PUCCETTI, Roland (Peter)

(1922-)

   US philosopher and writer, long professionally involved in mind-body problems. He published several essays on the split-brain controversy, perhaps most accessibly in "Sperry on Consciousness: A Critical Appreciation" for The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy in 1977.Both of his novels deal, in their way, with the question. In The Death of the Fuhrer (1972 UK) Hitler's brain is transplanted into the body of a voluptuous woman, and "his" identity discovered, in (as it were) flagrante delicto by the hero at a moment of passion. The Trial of John and Henry Norton (1973 UK) convincingly updates the Jekyll and Hyde theme, in thatthe two Nortons of the title inhabit a single body as the result of an operation to cut the link between the two lobes of the upper brain, the left and right lobes becoming in effect two different people. One of them proves to be a murderer, and they are tried "together". RP's concern with identity problems was evident also in Persons: A Study of Possible Moral Agents in the Universe (1968 UK), which argues an expansion of the conceptof "person" beyond its usual human-centred limitations and provides serious cognitive backing for the more speculative attempts in sf to apprehend the potential nature of ALIENS.

   JC