[whythre]

Doesn’t seem that hard to measure. It isn’t like the subject will become a mysterious P zombie, they will probably just become increasingly incoherent and then non verbal and then die.

Damage a brain enough and brain death occurs. By the same token, after a certain number of neurons are lost, there is no self. Whatever consciousness is, it can’t be sustained with a sufficiently compromised brain.

This is observable in late stage dementia patients, it gradually becomes difficult to think and in the final dire stages their sense of self degrades too.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> This is observable in late stage dementia patients, it gradually becomes difficult to think and in the final dire stages their sense of self degrades too.

At best, you can be an external observer. You can't truly understand what the person is experiencing.

A common thread I see among people with brain damage is that they don't recognize it. For example, with patients with hemispatial neglect [0], if you ask them to draw a clock, and then only draw the right-hand side of one with the numbers 12 through 6 and they don't draw 7-11, then try to ask them where the 9 is, they might insist it's there. If you ask them to point at the 9, they'll either point to the wrong number or not point at all. And if you tell them they're not pointing or are pointing to the wrong number, they'll insist they're right.

But even with all that knowledge, it's still hard to imagine what that person is actually experiencing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect

[LargoLasskhyfv]

That is the common way of current understanding. But there is problem.

So called 'terminal lucidity' exists sometimes.

One theory is that is enabled by the immune systems shutdown, so inflammation ceases to interfere for a short time.

The problem with that is it still fails to explain the few cases, where shortly post-mortem it is found that there is not much healthy/able to function somewhat normally brain left to speak of.

Rather 'spooky'.