>>2178043Tabula rasa in terms of continuity of experiences, in terms of the "ego" and the "superego", the part of you that identifies with your past self. I do agree that rest of the brain (and to a lesser extent the body) definitely determines things, although the brain and the body themselves can still be explained 100% in material terms.
A good comparison is with computer hardware. You can swap out every component of your PC one by one until nothing from the original remains, but if you've kept the contents from your original hard-drive(s) on the new one, and are using the same version of the same operating system with the same configuration, it will function as an extension of the old one. The CPU might be faster, and the GPU may be capable of fancier graphics, both of which will likely impact how you use the computer, and thus populate the hard drive going forward, but you're still running your old software and accessing your old files exactly as you did the old one.
And this metaphor isn't as far fetched as you might think. Your "hardware" as an adult is, on a physical level, completely different from your "hardware" as a child. But you still have memories that were created on that hardware, and thus identify with it.
>>2178054We're talking about the "consciousness", the "mind", the "soul", not the "body".
Regardless that kind of identity, seeing a thing as a fixed set of matter in space, is, IMO, not a particularly useful way of looking at things. Better to look at things dialectically, in terms of changes and relationships.