Absolutes

Bill,

Aristotle addressed the paradox of Theseus' ship.  He analyzed this from his view of causes.  For him, the understanding of an entity meant understanding its four causes:

1. The "formal cause" which would be the form or design,
2. The "material cause" which would be what the entity was made of,
3. The "final cause" which is the intended purpose of the entity,
4. The "efficiient cause" has to do with the things construction.

Aristotle declared that the answer to the Theseus' ship paradox was resolved by understandinig that the formal cause, the design of the ship, does not change even though all of its parts are changed.

I don't agree completely with this formulation.  It makes, or implies, that causes are intrinsic to the entity.  Following from Rand's formulation of concepts, I'd say that a percept of a concrete is subjected to abstraction, then integration as a way to establish an identity and that identity (when we are talking about a concrete) is an epistemological identity that requires context and purpose. 

Using Aristotles' terms but Rand's epistemology, a person objectively abstracts the form (and/or final cause) as their context (which includes their purpose) and integrates this bit of knowledge about the concrete/ship (that it is identified as a kind of design intended for a given kind of purpose). 

In software development this could be seen as taking a piece of concrete data (e.g., "123 Main St., Cheyenne, WY") and creating an 'index' integrating this data with a customer billing file as the address.  That's not the best example, but it shows design (it's an address) and a purpose (to do billing) and thus creating the identity of the concrete "123 Main St., Cheyenne, WY" as a specific customer billing address.

Bill,

There's not one part of it that's the same.  [referring to Theaseus' ship after a total replanking]

When you say that the ship, which you identified as "it," isn't the same ship.  What does "it" refer to if not the ship?  If epistemological identity, in some context, doesn't remain the same, then how could we hold in our mind the idea that some ship had all of its planks replaced?  That is a logical issue that I raised in my previous post, and I think it has to be answered if these paradoxes are to be taken seriously.

There is a philosophical discussion of identity where some people argue against the paradox by saying there are no "Proper Parts."  That is, there are no special material parts that exist, such that taking them away would change the identity.  They reply that one could talk about a normal coffee cup with the opening at the top.  They say that there is no such thing as the right or left half of the coffee cup such that you can take it away.  No "Proper Part."  I see it more as an argument against making identity intrinsic to a "part" of the entity, or in Aristotle's frame of referernce not choosing "material cause" or "efficient cause" as the location of identity.

And its a kind of stolen concept fallacy to say, in effect, "it is no longer it," and to say that in a way that invalidates empistemological identity of a concrete.  To be able to bridge the change so as to say that an identified entity was subjected to change that made it something else requires that the entity hold its identity  - in some fashion - so that we can identify what we are talking about as the same thing... otherwise we can't even talk about it intelligibly.

Steve wrote,

I'm finding this issue very interesting, and have a quite a bit I want to explore.  So, I'll break my reply into lots of smaller posts... maybe far more than you want to pursue, but maybe you'll find some that you want to reply to.

I started my post with a quote from Ayn Rand regarding identity, and then I started the very next paragraph saying, "Which is why...."   That "which is why" pulled in her statement as an explanation of why Theseus has the same ship after it was replanked.  That isn't begging the question. 

Do you think that her words don't apply to Theaseus' ship, or aren't valid in some way?

Steve, here is what you said:

The concept “identity” does not indicate the particular natures of the existents it subsumes; it merely underscores the primary fact that they are what they are.                     Ayn Rand in ITOE

Which is why painting lamps blue doesn't alter their identity.  And changing the handle and then the blade of the axe doesn't change the identity of the axe, just as when I change my socks, or get a haircut I'm still Steve.  And Theseus has the same ship even after it has been replanked.  What is the alternative?  Does the axe or the ship or the lamp magically disappear when they undergo change - leaving existence?  Or are we no longer able to identify them because they no longer have an identity?  No, those are nonsense.

Steve, I already answered you.  All you're doing is repeating your initial statement without addressing my rejoinder.  And no, Ayn Rand's statement doesn't address this issue at all.  Rand is referring to the concept of 'identity' -- what it is -- not its application to the issues of sameness, change and replacement.  Remember the problem of identity and change as discussed by Heraclitus, Parmenides and Aristotle.  Aristotle replied that Heraclitus and Parmenides were both wrong -- that change doesn't invalidate identity nor identity change, because in order for a thing to change, it must in some sense remain the same; otherwise, one couldn't say that "it" has changed.  If there were no identity -- no sameness -- there'd be no change; only replacement.

Enter the "Ship of Theseus," which asks how the ship could be the same if every part of it -- every one of its planks -- has been replaced?  In that case, wouldn't the original ship have been replaced by an entirely new ship rather than simply having undergone a process of change?  In that case, how could you say that the replacement is still the same ship as the ship it replaced?  The statement of Rand's that you quoted doesn't answer that question.  Do you have an answer?

P.S. Steve, would you please stop writing so many posts back to back and confine yourself to a single post.  I don't have the time or the patience to be be answering a flood of separate posts in response to a single, relatively short reply.  You did the same thing with John Howard.  No wonder he stopped replying to you.  If you want to add to or revise a previous post, you can always edit it.  Thank you! :-)

(Edited by William Dwyer on 9/19, 3:48pm)

Bill,

There is another ancient Greek paradox.  The heap of sand.  It goes like this:  There is a heap of sand, which consists of a finite number of small individual grains of sand.  If the grains are removed, one a time (kind of like the boat planks), till there is only one grain left (or no grains), when did it cease to be a "heap of sand"? 

A rebuttle to this involves calling the subject too vague to deal with.  In other words there must be a definition of how many grains of sand constitute a "heap."  My approach is similar but calls for a context and a purpose for identifying a heap of sand.  Say that I was the owner of a hobby shop adjacent to a Navajo reservation where some of the Navajo were into sand painting, and I started selling them different colors of highly uniform sand.  With that context of a commercial transaction to suit the sand painter purposes, and my purpose of being able to have a workable ratio of say, red sand to a dollar amount, I might define a "heap of sand" as the amount that fills a small plastic cup, sitting by the sand bins, right to the top of the cup and no more.

In writing a how-to article for people camping out at the beach, the writer might say, "To clean out your skillet after cooking breakfast, take a small heap of clean sand and rub it about in the empty skillet.  That will remove any cooked on food."  Notice how a "heap of sand" is adequately identified by the purpose and context?  Only people who are engaged in philosophical masturbation as they lay back on clouds of floating abstractions will suggest that there is no identity for the words "heap of sand" in that how-to article, or claim that you could remove sand one grain at a time till you confused yourself.

Bill,

I answered your question about how a thing can change yet still retain its identity in several posts.

In post 21 I gave Aristotle's answer, and my own.  Both essentially said that the ship is more than its parts and that an aspect of the ship did stay the same.

In post 22 I showed that any claim that a thing could not be the same if a part of it changed was always going to be false.

In post 23 I showed that one could not logically claim that "It has changed so now it is not it" by applying the stolen concept fallacy.

In post 24 I showed that a ship is more than its physical parts, hence there is still a way that it can be held as having identity.

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Rand is referring to the concept of 'identity' -- what it is -- not its application to the issues of sameness, change and replacement. 

You and Marotta both are writing about the specifics of a concrete and asking about how changing some of these specific properties affect identity.  I've pointed out that Rand is saying that the concept of identity is not going to apply to the specific properties of a concretes beyond saying that they are what they are. That is why I've written about how the identity of a concrete is formed in epistemology and requires context.  So, yes, the quote of Rand really does apply.

When the Melisian philosophers got hung up on the concept of identity, people should have been wondering why they weren't attacking identity directly but rather through paradoxes relating to concretes.  If they had, they might have seen how identity of a concrete and the concept of identity itself were being conflated.
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Remember the problem of identity and change as discussed by Heraclitus, Parmenides and Aristotle.  Aristotle replied that Heraclitus and Parmenides were both wrong -- that change doesn't invalidate identity nor identity change, because in order for a thing to change, it must in some sense remain the same; otherwise, one couldn't say that "it" has changed.  If there were no identity -- no sameness -- there'd be no change; only replacement.

Bill, what do you think I was saying in that last paragraph of post 23, the first and last paragraphs of post 24?
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Steve, would you please stop writing so many posts back to back and confine yourself to a single post.  I don't have the time or the patience to be be answering a flood of separate posts in response to a single, relatively short reply.  You did the same thing with John Howard.  No wonder he stopped replying to you.  If you want to add to or revise a previous post, you can always edit it.  Thank you! :-)

 
I write for my entertainment.  If others get enjoyment or value out of what I wrote, that great, and it makes me feel good.  But that's not my primary purpose.  What I've written addresses metaphysical identity, epistemological identity, change, applying those concepts to various paradoxes, identity of concretes versus all of existence, identifying fallacies in different paradoxes, and showing how floating abstractions can arise out of failures to tie identity to reality.  I couldn't do that in a single post without making it far too long and messy. 

Usually, you are one of my favorite people here at RoR.  If you like any of what I've written, come back to it anytime you want, and if you choose, reply to any part.  I hopy you get something out of it.  But if you don't appreciate the scope and fundamentality of what I've addressed then it would be better if you just moved on and ignored it.  At this point I expected a different response from you.  (What I get from Marotta is what I expect from him.)
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I have no idea why John Howard waited a year or so between posts, or why he hasn't responded since.  And to tell you the truth, I'm really not excited about hearing from him again.  I didn't find his posts that logical and I found him dogmatic in his pushing of NIOF as the sole political standard and his unwillingness to address the arguments I made.  (And he didn't seem very fond of me either :-)

Steve, because you assign the worst possible interpretation to everything I write, once again, I must apologize for not being clearer.  

 

SW: You were very clever in a mealy-mouthed sort of way in saying that I have difficulties but you have discovered them.

 

All I meant was that we each came close to identifhying the fact that we both were making the same mistake. While metaphysical absolutes exist, and while epistemological absolutes exist, they are not identical in meaning or application.  Moreover, our common language allows us to easily confuse the two by allowing the same word in both contexts.  That also applies to "identity" as a  metaphysical concept as well as a concept in epistemology.

You insult me by calling me mealy-mouthed. You say that I have no character. Indeed, you identify my name as a label for lacking character. You were insulted by my identification that you have a conservative personality, that you dislike change, and that you are attracted to absolutes. From my point of view, your Objectivism is well-intergrated, and you cite chapter and verse well, but you clearly have not extended or expanded your understanding since 1968. Thus, you have no comment on the book Understanding Objectivism by Berliner and Peikoff.  

You are angry at me for calling you a racist. I never did. You created that in your own mind. What happened was that in one of the Brad Thun discussions, you denied my assertion that "race" is only a social construct with no objective meaning. You called me a progressive (in the negative sense used by conservatives). In fact, I called you a "racialist."  That term also applies to Bill Dwyer and Dean Michael Gores, among others here and across the entire political spectrum. The word means just what I said: you believe that races exist as objective fact. You dug down several dictionary definitions deep to find an equivalency between "racialist" and "racist" and told yourself that I insulted you. Just as above, you found the worst possible interpretation of my words.  I have always accepted your claim that you would never pass moral judgement on a person because of their race.  As I said, your Objectivism is well-intergated. You know Ayn Rand's essay, "Racism," and it is part of who you are as a person. Like her, you accepted the assumption that races exist.

Since, then, however, you seem to have changed your mind. In at least one passage in the past year, you apparently abandoned the idea that race is real.  As nice as that is to know about you, the fact is that you just seem to have glided into it. You never actually said that you were wrong. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, you have never said that you were wrong about anything.  That is another attribute of an authoritarian personality. As someone who likes to think of himself as a libertarian, you will find that an insult. 

Allow me to suggest that you view our exchange from the outside. It is amusing.  I accuse you of being an absolutist. You accuse me of being a relativist. Do you not see the irony in that? 

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/23, 3:41am)

Steve, in Post 26, you wrote, "When the planks are replaced one by one, the ship stayed the same because it was the same ship with one new plank, then two new planks, etc.  But when the ship was turned into kindling and new ship was constructed there are two ships - one is now history . . ."

In think that's a good argument.  It's one that I would give, and seems to make the most sense.

With respect to my complaint about your postings, you are certainly free to express your opinions as often as you like.  But if you want others to address your posts, which I thought was the purpose of a discussion, then they are more likely to spend time responding to a single post than to a flood of posts addressing the same comments, especially if the original comments were relatively brief.  Why not post a single response, then wait for a reply, or if you think of something else to add, edit your post rather than simply adding to it with a flood of other posts?  You can always edit a post if you think of something else to say.

As for John Howard, I didn't know that he hadn't responded to you in more than a year, but you wrote so many posts in responding to a single post of his, that I could see how he might not want to respond to each and every one of your replies.

I appreciate your insights, Steve, as I think you're a very intelligent poster and write very well, even if I don't always agree with everything you say.  So, I'm certainly happy you're on the forum. :-)

Cheers,

Bill

Just to note what is obvious....

SW:  When the Melisian philosophers got hung up on the concept of identity, people should have been wondering why they weren't attacking identity directly but rather through paradoxes relating to concretes.  If they had, they might have seen how identity of a concrete and the concept of identity itself were being conflated.

 

And when the (lost) architect of the Parthenon is compared to Frank Lloyd Wright, we have to cry out that the Athenians did not condemn the building for violating the maxim that form must follow function.

And Steve, unless you have a card up your sleeve, you do not even read Classical Greek, which I do.  You have no idea what Aristotle "really" said.  You are just standing fast on what you already believe, lest you have to change your mind, and admit that you were wrong. You said that you said that you have been wrong. Would you please cite an example?

SW:  Races do exist.  It isn't an "assumption."  And contrary to what you or Rachel Dolezal might think, we don't mentally construct our race (whatever that word would mean in this very peculiar denial of reality) nor is it some kind of "social construct."  "Race" is a term that is part of established biological taxonomy.

 

I have no idea who Rachel Dolezal is, but I recognize an argument from intimitdation. I challenge you - a dreaded triple dog dare - what is my race?

 What is my race, Steve?  What is my race, Steve?  What is my race, Steve?  

You have no idea what genes I carry, or how they were entwined or expressed or suppressed. I am a Human Being.  So say we all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSFDrOxWCXY

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 9/27, 7:07pm)