QuestionsWho am I, really?The self changes bodies like clothes
Who am I, really?A soul

The self changes bodies like clothes

Krishna's teaching to Arjuna on the self (atman)

Bhagavad-Gītā (texte anonyme, attribué à Vyāsa) c. 200 BC · c. 200The self is neither born nor dies: it leaves worn bodies as one leaves old clothes.
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What it claims

What I really am is the self that stays the same under all changes, not my body.

Why

The body keeps changing, from childhood to death, but the self that inhabits it is neither born nor dies: it is what I really am.

The same idea through history
Bhagavad-Gītā (texte anonyme, attribué à Vyāsa)200 BCThe Gita is a chapter of the Mahabharata, an Indian Sanskrit epic. Tradition attributes it to the sage Vyasa, but it was probably composed by several hands. Scholars most often date it between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE; the year -200 is only a round value.
In short

"The self changes bodies like clothes" is an argument by Bhagavad-Gītā (texte anonyme, attribué à Vyāsa) (Bhagavad Gita, ch. 2, v. 12-13, 20, 22-24, 200 BC) on the question "Who am I, really?" (answer: a soul). Its claim: What I really am is the self that stays the same under all changes, not my body. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3, P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Bhagavad Gita, ch. 2, v. 12-13, 20, 22-24
Valid with an implicit premise

On a battlefield, the warrior Arjuna refuses to fight: his relatives stand before him. His adviser, Krishna, begins by speaking of the self. What we truly are, he says, is not the body. The body passes from childhood to youth to old age; at death, the self (the atman) passes into another body, as one leaves worn clothes to put on new ones. The self itself is neither born nor dies, and no weapon touches it. It is one of the most famous statements of the idea of a soul that stays the same through all change (verse 20 repeats almost word for word an older Upanishad, the Katha). The text is also advice given for a fight, and that use is itself debated (Gandhi, for one, read the battle as an image of an inner struggle). We quote Telang's English translation (1882), which is in the public domain.

P1The self (atman) is not born and does not die; it is lasting and stable. It is not killed when the body is killed, and no weapon, fire or water touches it.
P2The body, for its part, does not stay the same: it passes from childhood to youth and old age, then is left at death, like a worn garment exchanged for a new one.
P3 · implicit premiseI stay the same through these changes: the one who was a child, who is old, and who, according to the Gita, will have another body, is "I".
P4 · implicit premiseWhat I am is what stays the same through the changes of the body, not what changes.
So what I really am is the self that stays the same under all changes, not my body.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where the self lasts, the body changes, I stay myself, and yet I am not that self (for instance if I am a set of memories or a series of states, which lasts without being a separate substance).
The argument is valid with the hidden premises P3 and P4. If I stay the same through the body's changes (P3), if the self stays the same (P1) and the body does not (P2), and if I am what stays the same (P4), then I am the self. The objections target P1 (is there a self distinct from the body?), P3 (is there a lasting "I"?) and P4 (is what lasts what I am?).
Analogy. A driver changes cars over the years: the car is worn out, replaced, sold. The one driving is still the same. For the Gita, we are the driver, not the car.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

The Buddha (not-self, anatta) 450 BC · attacks premise 3

According to the Buddha, nothing in a person lasts or obeys us: neither body, nor feelings, nor perceptions, nor dispositions, nor consciousness. None of these elements is "my self". There is no lasting self behind them. What we take for a self is only this set of changing elements.

a defender replies
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T
The Nyaya school (Gautama, Nyaya Sutra, III.1) defender of the argument · 150
The Nyaya logicians answer that memory and recognition require one subject: we remember what we saw, and recognise an object seen yesterday. A flow of changing moments could not link yesterday and today. So there must be a lasting self, distinct from body and mind.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the disagreement is ancient and still open. Both sides accept that the body changes; they dispute what links the moments of a life.
John Locke 1694 · attacks premise 4

Even if there were an immaterial self passing from body to body, it would not be what makes me the same person. What makes the person is the consciousness I have of my past actions. A self passing into another body with no memory would not thereby be "me".

a defender replies
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Thomas Reid defender of the argument · 1785
Reid answers that memory presupposes identity instead of making it. If the general remembers being the officer, and the officer remembers being the boy, but the general does not remember being the boy, Locke's thesis says the general both is and is not the boy. So the identity of the person is something other than memory.
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Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the debate between memory and substance remains open. Reid defends a simple identity, like the one the Gita describes; but he does not say it passes from one body to another after death.
T
The Carvakas, Indian materialists (as summarised by Madhava) 1350 · attacks premise 1

For this school only earth, water, fire and air exist. Consciousness arises from their mixture in the body, as intoxication arises from mixing certain ingredients, and it vanishes with it. The self is only the body endowed with consciousness: indeed we say "I am fat", "I am lean". Nothing proves a self distinct from the body that would pass into another.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Vyāsa) in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary: the Gita does not argue against this school, it asserts the self. The schools that defend the self (Nyaya, Vedanta) later answered that a dead body keeps its shape and elements but has no consciousness: so consciousness would not be a mere quality of the body. The Carvakas' own texts are lost; they are known mostly through their opponents.