Abstract

Epilepsy patients who have undergone cerebral commissurotomy exhibit striking behavior patterns, about which many data have been gathered. Philosophers have drawn certain metaphysical and epistemological conclusions from these data, including: That commissurotomy patients possess two streams of consciousness; that they possess two minds; that they are two persons; that all normal human organisms are actually composites of two persons; and that the commonsense concept of the mind must be discarded. I argue that a few such patients possess two stream of consciousness and two minds, yet all are single persons, and that the commonsense concept of mind is so vague that it is pointless to attempt a systematic evaluation of it