Quote from: typtap on December 29, 2012, 02:27 amQuote from: SelfSovereignty on December 29, 2012, 02:12 amMy response depends entirely on how you define "personality", "memory", and "someone entirely different." But honestly, I think you may have missed my point: if drugs can influence us so profoundly, then it stands to reason we exist solely because of our brains and the physical matter that composes them. Thus when this mass of cells ceases to function in any meaningful way (i.e. dies), I will cease to exist. That's what I'm getting at.If drugs can influence us so profoundly, it stands to reason that our consciousness is tied to our brains as if by an umbilical cord, like a fetus in the womb, growing and maturing and preparing to be born into a wider reality.Or, a better phrase than "it stands to reason" might be "one could assume."Personally, I like the approach that death is the severing of the conscious umbilical and our rebirth as (possibly) purely conscious beings embarking into a wider expanse of reality. At that point, the shock could even drive us into forgetting our incubation in the womb of the brain, and everything we've learned in this life would sink into the subconscious, and our new awareness would be the next stage up.I dunno, just throwing out ideas I consider to be as likely as us just ceasing to be altogether, considering how little we understand. Sure, we can read measurements, but that's seeing, not understanding. Just like science has been pushing forward in other areas with a hunger for numbers and equations and a disdain for the work it takes to reach insight, we need to adjust and expand how we study consciousness and its interactions with reality.You know you said something recently that made me stop and grin like a child: there's no reason that our cause of consciousness can be the only thing that causes consciousness. In all my life, I never stopped to think about that. I mean sure... why couldn't there be thousands or millions or even more ways for something to be a conscious entity? Why must it only arise the same way ours does? Absolutely no reason at all that I can see.Definitely gives me something more to ponder. I'll say it again my friend: I cannot prove you wrong, and I find that wonderfully amusing :)