Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?

[abaris]

Would you necessarily have the same mindset if everything around you played out exactly the same? How much spontaneity is there in the world to allow that your circumstances could be drastically altered if the state at, say, birth, were largely or even precisely the same?

How would I even know if I hadn't knowledge of my previous existence? And how would you know that there isn't sufficient spontaneity in the world?

[Mudhammam]

How would I even know if I hadn't knowledge of my previous existence? And how would you know that there isn't sufficient spontaneity in the world?

Well, the new "you" (which is debatable) wouldn't know, but I mean if one were to take a God's-eye view of the two parallel universes.

[Cato]

If I have to relearn everything, then it is not I who am living the next life which makes the entire proposition nonsensical other than to say I am simply rewinding the tape and doing it again. Your invocation of different circumstance suggests we are not simply rewinding the tape so I must press, do I carry forward my knowledge and experience, or don't I?

It's not my intent to be a burr in the saddle, but I think the distinction is crucial to the thought experiment.

[bennyboy]

Between ceasing to exist or reliving my life over and over again, I'd still choose life. Even if I lost my memories, there must be something of me which is the same, or it's not me reliving my life-- and something of me is better than nothing of me, because I am super awesome.

[Mudhammam]

If I have to relearn everything, then it is not I who am living the next life which makes the entire proposition nonsensical other than to say I am simply rewinding the tape and doing it again. Your invocation of different circumstance suggests we are not simply rewinding the tape so I must press, do I carry forward my knowledge and experience, or don't I?

It's not my intent to be a burr in the saddle, but I think the distinction is crucial to the thought experiment.

I suppose it depends on what it is that we understand personal identity to hinge on; if it's memory then I'm not sure if it's more problematic that one would fail to remember a past life than it is that they can't remember the majority of their past in this life. If someone suffers a brain injury and they lose all of their memory, are they a different person? What about a person who's in a drunken stupor and recalls nothing the next day? Or my failure to retain each individual moment of the past hour... Was the person who did those things, of which I share no connection with now (to the extent that I am self-aware), the same me? And it doesn't seem helpful to bring in physical identity, as our physical parts are always being replaced with new parts. If the "I" is the continuity of consciousness, then I might be a new man every morning that I awake from a deep slumber, and as there are people who actually believe they were once Napoleon or Jesus Christ, or even a wild animal, it's obvious that my past memories in which I think I remember what I did yesterday or a year ago can be deceptive...

[IATIA]

I have two memories that are reasonably clear. One is in a pastel blue room with a small window from the perspective of a crib. The other is in a queen size bed with my mother and a knick knack shelf against the wall next to the bed and asking my mother when daddy was coming home. I was probably about one year old and unable to construct coherent speech and in the first scenario, I was around two years old.

As with all memories, I do not recall a 'feeling' of "I" with the memories, but "I" do remember. Even yesterday's memories are nothing more than that. My "I" is in the here and now. I trust that they are memories of my previous "here and now", but I do not know for a fact that they are or that someone/something implanted them. I do not know for a fact that I am not rotating through countless "here and nows", each complete with their own set of memories.

Anyway, to the point of all this, what is the "I"? Can the "I" just be relocated and still be "I"? IMHO, it is moot. As the "I" is only aware of the "here and now", I would always think that this is it and therefore not have an appreciation for the "new" life for it would still be the "here and now".

This is all assuming, of course, that I was not given the luxury of remembering the previous life.

[Cato]

You're obfuscating the point and I think it's intentional. You are skating around absolutes. I am not required to remember all of my past experiences to retain what can properly be identified as me, but I cannot be without those experiences. Those experiences inform my future actions even if that which I am able to recall are hazy imperfect facsimiles of actual events. The fact that I may not remember a majority of what I have experienced does not delegitimize what it is I do recall or make insignificant forgotten events and the impact on my present personality. The intent with which you use 'majority' here is what cautions me as to your motives. The underlying assertion that there can be no 'I' unless I can recall >50% of my past experiences is ludicrous.

As far as people suffering brain injuries and their personhood, I can only answer based on my personal experience. My mother has suffered Alzheimer's. For her sake, she completely succumbed relatively quickly. Her gradual disappearance was painful to experience, despite how fast we were told it was compared to others. I can definitively say that there is a human body that has a remarkable resemblance to my mother, but my mother no longer exists. Redefining personhood for the convenience of argument won't change this fact.

By the way, you didn't answer my question.

[Anomalocaris]

"Had we not the knowledge of the life to come, I believe there would be few persons who, being at the point of death, were not content to take up life again, on condition of passing through the same amount of good and evil, provided always that it were not the same kind: one would be content with variety, without requiring a better condition than that wherein one had been."
- Leibniz, Essays in Theodicy, Pt. 1, §14

"Nay, if some god should give me leave to return to infancy from my old age, to weep once more in my cradle, I should vehemently protest; for, truly, after I have run my race I have no wish to be recalled, as it were, from the goal to the starting-place. For what advantage has life - or, rather, what trouble does it not have?"
- Cicero (speaking through "Cato the Elder"), On Old Age, §23

Cicero speaks for himself. Leibniz presume to speak for others, and through that usurpation clearly intend to establish himself as an authority to which he could then appeal.

Leibniz commits the sin of being like Jesus.

So Cicero.

[Mudhammam]

You're obfuscating the point and I think it's intentional. You are skating around absolutes. I am not required to remember all of my past experiences to retain what can properly be identified as me, but I cannot be without those experiences. Those experiences inform my future actions even if that which I am able to recall are hazy imperfect facsimiles of actual events. The fact that I may not remember a majority of what I have experienced does not delegitimize what it is I do recall or make insignificant forgotten events and the impact on my present personality. The intent with which you use 'majority' here is what cautions me as to your motives. The underlying assertion that there can be no 'I' unless I can recall >50% of my past experiences is ludicrous.

As far as people suffering brain injuries and their personhood, I can only answer based on my personal experience. My mother has suffered Alzheimer's. For her sake, she completely succumbed relatively quickly. Her gradual disappearance was painful to experience, despite how fast we were told it was compared to others. I can definitively say that there is a human body that has a remarkable resemblance to my mother, but my mother no longer exists. Redefining personhood for the convenience of argument won't change this fact.

By the way, you didn't answer my question.

So, let's say you become vaguely suspicious tomorrow or at some point in the future that once you lived in a variety of former times and places, under a different name and face, and that's the only detail about this peculiar epiphany that you can recall. The only difference between that situation and 95% of our own lives, especially events that we experienced in infancy and childhood, is the continuity of our name and more importantly, the steady recognition by others who identify us as that same individual. But if those whom you thought were family, friends, acquaintances, etc. were to suddenly start treating you as if you were a complete stranger whom they had just met for the first time, as much as you might find yourself confused and distressed by their behavior, you would probably not concede that you were not the same individual that you believed yourself to be prior to the change in them; yet if on top of that you woke up with no recollection of any past events in your life, and everyone continued to act as though you were someone they had never met, then you'd be precisely in the situation wherein you wake up at the termination of your present life in the body of a newborn. In other words, there still might be a sense in which "you" retain your "you-ness," even if everything about you is radically different. My answer to your question is that I don't know how much experience and knowledge is required of past selves to form personal identity (I like your idea that it must include "experiences [which] inform my future actions," but I might add that at most it need only be a perception of past experiences, not ones that have actually occurred); if it's merely a vague notion that is required, then you can assume at least as much as I did in the sentence that began this reply.

[Foxaèr]

I choose option C:

I am alive right now without all of your ignorant bullshit infecting me.