I am kinda goin all over the place with this, hopefully there is something to react to, I at least find this sort of stuff mind boggling...


“On those stepping into rivers the same, other and other waters flow.” - Heraclitus
“Everything changes and nothing remains still.” - Heraclitus
“This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was and will be: an ever-living fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.” – Heraclitus

Are specific identity (not "laws of nature") tautologies like photographs? A thing is a thing captured in a moment, but a thing is destined to change and destined to transform, tautologies exist in memory and in the finite registration of a moment? That is that is that is that! Facetious?

Quote:

(See Plutarch, Life of Theseus.) Imagine a wooden ship restored by replacing all its planks and beams (and other parts) by new ones. Plutarch reports that such a ship was "… a model for the philosophers with respect to the disputed arguments … some of them saying it remained the same, some of them saying it did not remain the same" (cf. Rea 1995). Hobbes added the catch that the old parts are reassembled to create another ship exactly like the original. Both the restored ship and the reassembled one appear to qualify equally to be the original. In the one case, the original is "remodeled", in the other, it is reassembled. Yet the two resulting ships are clearly not the same ship.
Some have proposed that in a case like this our ordinary "criteria of identity" fail us. The process of dismantling and reassembling usually preserves identity, as does the process of part replacement (otherwise no soldier could be issued just one rifle and body shops would function as manufacturers). But in this case the two processes produce conflicting results: We get two ships, one of which is the same ship as the original, by one set of criteria, and the other is the original ship by another set of criteria. There is a similar conflict of criteria in the case of personal identity: Brain duplication scenarios (Wiggins 1967, Parfit 1984) suggest that it is logically possible for one person to split into two competitors, each with equal claim to be the original person. We take it for granted that brain duplication will preserve the psychological properties normally relevant to reidentifying persons and we also take it for granted that the original brain continues to embody these properties even after it is duplicated. In this sense there is a conflict of criteria. Such a case of "fission" gives us two distinct embodiments of these properties.

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andrewss said:

...or ignore it

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I don't want to ignore it; it interests me, but I'm on Clonazepam ATM, so I'm a bit drowsy/lazy...

Quote:

Imagine a wooden ship restored by replacing all its planks and beams (and other parts) by new ones. Plutarch reports that such a ship was "… a model for the philosophers with respect to the disputed arguments … some of them saying it remained the same, some of them saying it did not remain the same" (cf. Rea 1995). Hobbes added the catch that the old parts are reassembled to create another ship exactly like the original. Both the restored ship and the reassembled one appear to qualify equally to be the original. In the one case, the original is "remodeled", in the other, it is reassembled. Yet the two resulting ships are clearly not the same ship.

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How do you answer? Is the ship reconstructed still the ship of theseus? What about the addition Hobbes made? Perhaps just stick to the original Ship of Theseus case...

I think off the bat I want to say that in the original case, barring Hobbes addition, that the ship isn't the same ship. But it is funny because at what point is the transformation coined? Considering its transformation was slow and not uniform or linear, like certain things weathered faster than others, etc etc - at what point do we say AH HA this is now not THE ship of theseus! What when more than 50% of the parts are new? Why? What about parts being more important than others??? So its when all the parts are transformed? But then what if the last part was inconsequential? Hmmmm on and on...

In the Hobbes addition, would we need the original nails to be included, etc etc hehehe

mmmmm hmmmm

Lakefingers said:

Quote:

Imagine you were god like and �time� could be sped up (compared to what say humans experience) would everything in its influx become a big smear in a sense?

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If as a god you still had a humanlike Weltbegriff, or way of conceptualization, it might only be different in that you see at different speeds. Somewhat similar as seeing at the speed of a fly or a human.

The interesting stuff starts happening when you have a god-view that doesn't conceptualize like we do, or at least so differently that, the illusion of the permanence of objects is not present.

Check out that Manuel de Landa book (A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History) I recommended in the Kant thread. I was thinking mostly of you when I said others might like it, I think it's right up your alley if with the interest in indentity and flow.

Finishing off:

If you have The Gay Science (Nietzsche) available read �111 ("Origin of the logical") and �112 ("Cause and effect"). Or check on Google books... In those passages Nietzsche gets into the result of thinking about substances and concepts, these solids that have solidified in our mind; how at some early stage in our history (pre-human) we did not notice "change". And then he continues to say that cause and effect is a duality that probably never existed, because rather there is a contiuum out of which we tear out parts, and that an intellectu that could see the continuum rather than cause and effect would deny the very idea of the later.


P.S. Does anyone know what happened to daytripper23?

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Hmmmm perhaps I need to look into that book.

As for The Gay Science ive read it and remember those sections, they are really good - havent taken a look at em in a lil while though... but yeah good shit indeed.

I think daytripper23 just comes and goes in intervals, at least it seems like that to me.

Lakefingers said:

andrewss said:

Quote:

Imagine a wooden ship restored by replacing all its planks and beams ... In the one case, the original is "remodeled", in the other, it is reassembled. Yet the two resulting ships are clearly not the same ship.

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How do you answer? Is the ship reconstructed still the ship of theseus? What about the addition Hobbes made? Perhaps just stick to the original Ship of Theseus case...

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I don't have any decisive, analytical answer to this. I don't think anyone can produce one either; not one that would be generally or universally useful for such cases of identity.

However, I think if we return to our basic language and intuition, we "know" when it's the same ship or not and in context can agree with others about it or get them to do so.

If you have a house from Sevilla, Spain and a rich oil millionaire from Texas buys it and takes every stone, plank of wood and building material used in it and rebuilds it exactly as it was but outside of Amarillo, it seems fair to intuitively say it's the same house.

With your body, since you're an adult, probably none, of the cells in your body are the same as when you were born. They've been replaced, duplicated, destroyed, neglected... yet you are the same person.

What I'm saying is that our language and everyday view makes these things complicated, and illogical, yet at the same time it seems very reasonable to return to this view to make things lucid and logical; to return home to the language we live in to make the world comfortable and sensible again.

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those damn TEXANS!

Lakefingers said:

andrewss said:

...
So where does identity lie for things that constantly change?

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It could sit in the capacity to reason, which, I suspect we'll find more and more through neuroscience is tied into our capabilities for language. There could be a capacity to conceptualize identity in our brains outside of the linguistic structures, perhaps more primitive, but I think, much of it is there. Furthermore I suspect that most of it is an emergent illusion resulting from our lingual capabilties. We conceptualize, we have a Weltbegriff, a grasp of the world, unlike any other animals, composed of those little tears at the continuum Nietzsche mentions, because of this very peculiar architecture we dwell in called language...

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But obviously things have a usefulness or the opposite for other animals - things, animate or not, can be objects of their "primitive" forms of hatred and love - of pain and pleasure in a sense and I claim something of them registers that...

An emergent illusion, do say more...

Illusion in the relative sense? In that its valid, for a time... or under a certain guise of a modality of "reason"

Icelander said:

Does anyone know what happened to daytripper23?

I got tired of his wordy obtuse posts.

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He posts mostly posts some good shit, actually

andrewss said:

He posts mostly posts some good shit, actually

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You don't know how to speak English properly!

andrewss said:

Icelander said:

Does anyone know what happened to daytripper23?

I got tired of his wordy obtuse posts.

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He posts mostly posts some good shit, actually

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He seems pretty intelligent but I usually have no idea what he's trying to say. 

Icelander said:

Now now, I was just playing with ya. I love having  you here.

I'm so tired of death anxiety I can't even express it.

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