Self-Indentity Over Time — Is It True At All?
April 27th, 2008, search relatedRelated posts :: Self-Indentity Over Time — Is It True At All? :: Exposing the Crifasi Maneuver :: - Is It Undeniable? :: Exposing the Crifasi Maneuver
michaelP wrote:
>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.
it is hard to understand what a thought so convoluted might mean.
>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.
here you are touching on a crucial problem: does the language of
philosophical discourse accurately reflect the realities discussed?
we recognize that the tree changes its appearance constantly; but, we
say that it is the same tree.
>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.
in the context of the discussion of of Anthony’s premise, ‘if I exist;
then, I am self-identical throughout all my perceptions’, there is an
ambguity concerning ‘identity’ (which human am I) and ‘identicality’
(whether I am 100% identical over time).
Joe
–
Philosophy is, after all, done ultimately in the first person for the
first person. — H-N Castaneda
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http://what-am-i.net
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