And now, as promised, a special comment.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

1. That is a defective brain--it's not properly reflective of the individual's physical body. In other circumstances where someone's self-identity does not match their physical body, everyone agrees that the mind is defective (e.g., body dysmorphic disorder, phantom limb syndrome, various eating disorders, etc.).

I do not agree with that whatsoever, so you are wrong, everyone does not agree with it. Phantom limb syndrome especially, how the hell is the brain the defective part there!?

2. I've never said it's a trivial change--the magnitude of the change is obviously large. I contend only that it is not murder.

From a legal perspective, certainly. But ethically? It involves changing someone so radically that they cannot conceive of themselves after the change.

Well that makes me sympathize with you.

Although it is true, a schizophrenic bushman likely understands the concept of murder.

It was not intended to make you sympathize with me; it was an objective statement, the brain structure of your sister's is more distant to your's than that of any man in existence.

The counterargument is that changing someone's self-identity does not constitute murder. Taking someone who's crippled by anxiety about how big their nose is and then treating them so that they no longer identify themselves solely by means of their nose does not kill the person.

You are using an absurd example, as if social anxiety over having a big nose is somehow remotely comparable to a completely different brain architecture.

[Alyrium Denryle]

The counterargument is that changing someone's self-identity does not constitute murder. Taking someone who's crippled by anxiety about how big their nose is and then treating them so that they no longer identify themselves solely by means of their nose does not kill the person.

A cognitive problem is not the same as a phenotypically normal female brain inside a phenotypically normal male body.

If you cannot understand that, then you need to go back to school and take a course in developmental biology or neuroscience.

[Simon_Jester]

1. That is a defective brain--it's not properly reflective of the individual's physical body. In other circumstances where someone's self-identity does not match their physical body, everyone agrees that the mind is defective (e.g., body dysmorphic disorder, phantom limb syndrome, various eating disorders, etc.).

But in all those cases, there's no way to rationalize the body with the brain in the brain's favor. You can't take an anorexic and give them a body they can live with, because a body thin enough to suit them would be dead of starvation long since. You can't give a phantom-limb sufferer a body they can live with, because we haven't invented neural interfaces that are worth a damn yet.

But you can give a transsexual a body they can live with, more or less. So why not do it that way, when we already know how to do it that way and have no reason to assume it's even possible to do it the other way by revising the brain to match the body?

Why must we try to resolve all mind-body conflicts in the body's favor, given that we identify far more strongly with our minds than with our bodies in the first place?

[Broomstick]

I've gotta come up with a name for the problem of "People think we can eliminate it but we can't 'cause the universe is a motherfucker."

We can't forever eliminate Down's Syndrome. Nearly every case of Down's Syndrome is a spontaneous error, NOT an inherited one! It is a risk at every pregnancy. Even if we aborted every Down's fetus discovered some would still slip through the cracks.

Who cares? The universe that you have described is much better than the current one, in which Down's syndrome is tolerated and in some circles encouraged.

Who the fuck would encourage Down's? Truly, I have never heard of this before. Who is doing this thing?

Funny thing is, we're finding that more and more often these people are more capable than prior generations believed. Individuals such as Chris Burke and Sarah Sherman are not people who are going to be burdens on society even if they are at higher risk than normal for certain health problems. Since we're going to have some people with Down's in the future yes, we should try to help those people as much as possible. Especially since there is some indication that part of the problem is the body producing an excess of certain substances that then cause damage - if therapies could be developed that reduce that production and/or mitigate the damage that results then even when Down's does occur it might be possible to greatly lessen the resulting impact on intellect and health.

So basically you're saying that because a scattered few individuals with Down's Syndrome live "full" and marginally productive lives, we therefore should make sure that the incidence of Down's Syndrome remains high in society?

No, fuckwit, that's NOT what I'm saying. Don't distort my words or conflate them with someone else's. Those individuals prove by example that Down's Syndome does not always doom one to a substandard and dependent existence. Ideally, for those who are alive with the syndrome medicine should maximize their chances of becoming one of the high-performers rather than just throw human beings on the trash heap. Stating that we should do everything we can to allow the handicapped to function independently is in no way to advocate deliberately creating more handicapped people.

1. That is a defective brain--it's not properly reflective of the individual's physical body. In other circumstances where someone's self-identity does not match their physical body, everyone agrees that the mind is defective (e.g., body dysmorphic disorder, phantom limb syndrome, various eating disorders, etc.).

[Nitpick] "Phantom Limb" is no longer considered a defect or a disorder. It has a biological basis (portions of the nerves to the absent limb still exist, and the portions of the brain that used to control/sense the missing part still exist) and has been found to be a crucial factor in the ability to use a prosthetic limb. Painful phantom limbs are a problems, but there are treatments for that now (even if not always successful).

[Master of Ossus]

[snip]Which is what I'm getting at. Imagine you zap me with some technobabble device that changes my mind from a typically male one to a typically female one (which, as Her Grace says, requires changes in brain structure as far as we know). Afterwards, based on what we know about sex-related differences in the brain (and therefore the mind), I'm not the same person. The old Simon is not the new Simone, even if they're similar enough to be fraternal twins.

So we now have this new Simone, but where did Simon go? I can only conclude that Simon is dead, or effectively dead. And so I would view this as being closely equivalent to suicide, with the notable difference that someone keeps getting to use my body. Though I have to say, I don't envy this hypothetical Simone, since she's now a woman's mind trapped in a man's body... she might very well want to go back through the zapper in reverse.

I understand where the analogy is coming from, but I still disagree with its applicability. If I were to (somehow) radically change my identity tomorrow, I would obviously have been radically altered and my personality would almost certainly change dramatically, but I still would not say that I had been killed in any meaningful sense of the term--I would only be different. I guess I view identity as in some ways a more malleable concept than you do in that I think it's integrally related to one's experiences. Even the prism through which we understand those experiences is not so central.

[Alyrium Denryle]

[Nitpick] "Phantom Limb" is no longer considered a defect or a disorder. It has a biological basis (portions of the nerves to the absent limb still exist, and the portions of the brain that used to control/sense the missing part still exist) and has been found to be a crucial factor in the ability to use a prosthetic limb. Painful phantom limbs are a problems, but there are treatments for that now (even if not always successful).

Yeah. Phantom limb syndrome is the normal condition. Your brain did not evolve to be able to tell if something is missing. It can actually be treated very well with some VERY basic cognitive therapy.

[Master of Ossus]

Who the fuck would encourage Down's? Truly, I have never heard of this before. Who is doing this thing?

The Down's Syndrome community, in the article that was presented.

No, fuckwit, that's NOT what I'm saying. Don't distort my words or conflate them with someone else's. Those individuals prove by example that Down's Syndome does not always doom one to a substandard and dependent existence. Ideally, for those who are alive with the syndrome medicine should maximize their chances of becoming one of the high-performers rather than just throw human beings on the trash heap. Stating that we should do everything we can to allow the handicapped to function independently is in no way to advocate deliberately creating more handicapped people.

Agreed. The latter position is the one against which I was reacting.

[Nitpick] "Phantom Limb" is no longer considered a defect or a disorder. It has a biological basis (portions of the nerves to the absent limb still exist, and the portions of the brain that used to control/sense the missing part still exist) and has been found to be a crucial factor in the ability to use a prosthetic limb. Painful phantom limbs are a problems, but there are treatments for that now (even if not always successful).

Conceded, but the other examples stand.

[Master of Ossus]

But in all those cases, there's no way to rationalize the body with the brain in the brain's favor. You can't take an anorexic and give them a body they can live with, because a body thin enough to suit them would be dead of starvation long since. You can't give a phantom-limb sufferer a body they can live with, because we haven't invented neural interfaces that are worth a damn yet.

But you can give a transsexual a body they can live with, more or less. So why not do it that way, when we already know how to do it that way and have no reason to assume it's even possible to do it the other way by revising the brain to match the body?

Why must we try to resolve all mind-body conflicts in the body's favor, given that we identify far more strongly with our minds than with our bodies in the first place?

I don't know why you think that I'm opposed to allowing transsexuals to change sexes. I'm stating only that altering their minds would not be homicide in any meaningful sense.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Even the prism through which we understand those experiences is not so central.

Sorry. But John Locke and his concept of the blank slate has been proven wrong for a looooooooong fucking time.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Conceded, but the other examples stand.

Yes, but they're not applicable to transsexualism, because transsexualism is more or less directly analogous to phantom limb syndrome. The brain is giving commands and expecting to receive input from a female body, but the body is not of the right type and responding to those commands incorrectly and providing unexpected data. Transsexuals have phantom body syndrome, to the point where it's been documented that we slam our shoulders into doorframes all the time because our brains can't recognize that our shoulders are unexpectedly broad.

[Master of Ossus]

Yes, but they're not applicable to transsexualism, because transsexualism is more or less directly analogous to phantom limb syndrome. The brain is giving commands and expecting to receive input from a female body, but the body is not of the right type and responding to those commands incorrectly and providing unexpected data. Transsexuals have phantom body syndrome, to the point where it's been documented that we slam our shoulders into doorframes all the time because our brains can't recognize that our shoulders are unexpectedly broad.

Interesting. Do you have a source for that?

But let me ask you this, then: do you consider psychotherapists who treat people with multiple personality sydrome to be murderers?

[Simon_Jester]

I understand where the analogy is coming from, but I still disagree with its applicability. If I were to (somehow) radically change my identity tomorrow, I would obviously have been radically altered and my personality would almost certainly change dramatically, but I still would not say that I had been killed in any meaningful sense of the term--I would only be different.

The new you surely wouldn't. The old you doesn't have an opinion anymore; its perspective on the universe is gone. It may not be "dead," but there ought to be a word for its change in status, and I would consider that new word functionally equivalent to "dead" for the old you's purposes.

I guess I view identity as in some ways a more malleable concept than you do in that I think it's integrally related to one's experiences. Even the prism through which we understand those experiences is not so central.

Thing is, what is integral to your identity? Can any conceivable process be said to transform "you" into "someone else?"

And if not, if your identity is that malleable, then how do you tell the difference between yourself and another person? We can distinguish between, say, chemical elements, because it is impossible to change one into another by normal means. They have traits that belong uniquely to one element and not the other. If personhood doesn't work that way, if any person can acquire any combination of traits and still be the same person... is there really any difference between people, or are we all just amorphous mind-blobs that happen to occupy different incidental shapes at this particular instance?

What makes you not me, if you can be made into a practically identical copy of me and remain yourself?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Interesting. Do you have a source for that?

It would be covered as a variation in kinesthetic sense, and though I can't find the particular source for that anecdote at the moment, I can provide a study done on kinesthetic perception in transsexuals. I'll also observe that there's never been a single recorded case, even in those individuals who have had regrets (who are a fraction of a percent of those who have undergone GRS), of someone having the equivalent of phantom limb syndrome regarding their genitalia. In short the body of the individual who has undergone genital reassignment surgery recognizes the corrected genitalia as being correct within their kinesthetic perception framework.

But let me ask you this, then: do you consider psychotherapists who treat people with multiple personality sydrome to be murderers?

I do not have enough data to honestly answer that question one way or another.

[Master of Ossus]

The new you surely wouldn't. The old you doesn't have an opinion anymore; its perspective on the universe is gone. It may not be "dead," but there ought to be a word for its change in status, and I would consider that new word functionally equivalent to "dead" for the old you's purposes.

That would be true under your scenario, but I assume that I can't be required to assume a new and entirely counter position simply because it is posited that I now think so differently as to disagree with myself and my current understanding.

Thing is, what is integral to your identity? Can any conceivable process be said to transform "you" into "someone else?"

And if not, if your identity is that malleable, then how do you tell the difference between yourself and another person? We can distinguish between, say, chemical elements, because it is impossible to change one into another by normal means. They have traits that belong uniquely to one element and not the other. If personhood doesn't work that way, if any person can acquire any combination of traits and still be the same person... is there really any difference between people, or are we all just amorphous mind-blobs that happen to occupy different incidental shapes at this particular instance?

What makes you not me, if you can be made into a practically identical copy of me and remain yourself?

Again, "my experiences" is the answer to every one of your questions. I cannot be given another person's experiences, they define me as distinct from other people who lack those experiences, they belong uniquely to me and through no conceivable process can they be assigned to someone else.

[Anguirus]

Since MoO seems to be objecting to the article more so than what any of us are saying (from the "eliminate Down" side of the argument, not the "change brain to match body makes any sense" side, to which I agree that education or research would be helpful), I took a look at it and I think too much is being read into it.

I didn't catch anyone in direct opposition to screening younger mothers, MUCH less any "encouragement" of Down syndrome, but rather to a perception that a Down person will be necessarily unable to contribute to society, love, be loved, etc.

This issue will remain resistant to all attempts to simplify it because it's impossible to cure Down syndrome, either directly or in society through artificial selection. You can only choose to bring a Down person into the world, or not bring a person into the world. This is a non-trivial decision for most people, and I suspect it becomes even less so for people who spend a lot of time interacting with Down syndrome people.

Now, if these guys were seriously proposing legislation to limit screenings, or inflicting Down in the way that certain deaf parents have inflicted deafness on children, I would flip my lid. But that's not what we're talking about.

[Serafina]

But you can give a transsexual a body they can live with, more or less. So why not do it that way, when we already know how to do it that way and have no reason to assume it's even possible to do it the other way by revising the brain to match the body?

Why must we try to resolve all mind-body conflicts in the body's favor, given that we identify far more strongly with our minds than with our bodies in the first place?

This.

That's what differs transsexuality from other disorders and seriously questions it's qualitification as a regular disorder.
Yes, something is obviously wrong. No one is questioning that.
Yes, it is undesirable. And yes, it is not positive at all.
But unlike all other psychological issues, transsexuality can be completely treated by treating the body.

So, since it is completely different from all those things listed in this thread in several ways - why is it comparable?
Because you think that transsexuals "think" that their gender is different? Then tell me, why do you think think that you are whatever gender you are? And did you ever read up on the differences between male and female brains? What, except preconceptions, qualifies you for that assumption?

On the issue of resolving transsexualtiy before birth:
No one wants to be stuck with a wrong body. So, if we ever find a way to reverse brain-chemistry before the child really forms memories or personalty, sure, let's do it.
Of course, i seriously doubt that that will ever be possible - after all, we are talking about a near-brain-wide change.

However, once the child is older than, say, a year, this becomes a whole different issue. Essentially, you would be forcing a sentient being to change his/her whole personality. I think it is pretty sure that various traumata and other unpleasant things would occur from that.
I do not see how this should be acceptable, since we already HAVE a solution that allows transsexuals to lead normal lives.

Is it murder? Well, this is an area where it gets really foggy - what makes a person alive?
The brain will obviously not stop functioning, so no murder there.
But what makes a person an individual? Memories? Personality?
I have no answer to that, and that really is one of the areas where i really think that we have to call it subjective and leave it at that.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Again, "my experiences" is the answer to every one of your questions. I cannot be given another person's experiences, they define me as distinct from other people who lack those experiences, they belong uniquely to me and through no conceivable process can they be assigned to someone else.

Then essentially what this thread comes down to is a disagreement between you and the rest of us over what constitutes the nature of human existence. We are arguing genetics and brain structure determine the individual and that I would still be me with a completely different set of life experiences--something that human imagination tends to follow. It is always easier for someone to imagine themselves in a different time or place or station in life than to imagine their very nature as being different. But in the end it seems that the argument has simply returned to the ages old nature vs. nurture.

[Anguirus]

But let me ask you this, then: do you consider psychotherapists who treat people with multiple personality sydrome to be murderers?

I can offer an anecdotal perspective on this. I am personally acquainted with Diane Champe (Google her) and have attended one of her talks. She suffered very severe DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) as a result of terrible sexual abuse as a child. Her therapist, who is now a dear friend of hers, is one of a relative few therapists who specialize in treating DID (many do not even accept that it is "real") and spent over a decade working with her to "re-integrate" all of her personalities into herself.

So, she would not consider it murder. The way she described it was nothing like Hollywood would portray it, with one personality "winning out" and destroying others. I don't believe she considers herself to be "missing" part of herself now, she just wishes that she, well, hadn't been abused so she wouldn't have had to go through all that.

I'm not an expert on DID though by a long shot. I don't even know how typical her experience was.

[Simon_Jester]

That would be true under your scenario, but I assume that I can't be required to assume a new and entirely counter position simply because it is posited that I now think so differently as to disagree with myself and my current understanding.

Fair enough, but conversely:

The entity which I refer to as "the new you" (henceforth MoO II) tells me that they are the same entity I refer to as "the old you" (henceforth MoO I). But MoO II would say that whether it was true or not, because MoO II remembers being MoO I, even if MoO II is not entirely comfortable with those memories. That doesn't mean MoO II is MoO I. After all, I could plant fake memories of being MoO I in a completely different person, who bears no relationship to you whatsoever... that wouldn't make them into another MoO I, would it?

Am I obliged to take MoO II's word for it that MoO II is in fact MoO I, even when there are divergences in behavior, attitudes, and mindset so great that I could never imagine them being similar if they both existed side by side?

Again, "my experiences" is the answer to every one of your questions. I cannot be given another person's experiences, they define me as distinct from other people who lack those experiences, they belong uniquely to me and through no conceivable process can they be assigned to someone else.

But that implies that my above statement is wrong, that I cannot give you false memories. Or would that change who you are? Or does it not matter, because your memories aren't really your experiences?

The most favorable answer to your case would seem to be that memory and experience aren't the same thing. But if they aren't, how do we tell what experiences someone has had? If you somehow alter me into as close a duplicate of you as theoretically possible (rewriting mind and restructuring body accordingly), and I now remember being you... am I or am I not another you?

Then essentially what this thread comes down to is a disagreement between you and the rest of us over what constitutes the nature of human existence. We are arguing genetics and brain structure determine the individual and that I would still be me with a completely different set of life experiences--something that human imagination tends to follow. It is always easier for someone to imagine themselves in a different time or place or station in life than to imagine their very nature as being different. But in the end it seems that the argument has simply returned to the ages old nature vs. nurture.

Speaking for myself, I seem to be arguing a hybrid position: I think that identity and existence are a function of mind, which is actually quite a bit like MoO's position.

I think I draw different conclusions from MoO because I think that the patterns of mind that you can use to identify yourself need to have enough unique structural features to make you somehow different from other people we would not normally say are identical to you. And then it follows that if I remove my unique mental features, I'm not really me, because there's no reason to say that I'm me, as opposed to being someone else with a different mental landscape.

MoO does not seem to believe that.

By the way, I agree that brain structure has a huge effect on the mind, but that effect is sort of incidental to me. I think that ways of changing the mind that do NOT require changing the physical structure it runs on would be just as identity-disrupting as those that do, if the same amount of net mind-change occurs.

[Simon_Jester]

Ghetto edit:

I can offer an anecdotal perspective on this. I am personally acquainted with Diane Champe (Google her) and have attended one of her talks. She suffered very severe DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) as a result of terrible sexual abuse as a child. Her therapist, who is now a dear friend of hers, is one of a relative few therapists who specialize in treating DID (many do not even accept that it is "real") and spent over a decade working with her to "re-integrate" all of her personalities into herself.

So, she would not consider it murder. The way she described it was nothing like Hollywood would portray it, with one personality "winning out" and destroying others. I don't believe she considers herself to be "missing" part of herself now, she just wishes that she, well, hadn't been abused so she wouldn't have had to go through all that.

I'm not an expert on DID though by a long shot. I don't even know how typical her experience was.

At a guess, and purely a guess (hey, my last pure guess worked pretty well...) :

The personalities that get spawned in DID are, I gather, often dysfunctional to varying degrees. This may be because in some obscure sense they are "incomplete" or fragmentary. For example, they may be very good at enduring pain (since abuse is a common cause of DID), but have effectively zero communication skills. Things like that.

In that case, it's quite possible to build one personality out of several fragments without destroying any of the fragments. A bit of bending and folding around the edges may be required, but that can easily be within the bounds of the kind of normal, evolutionary change that people's minds undergo all the time anyway.

We might envision the process as sort of like the way that people who live together for a long time can come to think increasingly alike, with a sort of mental fusion going on. The difference is that the fusion can proceed to completion because in this case, the minds in question occupy the same brain. So instead of getting two strikingly similar people, you get one strikingly self-similar person.

[Channel72]

It's a medical... phenomenon, to choose a neutral word. The devil's in the details; what qualifies as a "fix?" Do we alter the body to match the brain (and the mind running on it), or the brain (and the mind) in an attempt to match the body?

No, it's a medical problem. Why are you so hesitant to just say that? In an ideal universe, there would be no transsexuals at all; instead, everyone would be born with a body that matches the gender-orientation of their brain.

Again, I think the reason you're hesitant to say that is because transgenderism has been strongly associated with gay rights - implying that transgenderism is something to be valued and celebrated in the same way that homosexuality is. But I don't think that's the case; I think transgenderism is a medical disorder which is causing people to suffer, apart from the social and civil rights aspects. Again, I could be wrong, but it's my understanding that most transgender individuals ideally don't wish to be identified as "transgender"; they just want a normal body of the opposite gender.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

It's a medical... phenomenon, to choose a neutral word. The devil's in the details; what qualifies as a "fix?" Do we alter the body to match the brain (and the mind running on it), or the brain (and the mind) in an attempt to match the body?

No, it's a medical problem. Why are you so hesitant to just say that? In an ideal universe, there would be no transsexuals at all; instead, everyone would be born with a body that matches the gender-orientation of their brain.

Again, I think the reason you're hesitant to say that is because transgenderism has been strongly associated with gay rights - implying that transgenderism is something to be valued and celebrated in the same way that homosexuality is. But I don't think that's the case; I think transgenderism is a medical disorder which is causing people to suffer, apart from the social and civil rights aspects. Again, I could be wrong, but it's my understanding that most transgender individuals ideally don't wish to be identified as "transgender"; they just want a normal body of the opposite gender.

Transsexual. Transgender is a loosely defined umbrella term which includes a lot of people who are not really the subject of this discussion. And ironically I agree with you on the main points: I'm a woman who's suffered from a crippling birth defect.

[Serafina]

It's a medical... phenomenon, to choose a neutral word. The devil's in the details; what qualifies as a "fix?" Do we alter the body to match the brain (and the mind running on it), or the brain (and the mind) in an attempt to match the body?

No, it's a medical problem. Why are you so hesitant to just say that? In an ideal universe, there would be no transsexuals at all; instead, everyone would be born with a body that matches the gender-orientation of their brain.

Again, I think the reason you're hesitant to say that is because transgenderism has been strongly associated with gay rights - implying that transgenderism is something to be valued and celebrated in the same way that homosexuality is. But I don't think that's the case; I think transgenderism is a medical disorder which is causing people to suffer, apart from the social and civil rights aspects. Again, I could be wrong, but it's my understanding that most transgender individuals ideally don't wish to be identified as "transgender"; they just want a normal body of the opposite gender.

Marina beat me to it.
It is ALSO a social problem, but mostly because too much people still think that a transwoman is not a (real) woman or a transman a (real) man.
So we have to fight for social acceptance, particulary since being viewed as a woman/man is the most important thing for a transsexual (in regard to transsexuality, this does of course not include other important goals just like for every other person).

[Alyrium Denryle]

The personalities that get spawned in DID are, I gather, often dysfunctional to varying degrees. This may be because in some obscure sense they are "incomplete" or fragmentary. For example, they may be very good at enduring pain (since abuse is a common cause of DID), but have effectively zero communication skills. Things like that.

In that case, it's quite possible to build one personality out of several fragments without destroying any of the fragments. A bit of bending and folding around the edges may be required, but that can easily be within the bounds of the kind of normal, evolutionary change that people's minds undergo all the time anyway.

We might envision the process as sort of like the way that people who live together for a long time can come to think increasingly alike, with a sort of mental fusion going on. The difference is that the fusion can proceed to completion because in this case, the minds in question occupy the same brain. So instead of getting two strikingly similar people, you get one strikingly self-similar person.

From what I have read, DID is caused by trauma. The person disassociates as a defense mechanism, and their brain spawns one of more incomplete personalities as a defense mechanism. They basically form said personalities out of a combination of fragments of their actual personality and fictional characters. They are mental figments that the person uses as a front to interact with the world. A more extreme version of how we become more aggressive when we feel threatened, etc.

It is basically a cognitive defect where one takes on the persona of their imaginary friend while in a state of disassociation.

[General Brock]

Just out of curiosity, does Keith Olbermann have an official position on transgender issues, and has any umbrella group representing transgender rights taken offense to his statements and requested clarification?

There are formal channels to pursue with this kind of thing, as has been pointed out.