If all your memories were replaced with someone else’s, but your consciousness continued uninterrupted, would you still be the same person?
Imagine that every memory you possess - your childhood, your experiences, the people you love, and everything you know about yourself - is replaced with the memories of another person. Yet your consciousness continues without interruption. You still think, feel, and perceive the world, but you now possess an entirely different personal history.Who, then, are you? Is identity determined by memory, by the continuity of conscious experience, or by something more fundamental? This thought experiment confronts one of the deepest questions in the philosophy of personal identity: what exactly makes us the same person over time?
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DISCUSSION OF THE WEEK | What Makes Us the Same Person?
Are you still the person who went to sleep, or have you become someone else?
This thought experiment confronts us with one of philosophy's most difficult problems: what determines personal identity? Are we a collection of memories, a continuous stream of consciousness, a physical organism, or something that cannot be reduced to any of these?
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