Religion
In reply to the discussion: Consciousness: often even scientifically minded people make unscientific assumptions [View all]cpwm17
(3,829 posts)but once that happened complex animal life took off. The original multicellular life form didn't evolve to form such things as legs, hands, and conscious intelligence. But once multicellular life started the future allowed all sorts of possibilities.
Same with consciousness: consciousness probably didn't originally evolve to create good social critters. But due to the flexibility of consciousness all sorts of abilities evolved in the future. Often the abilities are indications of higher intelligence rather than more consciousness.
You ask excellent questions. Is it possible to only be part of the person you were the day before? Your memories, goals, thought processes change over time; so can your conscious-self change in increments? I like to think that the self doesn't change even when many other things change in your brain. Your conscious-self isn't your memories, thoughts, goals, etc; your consciousness is what experiences those things. So why should your consciousness necessarily change when your life changes? But then I may be too attached to the concept of the soul if I believe that the conscious-self can only come in whole increments, and I don't believe in souls.
Your sleep question does lead to interesting points. So when you fall asleep it does seem it is similar to losing your consciousness when dying. When you're not dreaming your consciousness does shut off. Your memories give you continuity so it sure does feel like we are the same person when we wake up. But how can we prove it?: we can't.
How different is falling asleep than having your body evaporated and then with an hour delay have your body reconfigured exactly as before, would you then be the same person with the same conscious-self? I dont see why not.