On consciousness after split-brain surgery.

February 10, Lizzie Schechter is up in Storrs at the University of Connecticut for the Kinds of Consciousness graduate conference, which serves as the 5th conference of the Expression, Communication, and the Origins of Meaning Research Group established by Dorit Bar-On. Her keynote presentation, "Self-consciousness after split-brain surgery," is abstracted below.

Self-Consciousness after Split-Brain Surgery

In this talk, I first argue that the two hemispheres of a split-brain subject are associated with distinct conscious thinkers and, indeed, distinct thinkers of self-conscious thoughts, R and L. I then argue that the dynamics of self-conscious thought after split-brain surgery shows that R and L are unlike other pairs of self-conscious thinkers. Indeed, there is a basic psychological capacity much simpler than but ordinarily inherent in full-blown psychological self-consciousness that R and L both lack.