cellular memory exists, the concept that individual cells outside of our brain are indeed imprinted with our life's experiences seems more plausible with the epigenetics providing a demonstrable and logical mechanism of how this might occur.

Will this concept of non-neural tissue storing important information about one's individual, existential identity change normative considerations relating to organ donation, embryonic stem cell research, cry, etc? I honestly do not know, but I think it is interesting to pose this question and see what others think.(Khan)

 

Comments

[Diana]

Does this mean we could be influenced by a blood doner that we get blood from, also??

[sallysunshine]

Our bodies are more than the physical. Our memories/emotions are stored in our energy field that surrounds the body. Read Barbara Brennan, Hands of Light. And in terms of Karma, aren't we taking on the Karma of the donor when we receive blood, organs...? It's wonderful that mainstream medicine can finally begin to act as though it has investigated the body enough to know that it will heal itself if we would get the heck out of it's way. Of course truly health conscious medicine cannot exist in a super capitalistic health system.

[sally sunshine]

The body is more than the physical. Our emotions are stored in a part of us which is outside the solid matter. Read Barbra Brennan, Hands of Light. It's about time medicine field is asking such questions, but the answers are already known. In a super capitalistic society don't expect to learn about your humanity from the health department. We take on the Karma of the donor of blood and organs. Medical community needs to be educated about the divinity we each possess. The body heals itself. Just get the heck out of it's way. To think that your physical head (brain) possesses your mind after you are dead just shows ignorance at our highest levels of neuroscience. You seem to not have discovered the mental, astral, causal... bodies which we are.

[Keith]

As a scientist, I am sceptical of the explanation offered for changes to mental capabilities following heart transplants. However, I do agree that the brain, and even neural tissue in general, is not the sole seat of the person, which I take to be your main point. Descartes is often ridiculed in scientific circles for his "ghost in the machine", but modern understanding of the nature of reality gives him quite some credence. We are both our mind and our body and the best model of what it is to be a human being takes these combined, not one or the other separately. The mind is best described as the product of information processing in the brain, but the brain is strongly influenced by the chemical environment generated by the rest of the body - in fact the two influence each other intimately as components of a complex system from which personality emerges.

Of great interest is the difference between the material world and the mind. A scientific view is that the mind is one of the creations of the working brain, but we should really extend this to the whole body to take account of the mutual influences. According to recent research evidence, our behaviour (the outward signs of our mind) is determined, not by conscious deliberation, but rather by established patterns of responses to sensory signals combined with internally generated impulses, of which we are only aware after the event. The conscious mind is a super-construction with the role of reviewing and evaluating our behaviour, not causing it. The mind, and its causitive neuro-endocrinal processes amount to information processing in ways which are unique to the individual. Information processing is one of the essential features of all life according to the Manturana and Valera hypothesis (which seems to be right), but it is taken to the ultimate level (that we know of) in the human being. Information processing - computation - is the process of making information semiotic (meaningful), given a definition of (primitive) information as differences in the material world (the unit of which is a single difference in space or time which encodes a single bit). Since all information must be encoded in differences in the physical world, the mind cannot be other than a part of that world, hence classical dualism is wrong. However, because the processing done by a human mind results from the combined efforts of body and brain, chemicals and neural signals, it is also wrong to treat the brain as the whole and independent home of the mind.