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(A digression about 8th grade- adolescence is a really interesting stage, developmentally, because abstract/higher order thought develops. If you know teens, you can sometimes notice the change- it feels as if they become different people over a short time.)
Anyway. There are a few ways to think of the self. Mind/body dualism is one that makes intuitive sense to a lot of us. The mind is in the pilot's chair, steering the body around. It is the locus of consciousness, memory, and agency.
Science and philosophy present challenges to dualism. Science asks: Where exactly is this self, and why can't we find it if we dissect the brain/body? Philosophy (and some religious traditions) suggest alternatives: Maybe the self is an illusion? A conglomerate?
We can also observe challenges to the self in the real world. Severe mental illness and head injuries can both wreak changes so profound as to force us to wonder if a person is still the same person. And, a person who lived as a woman can transition to become a man.
One of the philosophers who most influenced how people think about self intellectually was Hume, who saw the self as a bundle of components that can change, but like the Ship of Theseus (or a sports team that can change athletes, home city, even its name), has a continuity.
For me, the changes I felt to my consciousness in eighth grade were so profound that I couldn't think of my child self as continuous with my adult self. Transition for me has been a lot like doing that again.
I changed my name, pronouns, body, internal chemical balance, how I was perceived by strangers, and the relationship to everyone in my life... and the feel of having a continuous self throughout wasn't quite able hold.
Memories of pre-transition life, like my memories of childhood, lack a dimension of being able to feel as I felt. I see the pictures in my mind, even remember abstractly what sort of things I felt or thought, but I can't feel I am there, in the scene, as my... er...self.
This isn't what I expected transition to be, for what it's worth.And I'm sure it's not like this for everyone- a lot of trans people describe things in dualist terms and I can only assume that's bc they perceive them that way.
But, as someone who was already somewhat skeptical of ideas about dualism and the unchanging self, I'm fascinated by the disorientation of this. By feeling like too much has changed too quickly for the self-fiction to adapt.
If you change every plank of the ship, people may think of it as the same ship, but that's just a social illusion. If the team changes names and moves away and has no athletes or staff in common with the earlier team, it's not the same team.
Likewise, Evan Urquhart isn't Vanessa Vitiello. They share some molecules, some memories, some legal and social markers of continuity- but too much changed too quickly for the fiction that it's the same person to hold.
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