I’m not sure what it would even mean to be “you” without all of the external forces that made up your life. We’re basically just the sum of our memories and experiences; if I lose all of that, would that be akin to a being who hasn’t lived at all?
I’d say ‘you’ is like a filter. If two people had the same experiences they’d differ in how those experiences affect them, who you are is how you filter the world. But yeah without external things there’d be nothing, so ‘you’ on its own has no content.
Ultimately sure, but it’s partially (epi)genetic at least so not just your own experiences, but derived from all that has come before. You’re not some pure, objective observer in the sense of some kind of non-identity I don’t think.
Ultimately yes, I don’t adhere to an essentialist view of identity though, identity is just a unique arrangement of matter.
Which also means that a ship-of-Theseus doesn’t maintain its identity, yes. Even more, I personally don’t think identity is anything but a consistent narrative and there’s no material identity. One doesn’t need to rearrange anything but just wait a bit and your body is no longer the body it was a second ago :)
I’m not sure what it would even mean to be “you” without all of the external forces that made up your life. We’re basically just the sum of our memories and experiences; if I lose all of that, would that be akin to a being who hasn’t lived at all?
I’d say ‘you’ is like a filter. If two people had the same experiences they’d differ in how those experiences affect them, who you are is how you filter the world. But yeah without external things there’d be nothing, so ‘you’ on its own has no content.
Those filters were created by your environment too. “You” are simply the experiencer, a vortex in the sensory feed.
Ultimately sure, but it’s partially (epi)genetic at least so not just your own experiences, but derived from all that has come before. You’re not some pure, objective observer in the sense of some kind of non-identity I don’t think.
That epigenetic information was created by your environment.
So you believe that if I ship-of-theseus your body, you would no longer be you?
Ultimately yes, I don’t adhere to an essentialist view of identity though, identity is just a unique arrangement of matter.
Which also means that a ship-of-Theseus doesn’t maintain its identity, yes. Even more, I personally don’t think identity is anything but a consistent narrative and there’s no material identity. One doesn’t need to rearrange anything but just wait a bit and your body is no longer the body it was a second ago :)