"You," Grand argues, "are like a cloud: something that persists over long periods, while simultaneously being in flux. Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made."
Eh. I agree with the basic idea, but the way it's worded here still seems to imply some sort of mysterious, immaterial essence. "You" are a combination of the stuff of which you are made, the form it takes, and the time and place in which it exists, how's that?
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Not much like a flashlight beam, cumulous clouds are more like flames; they result from an interplay of heat and phase change and fluid motion that maintains a somewhat coherent structure through time. They're even exothermic like a flame, which maintains the elevated temp which causes rising air. Living things do indeed have something in common: the structure being more important than the material that moves through it. I believe consciousness is a similar kind of thing happening in the information processing of our brains. There is some kind of "structure" that is maintained as information moves through it.
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