Suppose all the memories in one person were wiped and replaced with your memories. I believe the new body would claim to be you. It would introspect as you might now, and find your memories as its own, and say "I am Dahlen in a new body."
But would it be you? If the copying had been non-destructive, then Dahlen in the old body still exists and would "know" on meeting Dahlen in the new body that Dahlen in the new body was really someone else who just got all Dahlen's memories up to that point.
Meanwhile, Dahlen in the new body would have capabilities, moods, reactions, which would depend on the substrate more than the memories. The functional parts of the brain, the wiring-other-than-memories as it were, would be different in the new body. Dahlen in the new body would probably behave in ways that were similar to how the old body with its old memories behaved. It would still think it was Dahlen, but as Dahlen in the old body might think, that would just be its opinion and obviously it is mistaken.
As to uploading, it is more than the brain that needs to be emulated. We have hormonal systems that mediate fear and joy and probably a broad range of other feelings. I have a sense of my body that I am in some sense constantly aware of which would have to be simulated and would probably be different in an em of me than it is in me, just as it would be different if my memories were put in another body.
Would anybody other than Dahlen in the old body have a reason to doubt that Dahlen in the new body wasn't really Dahlen? I don't think so, and especially Dahlen in the new body would probably be pretty sure it was Dahlen, even if it claimed to rationally understand how it might not be. It would know it was somebody, and wouldn't be able to come up with any other compelling idea for who it was other than Dahlen.
I understand all this. And it's precisely the sort of personality preservation that I find largely useless and would like to avoid. I'm not talking about copying memories from one brain to another; I'm talking about preserving the sense of self in such a way that the person undergoing this procedure would have the following subjective experience: be anesthetized (probably), undergo surgery (because I picture it as some form of surgery), "wake up in new body". (The old body would likely get buried, because the whole purpose of performing such a tr...
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.