Introduction
Last post reasoned using the the almost-whimsical teletransportation thought experiment. Here, we will reify that rarefied philosophy with the real — yet oh so strange — corpus callosotomy surgery, and in doing so, plumb deeper into the philosophy of mind and metaphysics of identity.
Problem
Patient P suffers from epilepsy, intense seizures.[2] His doctor exercised every tool in her conventional armamentarium to no avail: the ketogenic diet didn’t stop the seizures; the nerve sedatives reduced the intensity but not enough; the vagus nerve stimulation worked at first, but its effects leveled off. But then, she cogitated, there is that highly nonstandard procedure so voluminously described in the neuropsych textbooks…