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AllergicToStabWounds t1_j2bx5ez wrote

Most human cultures large enough to have major medical practices or dedicated healers were able to observe that injuries to the brain can cause changes or impairments to the mind.

It took more studies to get a more precise understanding, but the connection between the mind and the brain is pretty intuitive from just what can be observed.

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uawithsprachgefuhl t1_j2cjwm2 wrote

This! I don’t think it took people long to notice what happens to a person’s mind after a serious head injury. Babies dropped on their head didn’t fair well, but the ones who had a broken bone grew up fine. I’m sure if a person lost all their ability to communicate, express emotions or have any sort of meaningful life after a serious leg injury, people would assume the mind must be in the leg.

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lifesoidot t1_j2czdvi wrote

That explains the personality changes after I fractured my penis.

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Nelewout t1_j2d01m5 wrote

Do you happen to be a gorilla or chimpanzee?

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Stock_Regular8696 t1_j2d0x36 wrote

It is possible to break your dingledong. Fracture might be the wrong word but it can certainly happen.

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tashkiira t1_j2dgvu4 wrote

nah, the medical term is 'penile fracture'.

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Splashfooz t1_j2djtvd wrote

'senile fracture'

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tashkiira t1_j2dkepo wrote

Considering the average age of a sufferer of penile fracture is under 30, you might want to consider how 'senile' the victims are.

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lifesoidot t1_j2dkad6 wrote

Ok, so I am actually a dog, but I was hoping to still fly under the radar because humans can technically fracture their dingledong. It’s just not a bony dingledong.

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pr3dato8 t1_j2dixkq wrote

So would it be medically accurate to call you a dickhead?

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anonymopotamus t1_j2desax wrote

Ancient Greeks thought that thinking was in the heart, Plato was an early proponent of placing it in the head (in the Timaeus). Before then people in the region would have answered the same way as you, but would have pointed to the heart.

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tommytraddles t1_j2diw4i wrote

Everyone everywhere has known that the answer to Did you get stabbed in head or kicked by horse in face? is You have thinky problems now.

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Jkarofwild t1_j2dkevh wrote

It's not the case that everyone everywhere everywhen has exposure to a corpus of knowledge about head injuries. Hence why some people went with "when I'm embarrassed/infatuated/etc I feel it in my 'heart', that must be where thinking happens".

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Tony2Punch t1_j2e1rf2 wrote

But that isn’t even fully true when you compare the massive amount of illnesses that would have been more common due to poor hygiene. Many of these diseases could infect through any open holes in the body or anything they eat and just give them a bad enough fever they get brain damage.

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MrXwiix t1_j2cpmv1 wrote

>It took more studies to get a more precise understanding,

Just adding that in comparison to the rest of the body, we still know very little about the brain and that there's so much left to discover

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qbookfox t1_j2d0dr1 wrote

Just wanted to add that every persons visual perspective and inner voice, thinking, hearing, dreaming - it’s all coming from the head and not the stomach or the arms. I don’t think most people was in shock when they learned about the brain. Most probably intuitively knew and just called it the soul instead.

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interstellargator t1_j2d4zog wrote

Do you interpret inner voice, thinking, and dreaming as occurring in the head because you innately know that's where it actually happens, or because you were told that's where it happens?

Plenty of emotions are felt in the chest. Excitement, love, despair, heartbreak. Seems just as reasonable to "intuitively know" that the soul lives in the heart or stomach.

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54yroldHOTMOM t1_j2ddx8d wrote

It could also be that the brain is simply a receiver and cpu. Like a dial up connection to the internet. But instead it connects to the mind. Which may or may not be present in the body. If the receiver breaks down or the cpu and mem gets damaged, the information downloaded obviously gets misinterpreted and or causes memory fails and bad computations.

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SirTruffleberry t1_j2dhe2n wrote

Sure, but ya know, Occam's Razor. Why suppose the brain is the middle man to an unseen object when treating it as the final object works fine?

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54yroldHOTMOM t1_j2dj0im wrote

Why philosophy when we all die anyway?

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SirTruffleberry t1_j2dpqw8 wrote

I don't think it reduces the quality or scope of philosophy if one doesn't assume a soul/immaterial mind.

Assuming unnecessary things to explain phenomena does, on the other hand, usually have negative consequences. Every one of your postulates is like a filter through which the truth must pass. More/stronger filters means it's more likely that the truth snags on one of those assumptions.

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54yroldHOTMOM t1_j2dvxb3 wrote

What is truth? Are they facts or what someone believes to be true? And what if everything is true? Even the things that “aren’t”. Or if truth is in a state of flux until someone observes it.

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SirTruffleberry t1_j2dx0ol wrote

I would say that empirical truths (obviously not mathematical or abstract truths) are statements about an efficient model that seems to agree with sensory data and predicts incoming data. That's pretty streamlined but hits the biggest points, I think.

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Ken_Field t1_j2divzy wrote

Recently read a theory like this, that consciousness is more of a universal field that our individual bodies “pick up on” with our brains acting as the sensing object, similar to how our ears might hear a noise in the distance but that doesn’t mean our ears are the object that generated that noise.

I don’t think it’s true tbh, but it’s an interesting thought experiment in the goal of understanding consciousness.

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