I think the question of 'if Sylar looks like Nathan and has Nathan's memories and thinks he's Nathan, is he Nathan?' is an interesting one and I hope the show's answer is more complicated than 'No'.

'if Sylar looks like Nathan and has Nathan's memories and thinks he's Nathan, is he Nathan?'

it's very Dollhousey

-t,

why wouldn't the answer be "no."

I think this is a straight forward issue, right?

From the original Nathan's perspective, yeah there's no argument. He's really most sincerely dead.

why wouldn't the answer be "no."

Well, what makes him Nathan if it isn't his DNA and thoughts and memories? Where does his Nathan-ness lie?

Eta: If it wasn't Sylar who had taken on Nathan's identity but, say, a Cylon based on Nathan, would that make for a different answer?

well, how can Sylar know how he would make decisions or his personality quirks?

Sylar only knows some shit about Nathan and perhaps a couple of his mannerisms, but he doesn't know Nathan even as well as Noah does.

This might be a more substantive issue if Peter took on Nathan's life, but I'm not sure I see a whole lot to it if we are talking about some memories and Rich Little impersonation. If we have someone's memories, does Sylar also have the meaning said memories have for people? What they mean in the context of a life?

Sylar only knows some shit about Nathan and perhaps a couple of his mannerisms, but he doesn't know Nathan even as well as Noah does.

To be fair, Sylar's base power is knowing how things work, including people. Under the circumstances, I'd say Sylar would have an intimate knowledge of what makes Nathan Nathan.

That being said, I have no idea where that particular coin is going to land.

That's a good point. His decisions won't necessarily be the decisions Nathan would have made. But is that more identity changing than if, say, Nathan had lived and radically changed his world-view based on a near-death-experience epiphany? I don't know.

Sylar isn't trying to impersonate Nathan, he thinks he is Nathan. Nathan's memories will have meaning for him, not necessarily the meaning that they would have for Nathan, but some meaning. Ultimately, I think the differences in choices that Sylar makes will make the people around him (Peter, Claire, etc., who don't know he's not the real Nathan) react to him differently than they would to Nathan and break the illusion that Matt's got him in, but I hope it doesn't happen too fast, that we get to see Peter and Sylar!Nathan, for example, having a similar relationship to what Peter and Nathan might have had if ieverything had really happened the way Peter believes it has.

if my next door neighbor thinks she is me, she still isn't me. Even if she knows some of the things I know.

What makes us us is what I referred to before: my core personality and how I would make decisions. How I would respond to the unknown.

I don't believe there is any superpower than can recreate the essence of who we are. My gut response to things would be different from my neighbors. She doesn't have my cognitive wiring, my experiences, my DNA, my knowledge.

BTW, if he has Nathan's memories, how does he not have the memory of Nathan dying?

BTW, if he has Nathan's memories, how does he not have the memory of Nathan dying?

Matt can implant new thoughts as well as whatever he did with wiping Sylar's memory out (and transferring Nathan's?), so he could have over/rewritten the outcome of the fight with Sylar.