It was amazing to read all your comment to the Death question part 1 posting. When I wrote it I had a question in mind, but it was fascinating how different people saw different things in it. Some saw it as a way of sickness, some as a way of therapy, some of the meaning of the question ‘what am I’? Isn’t it amazing how we can all look at the same thing and see something completely different?
And I have had some basic comments telling me I was too rude. That I did not accept people answers but rather kept asking, playing devil advocate. I apologize if anyone took me as rude, it did not meant to be like that, but simply my way of clarifying things I don’t understand. I do it to myself all the time
So now let me try and focus a bit more of the question of what am I, and am I anything more than the sum of my memories?
Let’s make some hypothetical though experiments and imagine that we have the technology to transfer minds (not only brains, but mind with all your memories and way of thinking)
- If someone or something got your mind, would it be you?
- If someone else’s mind replaced your own, in your own body, will you still be you, or will you be the other person?
Now try to meditate on erasing your memories,
- First you lose your past, the good and bad
- Then you lose your knowledge, you don’t know where you live, you can’t take a bus
- Then you lose your language, and the ability to think in concepts – a house, a bus, a door they are all learnt concepts
- Then you lose your recognition of things sounds, feelings, we learn that red is red, we learn that this is cold and this is hot, every time something touches you is a new feeling.
So what’s left? Is it still you?
loiswakeman
I sure am Lucky.. with all my problems I still Like my life & Memories

I didn't see the first post, so am coming fresh to this. More thoughts.
The body is like the hardware of a computer, and the mind/consciousness or whatever you call it is total of the executing software. If you shut down the software, there is nothing. So, the answer to your final question is definitely "no".
(I don't believe in the afterlife: if one does, then the analogy doesn't work as there is something else that lingers on after you punt the shutdown button.)
However, unlike a particular model of computer, every body is different (except for clones and identical twins). So, your experience of life is coloured by the abilities and deficiencies of your body. So, if you took my mind and put it in somebody else's body, I wouldn't be quite the same person.
More interesting is exactly what is consciousness and mind! I suspect it is a side-effect of the electrical activity in the brain, but don't know that. Dreams are a product of the brain's memory cataloguing (from short to long-term memory), that I do know.
Here is quite an interesting article.
(Or google "what is consciousness", or "the ghost in the machine" to find lots more!)