This is a similar problem to that of “The Ship of Theseus”. Imagine you own a watch (watch A) and over a period of 5 years the watch physically deteriorates and the belt needs replacing and so too does the clock hands etc. By the the time you have had the watch for 5 years each component from watch A is no longer on the current watch which we will call watch B. Is watch B still watch A even though none of the original components are left on it?
Imagine all of the components taken from watch A are kept aside in a cupboard and are then put back together again to construct a working watch (we’ll call this watch C). Is watch C the same as watch A and can we call it watch A?
If watch B is watch A and watch C is also watch A then how is this possible? Watch B lacks ‘‘all’’ of the original components yet it is still watch A whilst watch C is built from the orignal components of watch A and it too is watch A. How can watch B and C be watch A yet share no similar components in relation to eachother?
Everything is transient and dynamic. You are trying to mix conceptual and physical identity and it doesnt work.
Consider that Watch A is not Watch A anymore physically even .005 seconds after labelling it “Watch A” because the atoms have moved. Whether or not we still call it “Watch A” is just conceptual meaning games we play as humans, instilling a illusion of physical persistence.
We can establish any conceptual standard we like for categorizing when a watch is the same watch, but that would be a strictly socio-ideological construction. (p.s. is socio-ideological a word?)
I can call all of them Watch A, or I can say there is a Watch A,B,C and it would all be really meaningless because there is no physical “truth” in any of the statements, there is only what we agree with as the proper way of conceptualizing or (“physically abbreviating or chunking”) the identity of watch.
Heres a question: if I read something I wrote a week ago and asked myself “who wrote this garbage?”, am I the same person that wrote it?
This is difficult one. Our ordinary concept of identity has evolved from, and is applicable to, as you might expect, ordinary instances. Leibniz’ Law of Identity is fashioned to explicate this ordinary understanding of identity. Leibniz’ Law is that X and Y are identical if and only if all the properties are X are properties of Y, and all the properties of Y are properties of X. This is true of your two watches, but they are clearly not identical. So, our ordinary idea of identity seems to fail here. So, probably, this instance calls for a stipulation of some kind. There is no guarantee, after all, that our ordinary concepts, are going to fit extraordinary circumstances.
yes, your identity remains preserved throughout your whole life…no matter what accidental changes take place.
After posing your watch question, why would this be? Aside from few cells, I believe in the brain stem and reproductive organs, all cells, just as all watch parts, have been replaced many times over. And at the molecular level, none of the original merchandise is the same. Apparently 98% of the atoms in your body are replaced in one year. In three months your body produces an entirely new skeleton; six weeks a new liver; stomach lining, five days. I am curious to the firmness of your thinking.
And if they stop making the crystal of the original, so you replace it with a plastic one, and if the wind-up gearing is too expensive to replace, so you replace it with an off the shelf quartz-movement, and the hands rust, so you replace that with a digital display of hands. At what point is it no longer the same watch? Or is there an infinite number of changes you can make?
no matter what changes you make to watch B, it still cannot shake off the identity of watch A.
So if you take all the parts apart and put them each in another watch, so that you have let’s say, the crystal on watch B, and the gear part 1 in watch C, the gear part 2 in watch D and thuse 20 parts distributed in say 20 perfectly working watches, and you then put each of these watches in different places in your house so that you can use them to tell the time whereever you are. Are you really telling time by watch A? Come on now.
Or, you replace all the parts of watch A with improved parts over time, and turn it into an advanced digital watch, with no part having the same in function as the original, and no physical part remaining. What about the new watch would be watch A at all?
Or, you take all the old parts in your original example of watch C, with watch B working well, and instead of making a watch out of them, you melt them down and pound them out to form a rather handsome and perfectly good sundial. Would you honestly say that watch B and sundial C are identical?
yes, that is what i basically asked in the original post Dunamis. Watch B has none of the original components yet it can still be called watch A.
Now Dunamis, imagine that the original watch A was actually stolen and it wasn’t bought. The owner comes round to you and demands his watch back, which watch should you give him? Watch B or C?
I have an idea that might help strengthen this or just needlessly confuse everything.
If we recognize that identity is simply a intepretation by humans of a physical object, in fact even being able to identify a object as a watch and label it a watch is dependant on a human socio-ideological web. That is, the only reason we are even quibbling about this is because we are here to conceptualize about it and assign some persistence to the physical objects.
Watch A and Watch B are identical by Leibniz’s laws, in fact, all watches of a similar make are “identical” depending on how specifically you define the properties. Heck, even all watches are identical if you define the properties you are examining as solely “worn on a wrist, tells time”.
So, what we need to do here to tell one seemingly identical watch from another is to introduce subjective properties. Watch A is only the same as Watch B if the entire human population has the same subjective feelings about it. Heres how it would work for Rami’s example…
Watch A was my grandpa’s watch, after replacing the parts, I no longer have that sense that it was my grandpa’s watch. The subjective property of “its my grandpa’s watch” is gone, and it now Watch B.
Now, lets say someone stole my grandpa’s watch and replaced it with a identical watch. Under leibniz’s law it would be identitcal, and in my eyes it would be identical because I didnt know it was swapped. So, its subjective meaning would be the same to ME. However since we have to consider all of humanity’s feelings, it would not be the same watch because the person who stole it knows he swapped it and knows that it is in fact not the same watch. So Watch A still becomes Watch B, though I am ignorant of it.
However, there arises an interesting case here where lets say the little kid who manufacturered the watch in China was told his mom died while making watch A. He was sent home and came back and finished assembling the watch when he was able to face the fact his mom died. The watch was imbued with subjective meaning for him, but then he gets hit on the head and forgets all about the watch. It has no meaning, so it would it then still be Watch A or is it now Watch B.
I dont know, maybe this just confuses everything too much. But we cant assign just a meaning just to the “owner” of the watch because that doesnt really make sense if we trying to go for some type of “objective conceptual identity”.
yes, that is what i basically asked in the original post Dunamis. Watch B has none of the original components yet it can still be called watch A.
What the original post did not address, and what my examples did is that the relationship, the organizational structure between parts changed.
Unfortunately, other than you saying it, there is no reason to consider these watches/sundials (or bomb parts, or toothfillings, or whatever the material is turned into) the same. It’s just “check with Rami, and he’ll tell you”.
Perhaps you might take watch B and watch C, melt them both down, and then remake two sets of parts, for two watches, where each set is made from roughly 50% of watch B and 50% of Watch C.
And then eat it.
I wonder if you would then have accomplished the feat of achieving Watch A? (Which seems a strange thing to have to achieve given that it was your original premise that there was such a thing as watch A to begin with.)
But it seems equally strange to deny, by some kind of ontological chicanery, that there ever was a Watch A.
Which seems a strange thing to have to achieve given that it was your original premise that there was such a thing as watch A to begin with.
This of course is the point, and really an nominalistic one, because under Rami’s fast proliferating concept of identity, there was no watch A, but rather, a bunch of volcano residue, stardust, fish excrement, wafting summer breeze, etc., all come together in Watch A. Watch is identical to anything that any one of its molecular and atomic parts had once participated in.
The owner of watch A wants his watch back, should you give him watch B or C? If you give him watch C then are you saying that watch B is not watch A?
I think its a stupid question, because I do not believe in essences apart from our essentialating stance towards phenomena. Watch A isn’t even identical to Watch A if you get right down to it, or as Derrida would say, not identical but the same. So I would tell him what happened, put the two watches in front of him, and let him choose. If he wants a working watch that fulfilled the teleological ambitions of watch A, he’ll pick B. If he has sentimental attachments to the physical watch, he’ll pick C. But really you could have never made B or C, and simply polished the watch and replaced the crystal and infuriated him, because it was not the same by the index that was important to him. There is no “essence” of the watch. There is no Watch A, in an essential way.
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p.s. Let us set out upon the path towards the Essence of Confusion! We shall consult Heidegger’s relatively unknown third Magnum Opus, Zur Wesen die Verwirrung!
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