Who am I?

[Jon]

If I am me, is me the collection of cells within my body? If someone comes along and gouges out lots of my cells, am I less me now? I mean if those cells were me, they have taken part of me, so I am 'me - 1'. Is that right?

If not, can someone come along and take all my cells bar one. I've become a single celled organism. Have they taken me away from me, leaving 'me', or have they taken 'not me', but something else away (biological matter), and left 'me'?

Who am I anyway?

 

[Bee]

Let's take an alternative view. What if someone clones you? Which one is you? Jon1, or Jon2? Or are they both you? I need to revisit that Black Mirror episode where she buys a clone to replace her dead boyfriend...

 

[Jon]

That is a simpler answer. It is not you, but a clone. Your life experiences differ the instant after you are cloned.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

There are movies that involve cloning not only the body, but also the mind. (Hey, if your science fiction says you can make a new body, copying the brain's knowledge should be easy, right?). A short story that I recall from years ago is "Good Night, Mr. James" by Clifford D Simak, in which a guy has himself cloned in order to pull off the perfect murder - being seen in Hong Kong at a very public party while his clone goes to someplace in southern California to kill a rival. The catch is that BOTH of them think they are the original. And BOTH want to continue but know that the scheme will fall apart unless the other one is dead. I'll leave the ending alone so you can enjoy the story if you ever find it in a collection. The TV series The Outer Limits made an episode called "The Duplicate Man" from this short story and, as I recall, didn't botch it completely.