What defines you as "you"?

How different could you become from your present self and still remain the same person? Could you be of a different gender and still be you? Could you have been born in a different culture and still be you? Could you have a low IQ and still be you? Could you have been born 200 years ago and still be you? What are the minimum necessary traits and qualities required to define you as who you identify with? If any? Does it even make a difference?

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I'm content with who I am today just as I was content with the way I was when I was 21. I was in a few plays that I was a different personality altogether so that's one way to become a different person if you so want.

 

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The more you realize the easier it becomes to see you are what your hearts desire is. Desire, and free will are all capable.

 

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I'm a "skin deep" tough stubborn old bastard, with a marsh mellow heart, and when younger actually thought I was invincible, although I have some doubt about that now.

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I have a great hatred for reality TV shows, heavy metal music, and rap, and have been told I live in a time warp.

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I don't mind in the least being called an old bastard, and always remind any young scallywag that would call me that, that I am actually there...and that they have to get there!

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Other then that, I take life as it comes.

 

This is a really interesting question. I have looked using psychedelic drugs (not something i would recommend as they can be incredibly dangerous), years of meditation using traditional methods of self inquiry, various psychological theories and methods and at the age of almost 60 have no real answer.
The best i can come up with so far is that i am a somewhat unique set of interrelated causes and conditions, dna, culture, environment etc, that neither alone or in subset or in totality make up a concrete "I". What i see when i look inside is nothing that could be called personal, just thoughts and attitudes that come and go according to whats happening in the world or with my body at the time.
When all of that quiets down, there is something left, but again, its nothing that could be called personal. One might call it mind, or awareness i suppose.
Looking for the real "you" is a profitable exercise whose main salutary effect comes from its lack of result

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To answer the OP I'd have to say that what defines me as me is the consistency of memory, and the consistency between my memories and my current actions.
If I had brand new memories but none of them tallied with the way I actually would have reacted at the time to those situations, I might not recognise "myself" within those memories.
And if I suddenly lost all memory then all I would have to go on is the consistency between action and thoughts from that point onward.

If the question is asking me specifically what traits I recognise as "me", then as long as there is that consistency, I am not sure it matters, or can be defined: I am a consistency of memory and experience-processing, whatever those memories or processes may be.

 

Hello Magical Realist. What a good opening question. I also consider such questions as you have: would my quality of life be as good had I been born some-time in the past. This is why I also hate racism: I believe we were all black back in the day.

 

As we age we become a bit different with our experiences and our physical changes, but we are still ourselves from cradle to grave.

No, no, no and no.

I would have to be in this body with this mind, That's why I couldn't be the opposite gender, of different intellectual abilities or a different time and culture and still be me. I would be someone else even if I was from crosstown, even with the same parents and born on the same day.

No. People are people. Someone born in another culture, thousands of years ago was not very different in their thoughts and feelings from you or I.

 

Identifying primarily with the generic, baseline characteristics, tendencies, interests, desires of what it is subjectively like to be a human -- rather than the contingent, narrower-specified traits acquired over time -- might lend a sense of immortality (as long as the species itself endures). But that's usually unsatisfactory from the unique or particular ego's perspective. A kind of continuity could even be argued, in the sense of an individual's awareness deteriorating into the background absence of the world via death / non-consciousness; while fledgling fetal brains elsewhere are inversely rising / reloading from that global pool of not-even-an-emptiness being cognized.

 

subjectivity

 

I had long heard that every atom in a human body has been replaced after seven years. So you are literally not the smae pesron after all of your physical being has renewed itself. More recently I have heard that it's just one year, not seven that all the atoms are replaced. Yet we have memories from farther back than one or seven years. Yet we are recognizably ourselves. What is it that has remained? Is it only the persistence of memory?

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Subjectivity? -sculptor says above - but if the subject has physically changed over time, what is it that was subject?

 

In answer to the OP:
No, no, no, and no.

Usually, people define their sense of self by identifying and sympathising closely with what they believe they are not.

Humanity thrives upon conflict.

 

We seem to be in complete agreement, Marquis. Read my post above. Still the question remains. We can change a CPU and compute piece by piece and retain the memory, the information even when the original computer has been wholly replaced. However, is that analogous to our physical bodies and brains being wholly new after one year or so. Is the continuity of the memory information comparable to what happened in the case of a computer? If so then we have lbeen misinformed. There is not just matter and energy. There is a third basic: information.

 

Perhaps, experiential subjectivity would have been a tad more existentially significant?

I seriously doubt that the complete atom changeout every 7 years has ever been proven, or ever will be.

I change constantly, and yet I am unchanged.
Current subjectivity is based on previous subjectivity(and genetics), and is always unique to the subject.

 

The self is illusory anyway. It's generated by memory. As long as those memories are more or less intact, you will perceive yourself as you.

 

what defines an amnesiac as that amnesiac to that amnesiac?

 

Not much, they might become a different person than they were before. Only their body maintains a persistence that we recognize. But in fact amnesiacs don't lose all their memories, they just can't access all of them. So they still preserve some characteristic traits, those that have been conditioned.

 

I can't come up with the proper search term for it, but I remember that there's a problem some people have in that they don't recognize themselves in a mirror.

Help?

 

It's called depersonalization disorder. Apparently it's not all that uncommon..

http://www.angelfire.com/home/bphoenix1/depers.html

 

Every time I try to point at myself I end up being the pointer more than the pointed at. The self or soul is a vaporous and distributive property, spread out in things like my old work boots, my yellowed birth certificate, a scar I got on my shin while in the navy, and my 40 odd spiral notebook journals from the 80's. WHAT am I? WHO am I? I am the one who remembers my life. I am the one in THIS life and no other.