BBC RADIO 4: The Woman Who Forgot Who She Was

Description

Professor Andrew Mayes joins neuropsychologist Dr Paul Broks as he continues his detective hunt in search of the self. Today he considers a woman with amnesia, and asks: are we nothing more than our memories? The philosopher John Locke argued this position, and it makes a kind of intuitive sense. But talking to amnesia experts, he discovers that even people with severe memory loss often still retain their personalities; and that even people who seem to have forgotten everything about themselves may still have retained highly developed skills. And, would we really be happy for our memories to be transplanted into another body and have this one destroyed?