Bertrand Russel in “Do We Survive Death?”:
“We all know that memory may be obliterated by an injury to the brain, that a virtuous person may be rendered vicious by encephalitis lethargica, and that a clever child can be turned into an idiot by lack of iodine.”
To be the same person as yesterday means that we are able to make a connection to past experiences via memory, whether consciously or not. Our memories are clearly bound up within the structure of the brain. Trauma to the brain can cause temporary or even permanent memory loss. It can also sometimes lead to complete amnesia, where a person has no recollection of their past experiences, effectively rendering them as a different person (perhaps?). In order to believe that we survive death in some way, shape, or form means that somehow our memories need to continue existing once our brains are dead. Given that we know that our memories, and therefore our past experiences and our recollection of them are intricately connected to our brains, and that we can erase our memories and past experiences via trauma, it is more likely than not that once our brain dies so do our memories and experiences and we cease to be a person. So what, if anything, remains to continue existing after our brain stops working?
I don’t know, but, I also don’t think that this is necessarily a relevant question to consider while living our current life, the only one we do know about.
