Death without Dying

[Eilonnwy]

How is this relevant? Well, let us look at the original post:

say if you were to have a bad accident and you lost all your memories and you personality changes from severe brain trauma, does that mean you, essentially the person you are now, is as good as dead? I mean your body is alive, genetically you're exactly the same, it's just your personality is different and memories are gone. Is the "old" you the equivalent of dead?

Drunk -> act like a different person -> forget most basic aspect of your life -> wake up with no memory of the previous night -> person you were that night has died.

To address the OP directly, yes, your personality is the equivalent of dead. Of course it is. But "you" the person, the body, the mechanisms, you're still very much the same tabla rasa that you were born to be.

And as I said further down in the post:

Obviously the scenario has the big if of whether or not you can regain your memories and personality after therapy, so for the sake of argument, let's say it's permanent. What's your answer?

You continuously ignore that aspect of the conditions that I laid out. I think it's an important distinction. We as, as atheists, generally do not believe in life after death, so my questions was would this dramatic, albeit unlikely, but dramatic and permanent shift in personality with the loss of memories constitute as death for the self that existed before the accident?

Of course in a literal sense it does not, but I think in a figurative sense it could, especially if you don't believe in souls and afterlife...essentially, if you don't believe in an essence beyond the brain that is you.