Existence must exist at all times.

[Ignorant]

Thanks! Would someone who loses their memory or psychological continuity also lose their "self-ness"?

If they lost it permanently, then yes.

Just so I understand you correctly:

Suppose I lose my memory/psychological continuity permanently:

As a subject (in the context of my own experience of "me"), I would have lost my "self-ness".
As an object (in the context of your experience of "me"), you would describe "me" as a different object than the one before the memory loss, or the same object?

---

Well, an idea is a template which may be made manifest, right?  Let's look at the sense of self. [1] You talked about continuity-- but what about discontinuity?  It seems to me that due to brain damage, some people have almost nothing in common with their former "self."  Some kinds of damage even cause changes in personality and preferences. [2] The only thing that seems to be immalleable is that one either does, or does not, have the capacity to be aware that he exists.  And since one does not have this capacity during sleep, it seems to me that the identity is a collection of linguistic or symbolic impressions: "I'm this kind of guy.  I believe that kind of idea." and so on.  In other words, I am the part which I play, and that part is a collection of ideas about what it is supposed to be like to be a particular person. [3]

Some here will certainly start gesticulating vehemently toward the brain, but I think that's not really an answer. [4] I consider all parts of consciousness mysterious-- not so much their content, which is clearly of the brain and environment, but in their-- being rather than not being.

1) Happy to look at it as a subject (i.e. the sense of self). But I'd also like to consider the self as an object.

2) Yes, exactly what I'd like to consider. How do you consider such people as objects? Are they people who have suffered a personality altering trauma (the same human-being who has suffered a change) -OR- Are they people who have been cleaved into two different people due to a trauma (one human-being ends and a new human-being begins)? Can the same be said for any other object that exists, conscious or not?

If the latter is the case (discontinuity), I'm not sure I understand how anything can be continually itself from one moment to the next. Is a tree the same tree at day 3 of growth as it is at year 50, or is there no actual "tree" to speak of at any given moment? Either it is some THING that undergoes change in some aspect while remaining the same identity, or it is nothing but change.

3) See above. How does this apply to speaking about other things like this rock, or that tree or this atom?

4) I agree it's not the answer. It seems to me that there should be something in the formulation that can account for both the continuous identity of a human-being and any other sort of "being" or "existence".