You are correct, the person was on life support. But they grew and went through puberty like any other normal functioning human. (I believe the person was born brain dead, and the wealthy parents couldn’t let go so they kept the person on life support at home).
Cells are living things by definition. So it is alive, though the body functions more like a tree than a mammal at that point. But a decentralized nervous system grew around the different vital organs.
The real flip side of your question is: do you think you’d still be you as a “brain in a vat” without any body?
Ultimately this whole discussion boils down to challenging the definition of “you” or “I”. Biologically every “singular” person is the result of many living things working together, so the concept of “I” is an illusion. Physically, there is no “I”, but only “us”.
This makes the discussion easier. If the hand is removed, then of course “we” are different because “we” lost a piece of “us”. This would also be true if “our” brain was removed.
Nevertheless, there have been cases of brain dead people’s body adapting to the lack of central nervous system, so the body is more independently alive than we tend to give it credit.
It’s not about the content, but rather the skills gained when becoming an expert on the content. For example, physics degrees are often sought after in the financial realm because of they’re expert ability to model things with mathematics.
Philosophers are generally expert thinkers, writers, and debaters. Not a lot of jobs are hiring philosophers for their content knowledge, but instead, they’re hired for their skills.
BeliefPropagator posted a link above which possibly verifies the screenshot: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/11/grok-musk/
I get that we need to be wary of AI slop, I really do; but If speaking academic English with decent grammar becomes associated with talking “like a bot”, then we are cooked.
You truly believe the semantics of the English language disproves the point? English and the way it defines “I” is greatly affected by things seperate from biological definitions (one being the spiritual concept of the “soul”)
Also, there did exist languages in other cultures that did not have the same concept of “I” as the English language. Your counter-argument is very weak.