continuity problems

Would like to go to sleep but almost certain to be called into the labour ward soon. Slow progress. Variable decelerations. Epidural.
Unable to sleep so thinking about one of my obsessions.
I'm not sure how to define it. The real self.
If I think that I am me then am I definitely me? I think therefore I am -  but am I me or someone or something else?
I could be psychiatrically deluded....how do I know that I am sane?
When I go to sleep I stop being me. When I wake I recreate me. If I was to wake as someone else I wouldn't know. When I am woken by a phone call, at first I have no identity, just a concept of a role. I help people somehow....


Huh. Fell asleep and then called for an emergency Caesarian section, but not the one I was waiting for. Now it's after five am and still waiting for a call. Just the faintest light in the eastern sky but the birds are already awake.

If a science fiction transporter was possible would it really be the same person who re-materializes at the destination point? It seems unlikely that the same atoms would be used to re-create the body at the end of the journey so at the least it would be a body made of entirely different materials but which still feels as though it is the same individual. This is not necessarily a radical idea since the atoms which constitute our bodies turn over with the passage of time while we continue to feel like ourselves. But what if the transporter failed to "dematerialise" the original person...just simply reproduced the pattern at the destination? The original body would be utterly unchanged, would feel like its normal self, and yet another body would exist at the other end which feels as though it is the same being. However the original subject would have no perception of the thoughts and sensations of this second entity and could die without being aware of it at all. They are not the same person. Dematerialising is simply killing the original person while creating an exact but distant copy which thinks it is the original.If a person had been transported a number of times they could be useful from a strategic point of view and the resulting creature would consider itself the same, but it would be a copy of a creature that was a copy of a creature, going back to the original, all of whom had been killed and no longer existed.

This is the same argument for the concept of "downloading" one's "consciousness" into a computer network. It is theoretically possible to create a set of parameters which is sophisticated enough to be indistinguishable from human intellect and which might possibly consider itself to be the same as a human prototype, But the original human could live and die unaware of the "thoughts" generated by such a program. Thus if you "downloaded" your consciousness it still wouldn't be you. No immortality there.

What if an all-powerful being had only just created me, including an imagined memory of my entire life to that point? I wouldn't know - I could have only just come into existence now. This very moment could be the first instant of my existence.
Or this one.

When I wake for the inevitable next call will I really be me?  As my groggy mind searches for focus I often feel as though I have only just come into being, not sure who or what I am, but perhaps good for helping people somehow.