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Comment by nukeop | Hacker News Reader

I don't see this being any more unethical or unnerving than keeping a liver a or a lung or a heart alive outside of a body. A brain is just another organ, it's not a mind. It is a vital organ, to be sure, but the article equates it with the "essence" of a living being. This involves too many assumptions.

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Assuming it is not a mind and isn't in massive pain is also too many assumptions. If your stance can be proven, fine - but the ethical problem is getting to that proof without creating disembodied minds living a life of absolute torture, with no senses or possible actions or communications... just an endless experience of pain.

I would suspect that being deprived of sensory input, you would become a vegetable after going crazy at some point.

This is true. The "mind" could very well exist outside of any organ system.

No it can't.

Prove it?

The sheer amount of energy used by this organ is a major hint.

Also damage to the brain has immediate and profound effects on one's mental capabilities as opposed to damage to any other organ.

There are theories that the brain is just an interface for the mind-- as in, it exists apart from the brain, but the brain facilitates its expression in physicality. If the brain were damaged, the interface would thus be damaged, and you could no longer access the information provided by mind. There are theories that there is no such thing as mind. You didn't prove anything.

Citation needed.

Where is the mind then according to these theories?

I'm not trying to prove that these people are right or wrong. The point is that no one knows.

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