Brain room

[dungrollin]

No: HPFGUIDX 117753


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Megan" <skater314159 at y...> 
wrote:
> 
> Flop:
> 
> > Just a trippy sort of thought that's been bouncing
> > around in my brain: What if they never WERE somebody's
> > brains? I'm toying with this wild concept of the MoM
> > developing sort of "free-standing" brains kind of as a
> > data-storage thing like Wizard computer
> > hard-drives?... Okay, that's wilder than it sounded
> > before I typed it out. Any thoughts?...
> 
> "Megan" <skater314159 at y...> replies:
> 
> I agree... I was thinking along the lines of the Epistemological 
> Philosophy paper by Hilary Putnam "Brains in a Vat"... and all of 
> the lovely epistemological implications that ensue from that... (I 
> mentioned it in my Epistemology class - in Philosophy - and all > 
> the other students just stared at me, so I guess they don't know 
> about/haven't read yet book five!)
> 
> Any thoughts eh?


Dungrollin:

My mind immediately turned to Brains in a Vat too, and then the 
Daniel C. Dennet essay 'Where am I?' in which a man has his brain 
removed, and elaborate minuscule radio links fitted to each nerve 
ending, so that it can still control his body. He then stands 
outside the vat looking in at his brain, trying to work out where 
*he* is, and trying to imagine that his thought processes are going 
on inside the vat, while his eyes are outside looking in at it.  
Lovely stuff.

Someone else suggested somewhere, that the brains were a physical 
manifestation of what was being studied in that room, i.e. thought.
But brains are useful for many more things than just thinking.  
Collation of sensory data into experience, experience into memories, 
and a whole host of unconscious homeostatic processes.  

I'd love it to be the room where the unspeakables study experimental 
epistemology.  But given that JKR hasn't even furnished us with a 
definition of the Dark Arts, and it's been Harry's best subject for 
five years, somehow, I doubt that we're going to get a very in-depth 
explanation...  

Dungrollin
Astonished to find that there's a blue sky and sunshine outside - 
just like she's read about in books!