this ideology hurts my brain

on the one hand it is like it's really them because surly what makes someone is their personality and memories and it doesn't matter about who's brain their stored in it's still them

on the other hand it's just one scan from one time and they can make as many duplicates of this as they like which isn't normal and the original is gone and oh i dunno i have confused myself again

The (probably way oversimplified) way I see it is it's like if I have a photocopy of the Mona Lisa, all the colours might be the same, all the brushstrokes add up to the exact same picture, but I'm still not holding the Mona Lisa.

I think it's something deeper than memories that make a person. If I got amnesia and started acting very different I'd still be me, still alive, but if I die and there's someone exactly like me in every way still here I'm not any less dead. I have no way of knowing there's an 'Asvini2' running around, because I'm already gone.

hmm that's a good way of looking at it that you wouldn't know that your still living in a way....ow brain hurtage again

just a queery but is your name really asvini? if so i think that's the coolest name i ever heard defo joss character worthy

It's real enough. Take an axe, a simple piece of equipment with a head and a handle. Say the head breaks, and you replace it. Then the handle breaks, and you replace that one too. Do you have the same axe as you always did? I say, close enough.

Now, take people. We replace every cell in our body numerous times as we age. Our adult bodies are entirely different matter from our child bodies. Are adults the same people as their child selves? I say, no, but close enough.

If a child were to commit murder, escape, and then get caught as an adult, our court systems would rule that it is the same person. Even if their perspective of the world changes completely, it is still legally the same person. It can be argued that the adult version is a different person in a philosophical sense, though. I consider myself a different person from who I was ten years ago, but I am based off of my younger self and we both come from the same source.

Now, take Dollhouse. When Margaret Bashford scanned her brain, she was making a direct copy of herself at that particular moment. That scan was left dormant, and she left and was killed a bit later. When her scan is imprinted in Echo, it is a continuation of herself at that moment. It is not the most true copy. An axe analogy would be that new materials are used to create an exact replica of the axe, every scratch. In absence of the original, it is true enough. As she then lives in Echo, it is a continuation of the person who was scanned, just as was the person who got killed.

Complicated, but I would say it is her... enough.

I was going to say fake copy (Thats what I picked) but now after reading Dragonclaws comment, I think I might want to change my answer. Nicely done DC! =D

hmmm i can see your point DC

but it's not the same axe it's a new axe a duplicate of the axe,
it's not the same person they have change, the court might rule them as the same person just as they might act as the same person but it's not

hmmm think i just figured which side i think lol still good point

and and thats still a wiked cool name

Ok I've read what everyone else has said and I still don't think that a copy of a person is the same as the original.
I think that an imprinted copy is very close to having an extension of the original but I don't think that it would be the same person. A lot could have happened to that person to change them in the time between the scan and imprinting! Also we saw when Margaret Bashford wrote the letter to her family the way she spoke had changed, could this have been the influence of the host doll?! I don't know that's just my opinion and the way I watched it. I hope it makes sense! hehe

I really think that there is more to a person than a scan could achieve.
Their physicality for one. Assuming that all bodies are the same to be put inside seems weird to me. I'm very aware that as an ex-gymnast, I have better balance and flexibility than many of my friends, would that translate across? Simple things like the way you move or walk, I recognise these things individually in other people, but would they translate with an imprint? I don't think so.
Plus, Asvini's Mona Lisa analogy feels accurate. You can't just transport a consciousness from one body to another and say it is the same person, because (assuming you believe in such things, since we are talking philosophy and theoretical science here) what would you then assume has happened to their soul? While I applaud Dragonclaws well thought-out answer, I can't help but think that 'enough' just isn't enough in matters like this. Their consciousness may be living on, but is a consciousness the sum total of a person?
I'm with Amazondebs here. This makes my brain hurt.

It depends on whether the imprint was created from a genuine brain scan of the individual (like with Margaret in Haunted, or the various times when one of the main characters is imprinted into a doll) or if it's a personna created based on a real person but on another person's description of them (I believe that's how they got Rebecca from Man On The Street).