Are "you", essentially, software or hardware?

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An interesting early look at the question of what, exactly, makes you, you:

"I would be glad to know your Lordship's opinion whether when my brain has lost its original structure, and when some hundred years after the same materials are fabricated so curiously as to become an intelligent being, whether, I say that being will be me; or, if, two or three such beings should be formed out of my brain; whether they will all be me, and consequently one and the same intelligent being.
--Thomas Reid letter to Lord Kames, 1775"

I’m both mentally software and physically hardware. I don’t know what happens when people die and don’t think anybody knows the truth. “I can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try” - Jackson Browne

Can you provide some context? Was Reid poking fun at Lord Kames?

This is a quote I came across in a Wikipedia article. I don't know the context, sorry.

Darron

The human body is like a car with an onboard computer.

The human brain is like the on board computer.

Both the mechanical car and the computer are types of hardware.

The operating system, and the programs run by the computer are software.

So the brain is hardware...and the mind is software? Maybe.

Autism is one operating system, and NT is another operating system. Or not.

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But what part of you is ..you?

Is it your body? Your brain? Or your mind? If the last then "you" would be the software.

The brain is hardware which runs countless different software programs that combine into what we experience as thought. Much like programs, we can be aware of many of them, but, like brains, there are programs which we are not aware of unless we dig or explore our own minds.

The nervous system is a series of input/output devices which read sensory information and manipulate our bodies as dictated by our thoughts.

We are unique in that our hardware and software are influenced by non-logical, external influences--mainly emotions and other hormonal reactions.

the hardware/software analogy is misleading, unless you emphasize that software is physically there, in bits stored on a hard drive.

But then it's still misleading, because the "software" is not a seperate thing, stored in a biological hard drive, which you can access at will, and there are no background processes running that, say, read the file header and send a commamd to send read that file with a visual cortex.

it's all *only* wires and connections that organize themselves according to input.
That's why, if a feral child doesn't learn to speak, the language are necessary for our highly abstract language processing doesn't develop, and the feral child can't learn hoe to speak as an adult.
but also: people who got blind after having been able to see can now wear a camera on their head, with a "display" that creates tiny electric schocks rather than bright spots. The "display" can be put on the tongue (where there's high density of neurons) and "feel" the images on the dispkay as tiny electric schocks. I imagine it tingles.
It'll take a while, but the brain will physically restructure, so the incoming signals end up in the visyal cortex, and the people can "see" again. albeit very blurry.
But it takes months for the brain to restructure, it's not just changing the file header, or the command where to send the data.

I' think I might be photonic-electro-magnetic energy condensed into a carbon based protoplasmic meat sack.

well for my computer, its a bit of both. decent hardware for performance, and optimized software

Wetware. We're not emulated. The hardware we're on influences the software to a significant degree, and isn't inviolate itself.

I'm neither software nor hardware. I'm a living organism. Some of my features can usefully be compared to computer software and hardware, but the analogy breaks down if it's taken too far.