Self-Identity Over Time - Is It True At All?
April 28th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Words Have Changing Referents :: Self-Identity Over Time - Is It True At All? :: Self-Identity Over Time - Is It True At All?** :: Self-Identity Over Time - Is It True At All?
Cologne 28-Apr-2008
allen scult schrieb Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:20:34 +0900:
> >Joe to Ant:
> >
> >> you seem to be puzzled by the way language users use the same word time
> >> and again even though the referent changes (however slightly) over time.
> >>
> >> take the word ‘chair’. I use this word to denote my chair day after day
> >> even though the changes constantly. The fabric is getting worn, the
> >> frame creaks more and more, there’s a coffee stain on it that wasn’t
> >> there before, yada, yada, yada. but I still call it a chair.
> >
> >Joe, this is another interruption in your battle with Anthony and so can be
> >disregarded if the flow gets too distracted by my brief musing. It seems to
> >me that what words (say, chair, tree, I, etc {yes, even etc}) designate and
> >identify is not the ever-changing material-energetic consistency of their,
> >er, material-energetic constituents (to the extent to which the designated
> >*are* {are identical to, are rendered as, are cast as} such
> >materiality-energicity), but that which in each case and in its own way *is*
> >*what* is ever-changing in its material-energetic consistency etc. Whether
> >the tree (just outside my backdoor viewable now from my window as I type
> >these words) that I designate as such with the word “tree” is in full leafy
> >bloom (in summer) or starkly bereft of leafiness (in winter) or slowly dying
> >as it just about stands or uprooted and replanted in Joni Mitchell’s
> >horrendous tree museum is what is the same (and different to the other(s)
> >and to nothingness) in each and every case, even every possible (but not yet
> >or necessarily concrete) case. Identity here does not mean the same in the
> >sense of exact identical quantum stste of the ever-changing
> >material-energetic consistency/configuration (for example) of the tree. What
> >we see as a tree is ’seeing’ a *what*, not an ever-changing retinally-given
> >image or flickering of colour perceptions. The “referent” you refer to above
> >is not that what(ness) that the word designates (in my sense) but a series
> >of adjudged perceptions (that add up to the ever-changing, etc). Ah, but
> >when it comes to human-being, the being that is human, da-sein (not the
> >body-mind-thing), the word “da-sein” neither refers to the ever-changing nor
> >to the never-changing, rather to difference its self (and the explicit
> >advent of nothingness, but that’s another story).
> >
> >yada yada yadasein
> >
> >regards
> >
> >michaelP
>
> Hi Michael,
>
> I find the idea of Dasein as difference appealing, elegant. It
> points to a core element in Dasein’s way of being., a sui-generous,
> very generous being as becoming. This is a true wonder. Dasein
> different-iates itself as does every other Dasaein. And each Dasein
> does it in its own-most distinctive way. Where do all these
> similarly distinctive Daseins get their ownmost distinctions from,
> each with its way of being dasein as one’s own? From DIFFERENCE of
> course, the very difference of difference, Dasein as difference, its
> very own difference.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Allen
> ’s
>
ME: This discussion of self-identity overlooks that all identity is an identity
of identity and difference. This is apparent in even the simplest of observations
and statements, such as, “This is an e-mail.” This-here is identified as an
e-mail, even though this is obviously not an e-mail. To IDENTIFY this-here AS an
e-mail means seeing and positing a DIFFERENCE. This carries over to the
phenomenon of human being (Dasein) and its selfhood. A self is only possible as
an identification with what an individual human being is not. A trivial example
makes this apparent: If you are asked to identify yourself (e.g. at customs, in
the bank, to the police, etc.) you do not simply point a finger at yourself or
say tautologically, “I am I”, but you show your photo ID or passport, i.e. you
show what you are clearly NOT, something that is obviously different from you.
But showing this difference is precisely what conclusively proves your identity.
Hence, the simple observation and statement, “This is an e-mail”, already
contains the mystery of philosophy (of being), something which analytic
philosophy per se (and all thinking based on ‘logic’) can only understand through
self-destruction.
It is entirely superficial to locate Dasein’s difference in its becoming, or,
conversely, to want to locate identity in a self-same constancy over time.
Something can only become (in a movement of one kind or another) what it is not
because it always already is _its_ other.
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