Enduring Problems in Philosophy

o2b said:
That boat example is interesting, but lacking for me in significance simply because boats lack sentience.

If boats did have sentience and if some core attribute of sentience remained with either of the two boats, I would answer that whichever boat retained that sentience is Boat A.
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Sure, but here the situation is unparadoxical. If the original boat has sentience, then it's obvious that whatever 'later' boat doesn't have sentience is not going to be the original boat.

I'm sure a similar thought experiment could be attempted from a sentient starting point, though I'd have to think of one.
 
o2b said:
Of course, if the process caused neither boat to have any core attribute of sentience that Boat A used to have and yet each of the later two boats did have sentience, I don't know how I'd answer! Likely, I would say neither is Boat A and now we have Boats B and C.
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Hmm. That makes sense when you put it that way!
I’m not much of a philosopher for that very reason. :tearsofjoy: I have my guilty pleasures though. :sweatsmile:
 
ExhumedMorrison said:
Hmm. That makes sense when you put it that way!
I’m not much of a philosopher for that very reason. :tearsofjoy: I have my guilty pleasures though. :sweatsmile:
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I have zero background in philosophy, but I am a pretty strong critical thinker.

Of course, I have passionately given thought to gospel theory concepts and I am sure there is overlap between this and philosophy.

I have to do up my thoughts on free will.
 
 
Roses In The Vineyard said:
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That's a good summary of the concept of despair.

What do you make of the threefold hierarchy of modes of existence in Kierkegaard from the aesthetic mode (lowest) to ethical, to religious mode (highest)?
 
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Okay. Now someone else has asked. And that has complicated my answer a bit.
I think that in order for everyone to get along when it comes to ethics, religion of any kind whether yes, no, or maybe, and even psychology, I think we all learn that we’re very different and it’s about helping everyone out.
I understand I’m not the only one who sees it like this, I still try to understand the point of view. I guess I was silly for thinking so dogmatically.
 
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Ren said:
Like I said, identity is an extremely complex and debated philosophical field and as a result, there are still many paradoxes associated with it. Here's one of them: does an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object?

Let's imagine you have a wooden boat. We'll call it Boat A. Over time the wooden parts begin to rot, so you have to replace them progressively, one by one, over a period of many years. After 3 years, your boat has had all of its parts replaced.

Meanwhile, the discarded planks of wood have been stored into a warehouse. Decades later, technology is developed that allows you to cure the rotting wood, and a new boat is assembled from the (now cured) original parts.

The question is: which of the two boats is Boat A? Is it the boat whose parts have been progressively replaced over time, and in which there are none of the original parts left; or is it the boat that was assembled, years later, from the original pieces after their rotting was cured with the help of technology?

Obviously it cannot be the case that both boats are Boat A. They are clearly two different boats. So which one is Boat A?
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A proposed answer I like is the following one.

It seems that most people, on the strength of their intuition alone, would say that Boat A is the boat whose parts got replaced over time. In other words, it remained the same boat. The boat that got assembled years later from the original parts is not Boat A, but Boat B.

The question, of course, is how to provide an argument to support this basic intuition. The argument I have in mind relies on the concept of spatio-temporal continuity (or continuity of space-time paths). An object in spacetime undergoes change, necessarily, but its identity is preserved through change as long as it showcases continuity of space-time paths. Merely replacing a part every month or so does not create a fundamental discontinuity. On the other hand, in the case of the boat which gets assembled years later from the (now cured) discarded original parts, there is a fundamental discontinuity, in the sense that the discarded parts lie scattered in a pile inside a warehouse for years before they are re-assembled. Those years constitute the spatio-temporal discontinuity, and hence the non-identity of the reassembled boat with Boat A.

Thoughts?
 
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Ren said:
A proposed answer I like is the following one.

It seems that most people, on the strength of their intuition alone, would say that Boat A is the boat whose parts got replaced over time. In other words, it remained the same boat. The boat that got assembled years later from the original parts is not Boat A, but Boat B.

The question, of course, is how to provide an argument to support this basic intuition. The argument I have in mind relies on the concept of spatio-temporal continuity (or continuity of space-time paths). An object in spacetime undergoes change, necessarily, but its identity is preserved through change as long as it showcases continuity of space-time paths. Merely replacing a part every month or so does not create a fundamental discontinuity. On the other hand, in the case of the boat which gets assembled years later from the (now cured) discarded original parts, there is a fundamental discontinuity, in the sense that the discarded parts lie scattered in a pile inside a warehouse for years before they are re-assembled. Those years constitute the spatio-temporal discontinuity, and hence the non-identity of the reassembled boat with Boat A.

Thoughts?
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Sounds about right. I’m not too sure. I’m sure that would take quite a bit of faith. Faith that could move mountains as well as keeping with biblical principle. That makes sense as to why that would be considered much more ethical.
I can see I have been pretty closed minded when it comes to that.
I can see how it sounds like saying one thing yet meaning another. Contradictory yet completely the same. It’s like saying because x happened, y would mean that I am to die on a certain time and date that can or can’t be expected. So I’m not too sure. It’s like expecting life to have an expectancy that’s not based upon any logical drive or force that was created before it. Hmm. I guess I am more Jewish in tradition yet, accepting of change than I originally thought. Thanks for helping me understand that ethical concept a little more. Maybe it would appear I’m not a Christian woman if I’m afraid someone will have me deny the Holy Spirit. Very interesting. It’s like expecting myself to be responsible for something I’m completely burdened with, yet to be burdened and be responsible for it. I don’t think that those 3 would not be intertwined or completely separate from one another.

I’ve dealt with something similar to that in my relationship with Jesus and outside of it. Like being in a relationship that doesn’t fully exist with my eyes but exists in my heart, mind, body and yet completely separate from myself. It’s like you want to be one with your heart, and mind, but you body is completely out of touch. Like another person who matters to you, but you don’t see them. You just know they’re there and their soul is there and they mean everything to you. It sounds horrible because I’d hate to say something that sounds like identifying as the Christ, but not being able to say, hey I see myself as a small piece of them. I’m sorry I doubted you @o2b.
But I have seen times where there’s institutes that have conducted experiments on twins to understand the conscious mind. :cryingcat: I’ve always wondered with the intensity of my flashbacks or even dreams about things that haven’t been in my conscious awareness. Just completely unexplainable stuff.
I do see how that would explain strawman theories, though we wouldn’t want to blame eachother. Why I guess I feel I’m an evil antichrist for saying it. I’d hate to project something like that. That’s completely unethical.
What about if someone said something like I thought and felt x at a certain time, therefore it would lead to y. It sounds contradictory to both theories to say a certain date or time and suddenly know it without being able to explain it. Eg: a time of death like 2:08 or “Monday” at 3. So therefore time seems to be on a continuum in triggering flashbacks. Hmm. ‍♀️ I’m not God.
I also just need to be getting sleep. Hahaha. “Anniversaries.” Their triggering.
 
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Space/time would almost seem to me like a heart beat monitor. With both opening and closing of time. Clearly ethics would have to apply to all of us.

When I think about the whole term of ethics, there must be some standard upon which we base it and if it were to be based upon one, it would have to have a foundation, therefore spirit. When it comes to otherwise, we may just be killing the mother and raping our father of his seed. Sorry. User name reference.
 
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Ren said:
The argument I have in mind relies on the concept of spatio-temporal continuity (or continuity of space-time paths). An object in spacetime undergoes change, necessarily, but its identity is preserved through change as long as it showcases continuity of space-time paths.

Thoughts?
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Yeah, I dig it. Makes good, solid sense to me.

Thanks!
 
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Ren said:
Thanks o2b, glad you agree.

@Sidis Coruscatis @John K — Any thoughts to share on the paradox of identity described here?
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I've only skimmed through the last couple of pages, and haven't fully got on board with how this topic evolved here yet. Going cold at it though, my feeling is that identity, in the sense of individuated objects, is an emergent property and isn't a fundamental one. I think it's best to think of nature hosting distinct objects only relative to particular perspectives. For example, in the case of objects humans are familiar with, they are only distinct when seen on a large enough scale - which is how we normally see and think. If you look at subatomic levels though, everything we are familiar with is made up of quarks, electrons, and the bosons that bind them or repel them - it's impossible to lable and distinguish between these particles, and they aren't even well defined things of the sort we are used to because they are in a sense fundamentally indeterminate, yet everything we know of is made of them.

Another perspective is that of time. We almost always think of an object's distinctness as it is at a frozen point in time, but this is not the reality if you look at things longitudinally throughout extended time. Your example of the boat is a good one - and even more spectacularly, this is true of people too, because all our atoms and cells are replaced over and over during our lifetimes. I'm not made up of any of the same stuff as 10 years ago, but it goes deeper than that because I'm not the same person as I was when I was 8 years old. Extrapolate across the whole of time, and there is a tree of becoming that binds everything together in a vast network that started in the big bang, and where everything merges together into a single trunk at the beginning, and all apparently distinct objects are actually branches and twigs on this huge tree.

So what is it that gives identity? It seems to be something a little ghostly - a pattern, a configuration, and the relationship of this with other patterns and configurations. Mostly it's like this:


The cloud remains a coherent shape yet it's constantly being reformed - its substance is not the same from one minute to the next. Persistent eddies and waves in a stream of water are the same, and so are people on a longer timescale, and so are rocks and mountains on an even longer timescale.

So to a great extent, I think identity is in the eye, and at the convenience (or inconvenience lol), of a beholder, and their particular needs and purposes, and is actually more to do with software than hardware. Of course the danger then is that we get too clever, and start to think in terms of software templates, heirarchies of identity (humanity v John K for example), and idealised generalisations of identities, and then we may run headlong into Plato, but that's another story lol.
 
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