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"The Unstoppable Schwartz"

Interesting Ian said:
They couldn't make me want to go shopping.
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Er, if there's anything factual about HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy - as applied in cases of hysterectomies), there's good reason to suppose that goodly regular doses of oestrogen coupled with castration will change your view of shoeshops. :p

'Luthon64
 
kieran said:
So what would "common" mean here ... I think you mean that there is lots of here-say - please correct me if this an incorrect assumption. So what is wrong with asking if there have been any simple studies to see if there is actually such a phenomenon or just the perception of such a phenomenon? :confused:
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I have no idea if there are any or not. And I don't see the relevance to the opening post of this thread. Even if it transpired that this phenomenon doesn't exist, that obviously doesn't justify Mr Randi's rejection of it.
 
Tirdun said:
I'll throw in my 2cents. Any experience which drastically alters your life for months or years is bound to cause shifts in priority, interests, desire and feelings. Add in the drugs, stress and loss of control over personal and professional life and you have a catalyst for change.
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I agree that from the 3rd person perspective this would be a reasonable explanation. However it is not such a reasonable explanation if it is common for the organ recipients to deny this and claim something more interesting is occurring. We can't claim we know better than they do. At least not if we intend to be rational about this.
 
Tirdun said:
Here's the experimental process, find the troublesome bits:
1- Quantify the person before the event as a baseline
2- Quantify the person afterwards.
3- Calculate the delta of every emotion, interest and motivation.
4- Isolate causes for these deltas and compare to a control person.

See the trouble here? None of these are even remotely possible. People's interests and desires and emotions are rarely measurable, poorly remembered and impossible to isolate. Combine this with a traumatic experience and all objectivity is lost.
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This might very well be true, but so what?

It is therefore completely reasonable to dismiss fuzzy claims about transferring these intangibles from person to person through a process which, as far as we are able to detect, has no means of carrying this information nor a mechanism to transfer that from the organ to the new owner.
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You say it is completely unreasonable but fail to provide any reasons to suppose this.

It would be like me claiming to be able to send someone a ham sandwich through their TV set.
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This is a false analogy because since consciousness is non-physical and is therefore incapable of being subsumed under a complete physical description of reality, we cannot therefore state what the possibilities of consciousness are. This notion that consciousness is somehow in the brain I find inane.

As with the ham sandwich, proper research could certainly change the mind of the skeptic, but until some mechanism for transferring that sandwich is isolated and demonstrated, the whole idea will be scoffed at.
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Not by me it won't, and not by anyone who is reasonable.
 
Interesting thread. In regards to the issue of blood donation - blood cells have a short lifespan unlike an organ donation which would hopefully live the remainder of the recipient's life.

As far as evidence, I gather that Dr. Schwartz's study is the first to look at the issue seriously. I haven't read the study itself to see how he defined his terms and collected data in order to correlate changes in recipients abilites and personality to donors abilities and personalities. It does seem, at least at first glance, that other, more prosaic explanations would suffice to explain personality changes.
 
Interesting Ian said:
I agree that from the 3rd person perspective this would be a reasonable explanation. However it is not such a reasonable explanation if it is common for the organ recipients to deny this and claim something more interesting is occurring. We can't claim we know better than they do. At least not if we intend to be rational about this.
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No, It is still the most rational and reasonable explanation

I don’t think the patients are the best people to comment on this. Are users of radios the best people to say how they work or would the opinions of electrical engineers be prefered?

That is not to say the recipients should be ignored. However this is speculation. Is it common (outside the national enquirer) for organ transplant patients to claim that they have inherited traits of the donor ?

You keep ‘claiming’ it is common but don’t provide any evidence, saying it is just your perception. My perception is that you are trolling.
 
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Ian, if these reports are as common (and reliable) as they are said to be, don´t you think its at least a bit unlikely that such phenomena has been "under the radar" of medicine for so long?

Specially if one takes in to account the possibility -already raised by other posters- that such effect, if real, would probably also be seen, say in blood and marrow transfusions/transplants?
 
slabsides said:
I ponder the fact that yesterday I ate a delicious beef hamburger, which is now presumably thoroughly 'incorporated' into my slab sides; yet I feel no impulse to low, graze, or pursue that cute heifer in the field.
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I'm suspicious. How long have you felt that heifers are cute? ;)


But memory resides in the brain, if we are to believe neurological dogma, and the notion that the heart remembers love, or the eyes the image of one's murderer: notions common in romantic literature, are archaic superstitions. Anyone for a slice of Einstein's brain?;)
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Since you're new here (and welcome, by the way) let me tell you a couple of things about Ian. Ian says that consciousness and memory do not reside in the brain, but outside it. The brain acts as a receiver. Therefore, damage to the brain does not damage the underlying conciousness, but the reception instead becomes distorted. So hehas no use for your "neurological dogma".

He also believes that anecdotes constitute the only real truth, as I'm sure you can gather from the statements in this thread.

As a new reader and poster, this is one of the first threads that I've read through carefully. I'm impressed, first by how the discussion seems to devote itself as much the rules of rhetoric as to the subject itself.
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Only too true. I would say that most of the threads in General Skepticism, Religion and Philosophy, Million Dollar Challenge and Latest Commentary Issues at least touch on the rules of rhetoric and the scientific method. We like people to learn the rules of the road before undertaking that cross-country trip. And you must practice good defensive driving before encountering Ian.
 
athon said:
1) The claims are observations of a behaviour which can already be explained easily.
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Not so much that. The recipients claim to feel differently.

2) Epigenetics? Three things; firstly, explain firstly how the transferred DNA would be expressed in a fashion that could alter personality.
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Simply because one cannot propose a mechanism does not necessitate that an alleged phenomenon cannot possibly happen.

Secondly, this is not cellular memory, as the phenomena is a description of the transfer of particular personality traits of a person, which is as much (if not more) environmental.
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I'm not so much interested in the hypothesis as to why it happens. I'm more interested if some of these people really do change certain aspects of their personalities, and acquire new skills, which it would be unreasonable to suppose happened in any "normal" manner.

Thirdly, this claim would require evidence of functioning. Which, if you are suggesting it, you must surely have.

Athon
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I make no claims and have no evidence apart from the stories I have read.
 
Interesting Ian said:
I have no idea if there are any or not. And I don't see the relevance to the opening post of this thread. Even if it transpired that this phenomenon doesn't exist, that obviously doesn't justify Mr Randi's rejection of it.
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Seeing as you were wondering, here is why I think that my message had relevance to your opening post ... here is part of your text from that opening post ...

Interesting Ian said:
The reports of this phenomenon seem to be very common indeed.
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... to which people immediately asked what the reports were and what was the credibility of those reports ... my previous post was defending the right to ask such questions about your original post, and pointing out that your subsequent common-ness arguments were baseless.

Are you suggesting that we must limit ourselves to debating only the precise content of the original post, and that we are not allowed to pick up on any subsequent posts? Please enlighten me on the full list of such forum rules as I'm relatively new to this etiquette.:confused:
 
Interesting Ian said:
Even if it transpired that this phenomenon doesn't exist, that obviously doesn't justify Mr Randi's rejection of it.
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Let's, by way of analogy, examine this assertion against the background of a comparable situation that actually occurred in the hard science of geology: Alfred Wegener had amassed some facts which strongly suggested that continents, now far apart, had once been joined in the past. On the strength of these facts, he began advancing the hypothesis of continental drift. The orthodoxy of his day rejected his ideas for a very sound reason, namely that Wegener was unable to provide a plausible mechanism that would account for continental drift.

Notwithstanding that Wegener's data regarding rock types and ages on different continents were hardly contestable (though they may have played a role in more concerted efforts to identify the requisite mechanism), his conclusions were not accepted. Today, we have such a mechanism in the form of plate tectonics, and continental drift has, in consequence, become a well-established bit of science.

Does this mean that Wegener's colleagues were unjustified in rejecting his notions? Clearly not, because the converse would permit, or even compel, them to accept any old hypothesis into the canon of geology. By a similar line of reasoning, it is sensible to reject the idea of "cell memory." This should not be taken to mean that the latter does not exist or isn't worth investigating, only that one shouldn't start building what may turn out to be castles in the air on such shaky foundations.

'Luthon64
 
I once asked a cardiac surgeon something along these lines in a debate about the heart. Specifically, I wondered if a transplant patient was able to detect a change in their response to stress after the surgery. My thinking was that the expression levels or sensitivity of adrenoceptors may vary from one individual to another, and so the patients normal concentration range for adrenaline may have a different impact on the heart beat rate of the donor heart than on his/her previous heart.

Sadly, I didn't get a very illuminating answer as the chairman of the discussion decided to interject "oh you mean cellular memory," at which point the surgeon sighed and gave a weary rebuttal.

I guess the other psychological and pharmacological effects would probably overwhelm any difference in the short-term, and tolerance/adaptation would kick in over the longer-term.

Still, it doesn't seem impossible that quasi-memory effects could be sustained - but artistic skill or eating preference seem far fetched (to put it mildly).
 
Interesting Ian said:
What statement?
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The statement you quoted in post no. 27 of this thread (the post I was replying to; I even cut and pasted the statement quoted in your post to keep it in context).

I haven't quoted any statement.
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Yes you have. It's right there in the middle of this post, where you are claiming that it is proof of your assertion that reports of transplant recipients inheriting character traits from the donor are seem to be very common indeed.

I haven't said that people inherit character traits from their donors.
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You have said that there seems to be plenty of evidence (albeit anecdotal) supporting this claim, in the form of reports of it happening, but for some reason you are unwilling or unable to give any actual links to such reports, or references to where they might be found.
 
drfrank said:
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Got any anecdotes of anyone losing a talent after a transplant, such as someone who lost their artistic ability after a kidney transplant? That, to me, would be much more convincing evidence.
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Well, I heard about this one guy who said "Say, Doc, after my liver transplant, will I be able to play the piano?". The Doc says "Of course." Guy says, "Gee, thanks! I never could before!"
 
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