Are these statements correct?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

  1. Things indistinguishable from self cannot be distinguished from one another.

  2. Things cannot be distinguished without the criteria that distinguishes “self” from “non self”.

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I think that applies for NKT cells.

They freakin’ hate non-self. They kill it all.

Are we postulating a philosophical T receptor? That’d be cool.

3

Hi stellamonika,

Suppose that you placed an apple on the counter at a fruit market.

You: “I’d like to buy these apples, please.”
Vendor: “How many apples do you want to buy?”
You, pointing at the apple: “All of these.”
Vendor: “Um…but there’s only one apple on the counter.”
You: “No, there’s more than one apple on the counter, it’s just that one is indistinguishable from another.”

Stellamonika, in your statement you posit “things indistinguishable from self,” but in the same sentence you say these things (plural) that you’ve posited are indistinguishable from one another. In other words, the predicate of your statement reaches around to vaporize your subject. Your statement says, in essense, that there are pluralities that are not pluralities. A prerequisite for positing a plurality requires that we can distinguish or identify between individual items comprising the plurality. Otherwise, it would make perfect sense to say, “Look at all of these one apple”.

Your statement presupposes that the self is a singulur entity. But if a person were composed of a bundle of selves (read, Derek Parfit, for example) then we could make distinctions before we ever move outward from the domain of the complex self. If this is possible then your statement is false.

I doubt there is some homunculus, for example, seated at the “mission control” of my self. A valid critique of the homunculus theory asks if there is self at the center of myself, does this self, itself, have a center of its self? In other words, does each homunculus have yet a smaller homunculus seated at the “mission control” of its self (…great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em…)? But if this were true, again, we would have distinguished a multiplicity of (in this case, regressive) selves existing within a person. Again, this would render your statement false. In order for your statement to be true it is necessary (although not sufficient) that what constitutes the self should be a singular and undifferentiated entity.

Regards,
Michael