Quote:
Originally Posted by HenrikOlsen
Note that this doesn't mean the "self" is identical to the one before the operation, just that it feels itself(pun unavoidable) to be, which is really all the "sense of self" is.
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Yes, it's that sense of continuity which convinces us that we are a single, continously existing "self". It's remarkable the insults that selfhood can withstand. I can fill you with barbiturates until your EEG is a flat line punctuated by uncoordinated bursts of electrical activity, and keep you that way for days; I can shoot you in the frontal lobes; I can remove half your cerebrum; I can chill you into hypothermia and stop your heart for half an hour; I can pass a current through your brain so that your whole cortex lights up with uncoordinated electrical activity: and yet you still reboot with a sense that you are the same person who existed before the disruption of processing.
Grant Hutchison