Though, now that I think about it...

People with severe brain damage can suffer a loss of identity (i.e., severe memory loss, severe personality change, permanent vegetative state, etc).

Wait up. On your account, why should we call those things (memory loss, personality change, loss of cognitive ability) "loss of identity"? If something that has my memories, personality, and cognitive abilities doesn't have my identity, then it seems to follow that something lacking those things doesn't lack my identity.

It seems that on your account those things are no more "loss of identity" than losing an arm or a kidney.

Suppose a small chunk of your brain is replaced with its functional equivalent, is the resulting chimera less "you"? If so, how can one tell?

OK., I think I understand your position.

So, suppose I develop a life-threatening heart condition, and have the following conversation with my cardiologist:
Her: We've developed this marvelous new artificial heart, and I recommend installing it in place of your damaged organic heart.
Me: Oh, is it easier to repair my heart outside of my body?
Her: No, no... we wouldn't repair your heart, we'd replace it.
Me: But what would happen to my heart?
Her: Um... well, we typically incinerate it.
Me: But that's awful! It's my heart. You're proposing destroying my heart!!!
Her: I don't think you quite understand. The artificial heart can pump blood through your body just as well as your original heart... better, actually, given your condition.
Me: Sure, I understand that, but that's mere function. I believe you can replicate the functions of my heart, but if you don't preserve my heart, what's the value of that?

I infer that on your account, I'm being completely absurd in this example, since the artificial heart can facilitate my survival just as well (or better) as my original one, because really all I ought to value here is the functions. As long as my blood is pumping, etc., I should be content. (Yes? Or have I misrepresented your view of heart replacement?)

I also infer that you would further say that this example is nothing at all like a superficially similar example where it's my brain that's injured and my doctor is proposing replacing it with an artificial brain that merely replicates the functions of my brain (representation, information storage, computation and so forth). In that case, I infer, you would not consider my response absurd at all, since it really is the brain (and not merely its functions) that matter.

Am I correct?

If so, I conclude that I just have different values than you do. I don't care about my brain, except insofar that it's the only substrate I know of capable of implementing my X. If my survival requires the preservation of my brain, then it follows that I don't care about my survival.

I do care about preserving my X, though. Give me a chance to do that, and I'll take it, whether I survive or not.

My response to this is very simple, but it's necessary to know beforehand that the brain's operation is robust to many low-level variations, e.g., thermal noise that triggers occasional random action potentials at a low rate.

We would have to have a great many trial runs and would decide when we had got it right.

Suppose our standard is that we get it right when the reconstructed brain is more like the original brain just before cryonic preservation than a brain after a good night's sleep is like that same brain before sleeping -- within the subset of brain features that are not robust to variation. Further suppose that that standard is achieved through a process that involves a representation of the structure of the brain. Albeit that the representation is indeed a "cultural practice", the brute fact of the extreme degree of similarity of the pre- and post-process brains would seem much more relevant to the question of preservation of any aspect of the brain worthy of being called "identity".

ETA: Thinking about this a bit more, I see that the notion of "similarity" in the above argument is also vulnerable to the charge of being a mere cultural practice. So let me clarify that the kind of similarity I have in mind basically maps to reproducibility of the input-output relation of a low-level functional unit, up to, say, the magnitude of thermal noise. Reproducibility in this sense has empirical content; it is not merely culturally constructed.

Just to make sure I'm following... your assertion is that my brain is not itself a sort of computer, does not contain representations, and does not contain information, my brain is some other kind of a thing, and so no amount of representations and information and computation can actually be my brain. They might resemble my brain in certain ways, they might even be used in order to delude some other brain into thinking of itself as me, but they are not my brain. And the idea that they might be is not even wrong, it's just a confusion. The information, the representations, the belief-in-continuity, all that stuff, they are something else altogether, they aren't my brain.

OK. Let's suppose all this is true, just for the sake of comity. Let's call that something else X.

On your account, should I prefer the preservation of my brain to the preservation of X, if forced to choose?
If so, why?

I take it that my death and the being's ab initio creation are both facts.

In the hypothetical, your brain has stopped functioning. Whether this is sufficient to affirm that you died is precisely the question at issue. Personally, it doesn't matter to me if my brain's current structure is the product of biological mechanisms operating continuously by physical law or is the product of, say, a 3D printer and a cryonically-created template -- also operating by physical law. Both brains are causally related to my past self in enough detail to make the resulting brain me in every way that matters to me.

In the animation, the woman commits suicide and the woman created by the teleportation device is quite right that she isn't responsible for anything the other woman did, despite resembling her.

Curious that she used the transmission+reconstruction module while committing "suicide", innit? She didn't have to -- it was a deliberate choice.

It's possible to dream up scenarios where identity breaks down, but surely not ones where we have a clear example of death.

I don't know what the word "clear" in that sentence actually means.

If you're simply asserting that what has occurred in this example is your death, then no, it isn't clear, any more than if I assert that I actually died 25 minutes ago, that's clear evidence that Internet commenting after death is possible.

I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong... I mean, sure, it's possible that you're correct, and in your hypothetical scenario you actually are dead, despite the continued existence of something that acts like you and believes itself to be you. It's also possible that in my hypothetical scenario I'm correct and I really did die 25 minutes ago, despite the continued existence of something that acts like me and believes itself to be me.

I'm just saying it isn't clear... in other words, that it's also possible that one or both of us is confused/mistaken about what it means for us to die and/or remain alive.

have the false memories removed

!!... I hope you mean explicit memory but not implicit memory -- otherwise there wouldn't be much of a being left afterwards...

"tricking" it into thinking it did certain things in the past

For a certain usage of "tricking" this is true, but that usage is akin to the way optical illusions trick one's visual system rather than denoting a falsehood deliberately embedded in one's explicit knowledge.

I would point out that the source of all the hypothetical suffering in this situation would the being's (and your) theory of identity rather than the fact of anyone's identity (or lack thereof). If this isn't obvious, just posit that the scenario is conceivable but hasn't actually happened, and some bastard deceives you into thinking it has -- or even just casts doubt on the issue in either case.

Of course that doesn't mean the theory is false -- but I do want to say that from my perspective it appears that the emotional distress would come from reifying a naïve notion of personal identity. Even the word "identity", with its connotations of singleness, stops being a good one in the hypothetical.

Have you seen John Weldon's animated short To Be? You might enjoy it. If you watch it, I have a question for you: would you exculpate the singer of the last song?

I was referring cryonics scenarios where the brain is being scanned because you cannot be revived and a new entity is being created based on the scan, so I was assuming that your brain is no longer viable rather than that the scan is destructive.

Fair enough.

The resulting being, if possible, would be a being that is confused about its identity. [...] Consider that, if you had this technology, you could presumably create a being that thinks it is a fictional person. You could fool it into thinking all kinds of nonsensical things.

I'm positing that the being has been informed about how it was created; it knows that it is not the being it remembers, um, being. So it has the knowledge to say of itself, if it were so inclined, "I am a being purposefully constructed ab initio with all of the memories and cognitive capacities of scientism, RIP."

Would it be so inclined? If so, what would it do next? (Let us posit that it's a reconstructed embodied human being.) For example, would it call up your friends and introduce itself? Court your former spouse (if you have one), fully acknowledging that it is not the original you? Ask to adopt your children (if you have any)?

Any account that involves a step where somebody has to create a description of the structure of your brain and then create a new brain (or simulation or device) from that, is death.

You seem to think that creating a description of the structure of a brain is necessarily a destructive process. I don't know of any reason to assume that. If a non-destructive scan exists and is carried out, then there's no "death", howsoever defined. Right?

But anyway, let's grant your implicit assumption of a destructive scan, and suppose that this process has actually occurred to your brain, and "something that functions like [your] brain" has been created. Who is the resulting being? Who do they think they are? What do they do next? Do they do the sorts of things you would do? Love the people you love?

I grant that you do not consider this hypothetical being you -- after all, you are hypothetically dead. But surely there is no one else better qualified to answer these questions, so it's you that I ask.