I don't know the low level details about how the brain works but...

When you're sleeping and are under anesthesia your brain is still an organ that's alive. Your body as a whole exists and is functioning.

I don't think this can applied to death if our definition of death is that your skin, organs and cells decompose into nothingness relatively quickly. Over time you'll reduce into a pile of bones. Your brain, heart, lungs and everything else is long gone.

Your identity can only be restored at this point if you believe your identity is fully detached from your brain, in which case then you may believe your identity will continue to exist in an unknown state that as far as I know has never been measured or confirmed in human history. That is of course where lots of folks have different opinions.

I'm not here to sell anyone on my opinion but I have been under IV based anesthesia before. It's a legit pause button on what we perceive as our memory or consciousness. You drift into sleep within seconds and wake up as if nothing ever happened, then feel a little groggy along with deal with whatever side effects you were put under for and your doctor will tell you what you were responding to requests during the surgery which means you were able to do things like rest your arm in this position or look to the left, etc..

But the takeaway there is your memory has a gap that can't be accounted for. If your identity is composed of your memory and anesthesia is a combination of drugs that affects chemicals in your body to alter your brain into not remembering things then we've scientifically proven your memory is directly tied into your body (brain included), otherwise if it weren't then "you" wouldn't have been paused right?

Right.

> in which case then you may believe your identity will continue to exist in an unknown state that as far as I know has never been measured or confirmed in human history.

Right again, but note that this conclusion turns on the absence of observation. It's possible that dualism is true and we just have not yet invented the right instruments to measure it. The germ theory of disease, and even atoms themselves, were once treated with the same skepticism for the same reason.

Yes, dualism is false. But ruling it out is not easy.

> your memory has a gap that can't be accounted for

So? My memory has gaps that can't be accounted for while I was awake.

Yeah, I can't tell you what I was doing at any specific minute of time 15 years ago but I can say I was alive back then, at least to a degree of what we generally accept as alive (ie. I'm ignoring any ideas of living in a simulation and not being alive, etc.).

I don't think memory alone is your identity but I personally think your brain needs to exist and be functioning in its normal state to be able to record and recall memories to a reasonable degree and if your brain decomposed to nothingness I don't think you can still have a brain driven memory.

It's also kind of interesting that we have this idea of your "mind's eye". We have a brain, we know a brain exists and we know where it exists within our body. One could say your inner voice is your consciousness right? It's your ability to understand your own self and world around you. To have an inner dialog and then dictate actions based on a combination of reason and impulses.

What's interesting to me is if you don't think about it, this dialog always happens behind your eyes. It feels like it's projected from where your brain physically exists. I think you can throw this inner voice to make it feel like it's coming from other parts of your body but that's only when you purposely try to do this.

To me this makes me highly think that your brain controls this inner voice and if your brain decomposes to nothingness then this goes with it.

Am I wrong? Maybe but I cannot accept that because something hasn't been proven then it may exist on nothing but faith alone.

But that's an inference, not a direct observation. It's possible you turned into a philosophical zombie temporarily without realizing it. How would you know?

> I personally think your brain needs to exist and be functioning in its normal state

Sure, but that still leaves open the possibility that the brain is just a transceiver and the actual locus of your self is somewhere else. That hypothesis is consistent with all observations.

> It feels like it's projected from where your brain physically exists.

Are you sure? Or is this just a reflection of your prejudices? How could you tell?

I never thought of that but I don't know. This sounds like you're remote controlling yourself from a different location or plane of existence? I think I default to Occam's razor here in that we evolved into a meat bag with a surface level understanding that we can talk ourselves into thinking we exist. Basically we know just enough to be dangerous.

> Are you sure? Or is this just a reflection of your prejudices? How could you tell?

Is this not the same for you? Unless I purposely project it in a different location internal dialogs are visualized or felt as coming from behind your eyes, or more generally in your head region. I feel like this has been a thing for as long as I can remember. No one taught us how to do this, we just do it.

The sense of identity should by default be associated with the brain, not with consciousness, etc.