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This is an interesting experiment, and it may show that "split consciousness" is a mistake, but I don't think "unified consciousness" is the correct conclusion

This is an interesting experiment, and it may show that "split consciousness" is a mistake, but I don't think "unified consciousness" is the correct conclusion from that. I'd say instead that more likely this is just an edge case where the "consciousness" abstraction breaks down; it's an idea based on people who haven't had their corpus callosum severed, there's not necessarily any reason to expect that it continues to make sense in more general cases. Counting "How many conscious observers are there?" is probably just the wrong question.

phkahler 10y ago
From TFA: According to Pinto, the results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients. I only read it as unified awareness, not consciousness. I recall reading that some split people were asked questions about their aspirations and got different answers depending which side of the brain they asked (you can ask by restricting input to half the visual field, or one ear or whatever, the response can be in writing). Having different goals in life seems more like consciousness than being aware of the location of some stimulus.