This post can be thought of as offtopic and completely random. But when I read the quoted statement, I felt it necessary to comment on it.
Exhumed said:
The brain and the body develop separately
As I see it, that is just the Cartian split turned into a statement resambling "fact". When in 'fact' it is logically impossible. The brain is part of the body and cannot develop separately from the body. To do so it would have to be a completely different entity (or substance, following Descartes), which we intuitively feel to not be the case.
The question is not, even to Descartes, whether or not the
soul or the body
exists. If the soul exists (which it does, of course), it exists in the mortal realm in something that has a shape, a volume of sorts. "outside" of our realm -such as heaven- it could presumably exist without the body.
Accepting however, that we cannot make claims from outside our realm, the real question is how the now decreased -from soul- term
mind exists in union with the body as it is in
this realm, which
includes the brain.
There are still many things to be said for the
mind as perhaps being able to develop in alternative ways from one and the same
body, but the brain itself develops along with the body. It is, after all, just another organ. *
The mind however, that which we never see directly but we "know" / feel compelled to believe it's there, is not. We don't know what the mind
is (the brain? the body? a mathematical construct? a strange loop? and so on...), but whatever your starting point is, your views on many topics of identity will be heavily impacted by it. Which is what this topic is really all about: what on earth is an identity? What does it mean to have one? Is it even a thing? Is it a state of something or an idea of such a state, or maybe both?
I believe that is a questionable practise -in debates, politics, science, and so on- to reduce the topic of identity fully to either environment, the body, the brain or the mind / soul. All exist together and cannot be separated in a non-absurd way. That does not imply that I believe that one should be what one is and be done with it, but that the questions and interventions that one decides to make in that whole of
being have to be very well thought through.
* = as far as I know, there is no conclusive evidence available that shows the brain beign able to both generate the mind through the body and impact its own development as a result. This statement is also not to be confused with 'mind over matter' of some sort. I am referring here to the question whether mental states (the "mind") can impact the fysical states of the brain and it's future development.
for the record, most neuroscientists seem quite eager to say there is no such connection and 'free will' does not exist as a result. They seem quite content with this euphoric reversal of Cartianism (e.g. "the brain exists, the mind does not"), apparently without realising that this would also mean that the brain is not able to change itself -its future state, that is- by means of reasoned responses to the environment, which implies that there is no reason whatsoever for a body to have a brain in the first place. Whoops.
(which they appear to solve with 'happy accidents', which IMO is rethoric for "I dunno" )
Accept or Ignore this post as you see fit. It is not intended as a threadderail and should be treated as such.