Identity

[Dunamis]

Late edit

actually thinking about it, probably +

is more efficient. Perhaps we should start a thread, emoticon math

Dunamis

[James_No_2]

[edit]
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!

[Rami]

Dunamis,

I only ask that you give the owner back his watch, will you give him watch C or B?

Rami

[Dunamis]

James,

Let us set out upon the path towards the Essence of Confusion

Actually, I think you’ve done it! Discovered the Fourth Dogma of Empiricism! It’s not the scheme that grounds Empiricism, but the Essence of Confusion.

Dunamis

[Dunamis]

Rami,

You might as well ask me to give him his virginity back. Your question is meaningless because the words don’t refer to “what really is out there”, but to the use to which we put a thing to. Whatever I give him or tell him has no bearing on where or what his watch is or isn’t. His watch is whatever he wants it to be, and my ability to convince him such is it.

Dunamis

[James_No_2]

Actually, I think you’ve done it! Discovered the Fourth Dogma of Empiricism! It’s not the scheme that grounds Empiricism, but the Essence of Confusion. - D.

James

[PlatoJB05]

In response to Anvildoc,

I believe that you do stay the same person your entire life but as you grow up and mature your ideas and thoughts become different. But you are still essentially that same person you are just thinking in a different way.[/i]

[socratesgirl]

Yes you are still the same person who wrote it. Just because you review something a week later and decide you don’t like , doesn’t mean you as a person has physical change. If you dye your hair and a week later decide you don’t like it, have you changed? No, but your original thought and Idea has changed. Nature and time cause use to change in our physical apperance, but as far as not being the same person because you disagree with your writing is just the matter of having a change of thought.

[anvildoc]

@platoJB05

In response to Anvildoc,

I believe that you do stay the same person your entire life but as you grow up and mature your ideas and thoughts become different. But you are still essentially that same person you are just thinking in a different way.[/i]

@socratesgirl

Yes you are still the same person who wrote it. Just because you review something a week later and decide you don’t like , doesn’t mean you as a person has physical change. If you dye your hair and a week later decide you don’t like it, have you changed? No, but your original thought and Idea has changed. Nature and time cause use to change in our physical apperance, but as far as not being the same person because you disagree with your writing is just the matter of having a change of thought.

Physically, I am always changing, my neural networks are pruning some pathways, creating new ones, I am aging as a whole, my body is recycling my atoms.

Mentally, I am also always changing, my opinions, interests, judgments, values change.

Me, looking back and not being able to identify with myself last week is evidence of this mental change. I’ve read papers I wrote 3 years ago, and I dont even remember writing them. And you can forget about journal entries, I cant even relate with them.

So what is it then that allows my identity to be persistent aside from a insistance that it is?

The only persistent identity is me labeling myself, its a purely conceptual persistence that has no grounding with the reality of the situation. Watch A is Watch A as long as I keep calling it Watch A. Its a meaningless statement, same with me being “me”.

[Rami]

@socratesgirl

Yes you are still the same person who wrote it. so your identity is preserved through out the entire course of changes Just because you review something a week later and decide you don’t like , doesn’t mean you as a person has physical change. If you dye your hair and a week later decide you don’t like it, have you changed? No, but your original thought and Idea has changed. Nature and time cause use to change in our physical apperance, but as far as not being the same person because you disagree with your writing is just the matter of having a change of thought. “time” is not a necessity for change but that wasn’t the argument

[LostGuy]

It’s a trick question. ‘The Watch’ as one thing is a purely social construct anyway. When the watch-maker put together the watch, he didn’t perform some metaphysical act that we can now determine the nature of, he simply put the materials into a configuration and then declaired, “Lo, a watch.”

There for answer the question any old way you like. I’m going to vote for B, simply because it has consistently performed the watch funtion, and taken the social position of Rami’s watch. The connection between watch A and C cannot be ignored, but the flow of social phenomon (which as I said is what a watch is) is from A to B.

[Rami]

@Kennethamy

@Rami

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?

Rami

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.

Incase my understanding of the Leibniz law is lacking, i think that the law insists that if we were to make a clone of myself then the clone would be numerically identical to me since all its qualitive attributes are identical to mine but would this be true? It would also suggest that i am not the same person that i was ten years ago since the person i was then and the person i am now do not share identical qualitive attributes and are therefore not numerically identical but again, is this true?

[Blademaster]

I believe that the process of making Watch B in place of Watch A and then making Watch C (also from the original Watch A) is just a lengthened process for going out, buying a watch. Then taking Watch A, renaming it and setting it ten feet away. What I mean by this is if you dismember all the parts of a watch one by one and replace them with new parts then you take the collective remainder of the original watch you had and rebuilt it wouldn’t it in essence just be iself? If you took the original watch apart for 5 years piece by piece and then put it back together piece by piece for 5 years, wouldn’t it just be the same watch?

[Pinnacle_of_Reason]

again, this thread is the embodiment of stupidity. I have said this millions of times. if it is a question of identity then what is the concept being defined? what does the universal word ‘ship’ mean? and what does ‘same’ mean? all those who replied prior to my posts are [beep]s.