cave hermit wrote:If you could choose to have your brain removed from your body, prefrontal cortex and any other parts of the brain responsible for higher thought completely destroyed or excised, and have the remaining intact brain tissue put in some type of life support tank that electrically stimulated dopamine reward pathways continuously, would you do it?
Nope. You've asked a question that comes up a lot around my work.
1. Consciousness is embodied; by tossing the body you'd lose most of "you." You're not just a brain being chauferred around by a torso and a pair of legs, "you" are a full-body sensorium.
2. Consciousness is environmentally situated. If you toss yourself in a jar and get rid of the environmental stimulus, you'd go insane for the same reasons people who spend too long in anechoic chambers or sensory deprivation tanks do. Your experience of yourself is one of reactions to, interactions with, and anticipations of the world; take out the world, there's no you.
3. Not that those things matter here, since the prefrontal cortex is where consciousness is largely generated. It functions as a neural synecdoche of experience, allowing us to blend and contrast the experience of one part of the brain - say the auditory cortex - with another, such as hippocampal memory. This allows us to have singular but complex experiences drawing from multiple domains, and to reflect upon them. Without the anterior prefrontal cortex you'd be a vegetable who wasn't even aware of being blissed out in this scenario.
4. But even ignoring all that, don't fall for the social media pop-neuroscience stuff about dopamine being "the pleasure chemical." Experiences of pleasure are more varied and complex than that, there'd be no such thing as poetry otherwise. Neurotransmitters are effectively just keys, which unlock different actions depending on which neural keyhole they're put into. Dopamine has more to do with the motivation/arousal system than anything; its most powerful "rewards" are found in anticipatory situations, which is why the gambler waiting for that last card to turn or the kid on Christmas Eve experience such powerful emotions. Except in this scenario you're not doing anything, so Christmas never arrives. It would get extremely frustrating if you had any consciousness left.
So that's a hard pass on the lobotomy. But even ignoring the neurology, there's a big distinction between hedonic pleasure: sex, chocolate, Gunstar Heroes - and eudaimonic happiness: seeing your kids grow up, reaching a career milestone, etc. Eudaimonia involves experiences which might be difficult and not at all fun, but result in the greatest self-satisfaction precisely because they sit within a larger context of effort, sacrifice and validation. An orgasm is a more intense and immediate pleasure than seeing a community centre you worked hard to build open its doors, but the latter will provide far more lasting meaning to your life.
Just seeing someone else say it helps.
Justice prevailed and Peru restored their fantastic and fair government? 