Julian Baggini: Is there a real you?

In this short lecture, Julian Baggini raises several interesting questions regarding "What makes you, you?" He challenges the commonly held belief that there is a central core, an essence to you that remains true and unchanging throughout your life. Instead, he suggests that YOU are simply the sum of your parts--the summation of all your life experiences, thoughts, desires, beliefs, values, sensations, etc--that are intertwined and interpreted by the brain in such a way that gives you a self.

I believe that in many ways Mr. Baggini is correct. For me, it is difficult to imagine that there is a central essence to each individual person completely unconnected from the body [though sometimes it seems equally difficult to imagine there isn't one]. We are constantly molded and changed by our life experiences, and the thought that we can direct our personal development, in some ways, is, indeed, liberating, as Mr. Baggini says.

However, Mr. Baggini also says that you cannot be anything that you want to be, that in some ways you are limited in what you can and cannot do. As some individuals in the comments suggested, perhaps these limitations are the "real YOU." Your core, your essence, the real YOU is the starting material, including all the limitations, that is shaped over time by experience. Scientists might argue that the starting material is simply our genes, the expression of which can be modulated by experience over time to make us what we are. But that, I'm sure, is another debate.