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But that argument reifies a self by identifying it with some configuration or set of experiences (that it remembers). I don’t believe this definition can be sustained when one considers amnesia - would it not still be you even if you list all your memories? Or would you commit to the claim that you would not fear what it might be like to lose all your memories because it would not be happening to you? We can also imagine the progressive introduction of foreign or synthetic memories into a brain while cryogenically frozen or computerized. Again you have the problem of saying at what arbitrary point such a modified self becomes a different subject. The configuration may be called a “self” but this cannot be identified with the locus of experience, which is unitary and universal.

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Pierz Newton-John

Writer, software developer, former psychotherapist, founding member of The School Of Life Melbourne. Essayist for Dumbo Feather magazine, author of Fault Lines.