Tentatively Christian; looking for a reasonable discussion

[Neo-Scholastic]

They are basically the same problem. Anyone, but Heraclitus, can see that from cradle to grave, Joe is still Joe. And anyone, except Parmenides, can see that Joe has changed in material composition, size shape, and capacities. I wish there was a philosophical tradition that could somehow resolve this dilemma. Hmmmmm....

...Joe may have changed in material composition, but he has not done so entirely, all at once. Joe changes gradually over time, and since "Joe," as an identity,exists as a process going on within Joe's brain, that process can persist regardless of how many physical things change...

Maybe you didn't catch someone else's reference to Theseus's boat earlier or Pizz-atheist who further observed that when the contents of consciousness change then so also does any mental basis for a sense of self. Your proposed 'solution' only disguises the problem and doesn't answer how the identity is preserved throughout changes.

[Pizza]

Maybe we should be Software-Hardware dualists?

But in all seriousness if that is the case, mind-body dualism is of no practical importance; in fact, the specialness of the human mind disappears.

Your proposed 'solution' only disguises the problem and doesn't answer how the identity is preserved throughout changes.

Well there's the million dollar question: Is identity really preserved at all? Maybe at the end of the day, we are all asking the wrong questions? The reason why identity isn't reducible to particular things is, perhaps, because "I" doesn't mean anything more than what the dictionaries say: "pronoun-the person who is speaking or writing."

[Neo-Scholastic]

The reason why identity isn't reducible to particular things is, perhaps, because "I" doesn't mean anything ...

Generally, I(!) agree. The distinction to be made, I believe, is between consciousness and the contents of consciousness.

[Mudhammam]

Generally, I(!) agree. The distinction to be made, I believe, is between consciousness and the contents of consciousness.

I agree that there is a distinction, but what I think that means is probably quite a bit different than what you mean.

[Pizza]

I'm skeptical of this distinction. What would consciousness be without content? "Awareness of sitting at a chair," with the "sitting at the chair" part cut away doesn't seem like anything at all. Awareness of _____?

[Cephus]

If you have any questions, I'm fine with a PM or what have you.

[The Reality Salesman01]

What consciousness is in the first person perspective and what it is from the third person perspective will give you both what it is, and what it is made of. Just as a pain in my head accounts only for the experience of having a stroke, the third person understanding is a complimentary and necessary account for the entire description of the event being experienced. The moment we discovered that events, details, and our abilities in consciousness are entirely behold unto specific regions in the brain, to me, that was the moment this dualism nonsense became pure conjecture. If there were a separate unidentifiable substance required to generate consciousness, it wasn't very interesting to me if it was only useful if every single region of the brain was required to function perfectly in order for it to be recognized as anything coherent. That idea seems either false, or uninteresting.