Philosophers have expressed wide ranging views on the infinite, and even distinguished different kinds of infinites. In terms of the 'infinite' standing for a sequence of events without end, then (just as there is no greatest possible number) it is difficult for someone to claim to have experienced that (experienced all numbers, none of which is lacking in a greater number), though not perhaps difficult for one to claim to understand it (that is, understanding that there is no greatest possible number) or for someone to have an experience of time or space, along with the feeling that this will never end.

There has been some interesting testimony by some philosophers to have experienced soemthing related that may be of interest. Some philosophers have claimed to experience that which is boundless or, in some sense, eternal. Probably the two most famous philosophers to have spoken and analyzed such experiences are Boethius and Augustine. Boethius spoke of God's eternity (and having some experiential acquaintance with God as eternal) in terms of God possessing the 'whole, simultansous, and complete fruition of a life without bounds' (interminabilis vitae tot simul et perfecta possessio'). This would be different from claiming to experience what you might think of as 'forever' or 'endless'; it is more like experiencing an event so overwhelming and perhaps good that you seem to lose track of future and the past. This has been analyzed by some philosophers as experiencing something that is atemporal or beyond metric time or not bound by it. The philosopher A.E. Taylor in an interesting book in the early part of the last century wrote of the experience of eternity in ways that are (to use your term) intense, but more satisfying than jarring or incredible (not worthy of belief). In one example, he describes 'spending an evening of prolonged enjoyment in the company of wholly congenial friends. The past may be represented for us, if we stay to think of it at all, by whatever happened before the party began, the future -but when we are truly enjoying ourselves we do not anticipate it- by what will happen when the gathering is over. The enjoyment of the social evening has, of course, before and after within itself; the party may last two or three hours. But while it lasts and while our enjoyment of it is steady and at the full, the first half-hour in not envisaged as past, nor the third as future, while the second is going on....' Taylor goes on to defend the coherence and importance of experiences that seem to be in response to a value that we wish to last forever or not be bound by time, a state in which one or more people might be completely present to each other that they would never wish it to end. See Taylor's book The Faith of a Moralist --the title is a bit misleading given what we mean by 'moralist' or 'moralistic' today versus when he wrote the book in 1930. It is a good text for thinking about the experience of values and time. (See especially chapters three to six.)

great question ... we might make some useful distinctions -- whether memories, beliefs, etc. are 'true' does NOT make an immediate difference to the individual, psychologically: we act on what we think, believe, remember etc., and in that sense the false thoughts/memories are just as 'valuable' or 'real' or important as the true ones .... however in many ways we like to orient ourselves towards the truth, to get our beliefs to be true, etc.; and thus when we discover some belief/memory is false we want to correct it .... (why we do or should care about truth in general is a separate issue; but most people simply do) -- so from that perspective, there's a large difference between the true ones and the false ones, as we seek to overcome the latter ....

the "idealist' tradition in philosophy -- esp figures such as George Berkeley -- would ultimately deny the difference between the true ones/false ones (or at least reconstrue it very differently from the way I've implicitly done here) -- so if you want to pursue your idea in more detail, I'd recommend exploring the work of Berkeley ...

hope that's useful --

Andrew

Here is a simple response, which I think is true: Language shapes our understanding and our perception of reality (different words will cause us to focus on different aspects of the world around us) and reality shapes our language (different environments will cause us to adopt different words). Speakers of different languages all belong to the same world, however, for there is only one world.

Here is a more complicated response that may do a better job of addressing your concern: When people use different words to refer to the very same objects -- a bug, a chair, a curtain -- the differences in their view of the world can seem trivial. But when different languages focus on entirely different things (even the words for objects such as bugs and chairs can have importantly different associations in different languages), they are bound to reflect important differences in the worldviews of the relevant speakers. In some cases, the different views may be quite compatible because they simply attend to different things -- different parts of a single world. In other cases, where there seems to be a disagreement about the very same thing (about what will help a fever, for example), it may be difficult to decide who is right because it is difficult to decide whether the disagreement is really about the same thing (fever or something of which the fever is just a symptom? help reduce a fever or help it do its work? reduction in objective temperature or reduction in felt distress? etc.). In these cases, we may say that the different speakers exist in different worlds as way of noting differences in their worldviews, but I think that this way of talking is dangerous insofar as it encourages us to give up on the attempt to communicate with others about our common world.

The prospect of going under anesthesia is a scary one, for all sorts of reasons. But I don't think you should have much cause to worry about identity issues. I have two comments that might help alleviate your concerns.

First, you might ask yourself: What would be the difference between its being you who wakes up from the anesthesia and its being a doppelganger with your memories? From the outside, you would seem exactly the same. And from the inside, it would seem the same too. Your doppelganger might be thinking something like this: "Yesterday I was worried about whether I would wake up from the anesthesia, and I'm glad that my worries were for naught -- here I am." In other words, the prospect that you're proposing is not really one that can be discerned -- either from the inside or from the outside -- as one that makes any difference to anything.

But if that doesn't help (and I'm a bit worried that it won't), it might better reassure you if you think about anesthesia on the analogy of sleep. I doubt that you think that the person who wakes up each morning is merely your doppelganger with your memories, so why should it be any different with anesthesia?

Good luck with your surgical procedure.