Concerning Necromancy

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Sure, when you raise the dead, sometimes the person you get back isn’t the same person you lost. But isn’t that always true? When somebody goes on a vacation, when they take up an internship, when you part ways because the career is more important and then meet up 20 years later at the reunion…

[Deledrius]

Death changes a person. It changes them in ways that few living people experience and live to tell about.

Coming back from the dead? That's even more rare. It's something which is hard to discuss with someone who has never gone through it.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

So you're taking the Spock approach then?

[CharlesPhipps]

Listen man, of course I go to the Necromancer to raise my dead.

Who else would I go to?

A priest?

[AllanO]

Personal identity is a tricky subject. Personally I am unconvinced that we are ever quite the same person from moment to moment, as we change our mental and physical characteristics. However personal property, personal relationships, marriages, parents, children and other practical relations require us to work with the fiction that we are indeed the same person throughout the course of our lives. If we could resurrect the dead, especially if they change a great deal in the process, things get more complicated. However I agree since we don't require people to be identical over time, requiring them to be identical before and after resurrection sounds like moving the goal posts on identity.

My favorites brief dealing with a few of the issues (although this is more about whether you are the same person after a transporter zaps you around, see also the Ship of Theseus)
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Fricking neato. =o

[LittleRaven]

Personally I am unconvinced that we are ever quite the same person from moment to moment, as we change our mental and physical characteristics.

This is because we are quite demonstrably not.

We think of people as single entities, because how can we not? But we really aren't. Every human is a collection of trillions of cells and other organisms, and most of them (by count, if not by mass) don't even have human DNA. All of these tiny creatures are organized into a mindbogglingly complex system of organs and transport systems that (mostly) work in a symbiotic relationship to power...you. But what are you? You're definitely not the body. We have plenty of tragic examples of bodies still pumping with dead brains, and they aren't the person they once were. But you're almost certainly not the brain either. We can't quite keep a brain alive with no body yet, but everything we do know suggests that even if we could, a brain with no body would change VERY drastically VERY quickly, because the body is constantly affecting the brain via hormones. And heck, even 'body' and 'brain' are ridiculous oversimplifications. Start giving a man testosterone blockers and you'll have a very different 'person' in a few months, and all you've done is tinker with one chemical. People that suffer a TBI are almost inevitably described as 'permanently changed' by their loved ones, even (or perhaps especially) when the brain damage is highly localized.

People. Are. Awesome.

[Beastro]

There is more to a person than the conscious self and our fixation on it I find to be an unhealthy egotism that results in people damaging or destroying themselves thinking the rest of them is possession to use and abuse like any other item they own.

[chaos42]

plus here is the question does coming back from the dead change some bit of chemistry in the brain to the point that you don't think quite the same. people with mental disorders who have some chemical usually have to take some medication to help balance it out with out it they do things they normally wouldn't consider. who is to say your entirely yourself again

[Mercury01]

Consider that when you die, your body stops working. Your blood stops pumping and pools inside you. Your nerves and neurons stop transmitting. Nutrients aren't flowing to the organs to keep them running.

In a world where necromancy is possible, a person raised from the dead would probably suffer from the same aftereffects of anyone with severe head trauma.