It is two or one?

[R_1]

Let's say it's possible to merge two humans as split in one body. Let's ignore all the complications from it. You performed the merging of the two bodies including the two brains in half, and the result is that the brain communicates to each other like it was two people in it, and they're both aware that they're merged. Does this merged person becomes a new person, or it is two people in one body?

[alpacaterpillar]

Depends how you define "person" and "body" :P

To be honest, I see it as a more lingual problem than a philosophical one. I mean, I can imagine such a (pair of) individual(s) might have some kind of identity crisis, and if this thing happened on a large scale it could have some interesting implications for society, but whether they're a "person" or not... Simply put, I say they're two functional brains in one body, and you don't really need to throw 'person' in there.

"Two people in one body" does have a certain ease of use associated with it however; I think it gets the point across pretty well as to what this... merging is.

I say all this as somebody who considers the pragmatic aspects of communication to be more important than the semantic or technical. I'm currently taking a course in philosophy of language, as it happens :P

[poindexter]

Well.. if you look at siamese twins, they are often two seperate people joined in the same body. As long as both "halves" have their own thoughts and feelings, I would say they're two people.

[Mobocracy]

I'm going to say that for social purposes, they are two people, but for roles and legal work (like working a job and paying taxes) they are collectively one person. For a scenario such as this, I believe Dugtrio from Pokémon Rescue Team would be the best example. Whenever Dugtrio refered to itself, it would always use the pronoun "we," however; whenever Diglett refered to Dugtrio, Diglett called it "Father," and not "Fathers."

[House of Chimeras]

Biased response is biased.

We’d consider them two people in one body if there still were two different sets of awareness/personalities/minds/whatnot. Like was mentioned even in extreme cases of Siamese twins where almost all of the body is shared, such as the case of Abigail an Brittany Hensel, they are still two very distinct people of course.

[Lullu]

I think it's would be very similar to having a split personality.

I think they would probably become one person but perhaps they are able to view the world in two different perspectives due to the fact that two different people were merged together, it's likely they could be a lot smarter as they would have two opinions rather than one and it's possible that by putting two brains together the percentage of the brain used would double in comparison to the percentage used by a single persons brain... although I also think it would be very frustrating at the same time as they are most likely to become conflicted.

Plus wouldn't each persons thought overlap with each other? Maybe there will just be too much going on in there head?

It might be frightening and frustrating that this person would never feel like they were able to be alone but sometimes it might be quite comforting.

[Kelly]

Along with this is something perhaps almost opposite: Split Brain. When the corpus callosum (the part connecting the two brain hemispheres) is severed, the two parts of the brain cannot communicate, resulting in each hemisphere being independent.

This radical surgery has been done to alleviate severe epileptic seizures. But it can also result in what might be two people in one body. And sometimes these two people have different desires. They can even fight each other. See:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201211/split-brains

This can give rise to a kind of split personality, in which the left hemisphere give orders that reflect the person’s rational goals, whereas the right hemisphere issues conflicting demands that reveal hidden desires. . .

. . .One of their child participants, Paul S, had a fully functional language center in both hemispheres. This allowed the researchers to question each side of the brain. When they asked the right side what their patient wanted to be when he grew up, he replied "an automobile racer." When they posed the same question to the left, however, he responded "a draftsman." Another patient pulled down his pants with the left hand and back up with the right in a continuing struggle. On a different occasion, this same patient's left hand made an attempt to strike the unsuspecting wife as the right hand grabbed the villainous limp to stop it. . .

[binary suns]