In the case of sleeping and waking up it is already clear that the currently awake consciousness is modeling its relation to past consciousnesses in that body through memories alone.
The currently awake consciousness is located in the brain, which has physical continuity with its previous states. You don’t wake up as a different person because “you” are the brain (possibly also the rest of the body depending how it affects cognition but IDK) and the brain does not cease to function when you fall asleep.
I agree on the physical continuity of the brain, but I don’t think this transfers to continuity of the consciousness or its experience. It is defining “you” as that physical brain, rather than the conscious experience itself. It’s like saying that two waves are the same because they are produced by the same body of water.
Imagine significant modifications to your brain while you are asleep in such a way that your memories are vastly different, so much as to represent another person. Would the consciousness that is created on waking up experience a connection to the consciousness that that brain produced the day(s) before or to the manufactured identity?
Even you, now, without modifications, can’t say with certainty that your ‘yesterday self’ was experienced by the same consciousness as you are now (in the sense of identity of the conscious experience). It feels that way as you have memories of those experiences, but it may have been experienced by ‘someone else’ entirely. You have no way of discerning that difference (nor does anyone else).
The conscious experience is not extricable from the physical brain; it has your personality because the personality that you are is the sum total of everything in your brain. The identity comes from the brain; if it were somehow possible to separate consciousness from the rest of the mind, that consciousness wouldn’t still be you, because you’re the entire mind.
I would… not consider the sort of brain modification you’re describing to preserve physical continuity in the relevant sense? It sounds like it would, to create the described effects, involve significant alterations in portions of the brain wherein (so to speak) your identity is stored, which is not what normally happens when people sleep.
I think we are in agreement that the consciousness is tied to the brain. Claiming equivalency is not warranted, though: The brain of a dead person (very probably, I’m sure you’d agree) contains no consciousness. Let’s not dwell on this, though: I am definitely not claiming that consciousness exists outside of the brain, just that asserting physical continuity of the brain is not enough by itself to show continuity of conscious experience.
With regard to the modifications: Your line of reasoning runs into the classic issues of philosophical identity, as shown by the Ship of Theseus thought experiment or simpler yet, the Sorites paradox. We can hypothesize every amount of alterations from just modifying one atom to replacing the entire brain. Given your position, you’d be forced to choose an arbitrary amount of modifications that breaks the continuity and somehow changes consciousness A-modified-somewhat into consciousness B (or stated otherwise: from ‘you waking up a somewhat changed person’ to ‘someone else waking up in your body’).
Approaching conscious experience without the assumption of continuity but from the moment it exists in does not run into this problem.
The currently awake consciousness is located in the brain, which has physical continuity with its previous states. You don’t wake up as a different person because “you” are the brain (possibly also the rest of the body depending how it affects cognition but IDK) and the brain does not cease to function when you fall asleep.
I agree on the physical continuity of the brain, but I don’t think this transfers to continuity of the consciousness or its experience. It is defining “you” as that physical brain, rather than the conscious experience itself. It’s like saying that two waves are the same because they are produced by the same body of water.
Imagine significant modifications to your brain while you are asleep in such a way that your memories are vastly different, so much as to represent another person. Would the consciousness that is created on waking up experience a connection to the consciousness that that brain produced the day(s) before or to the manufactured identity?
Even you, now, without modifications, can’t say with certainty that your ‘yesterday self’ was experienced by the same consciousness as you are now (in the sense of identity of the conscious experience). It feels that way as you have memories of those experiences, but it may have been experienced by ‘someone else’ entirely. You have no way of discerning that difference (nor does anyone else).
The conscious experience is not extricable from the physical brain; it has your personality because the personality that you are is the sum total of everything in your brain. The identity comes from the brain; if it were somehow possible to separate consciousness from the rest of the mind, that consciousness wouldn’t still be you, because you’re the entire mind.
I would… not consider the sort of brain modification you’re describing to preserve physical continuity in the relevant sense? It sounds like it would, to create the described effects, involve significant alterations in portions of the brain wherein (so to speak) your identity is stored, which is not what normally happens when people sleep.
I think we are in agreement that the consciousness is tied to the brain. Claiming equivalency is not warranted, though: The brain of a dead person (very probably, I’m sure you’d agree) contains no consciousness. Let’s not dwell on this, though: I am definitely not claiming that consciousness exists outside of the brain, just that asserting physical continuity of the brain is not enough by itself to show continuity of conscious experience.
With regard to the modifications: Your line of reasoning runs into the classic issues of philosophical identity, as shown by the Ship of Theseus thought experiment or simpler yet, the Sorites paradox. We can hypothesize every amount of alterations from just modifying one atom to replacing the entire brain. Given your position, you’d be forced to choose an arbitrary amount of modifications that breaks the continuity and somehow changes consciousness A-modified-somewhat into consciousness B (or stated otherwise: from ‘you waking up a somewhat changed person’ to ‘someone else waking up in your body’).
Approaching conscious experience without the assumption of continuity but from the moment it exists in does not run into this problem.