Argument from perpetual identity against naturalism.

[Neo-Scholastic]

You'd need to address Theseus' paradox (ship of Theseus) before you can establish your premises and proceed with the argument.

Ahhh, form and substance, my home sweet home. I'm rather curious about how you resolve this paradox, genkaus.

[Anomalocaris]

You'd need to address Theseus' paradox (ship of Theseus) before you can establish your premises and proceed with the argument.

Ahhh, form and substance, my home sweet home. I'm rather curious about how you resolve this paradox, genkaus.

Where you can call home there can be no substance.

[genkaus]

Ahhh, form and substance, my home sweet home. I'm rather curious about how you resolve this paradox, genkaus.

I do not consider identity to be perpetual or unchanging. The fact that we can disregard minor changes taking place and consider it unchanging does not make it so. However, that serves as a functional approximation of identity.

To take the example of the ship, while it would be correct to say that its identity is changing continuously due to the passage of time, such changes are minor. So we regard certain main features of the ship as its identifying features and consider any new changes as being continuously integrated into its identity. Therefore, even if all the parts of the ship are replaced one by one, as long as the identifying features remain intact and in perpetual existence, we regard it as the same ship. The ship created from the discarded parts would be a different ship.

[Angrboda]

A couple minor points.

Metaphysical assumptions about consciousness and mind, especially ontological assumptions, strongly shape the answers one can see, imagines, or accepts. I view consciousness and "the self" as mere ideas in the brain. They are "constructs." So, no, they aren't perpetual, and their "identity" and what identity means are highly dependent on how these constructs are created, maintained, and used by the brain.

I'll get off that a moment and point to an interesting nuance. Over the years, I have changed in my religious beliefs, and my feelings about certain religions, and have changed substantially, both in how I view their religion, and my own. (My thoughts about consciousness have changed as well.) But all these changes have occurred gradually, over a long period of time. In some sense, the idea that things are remaining largely fixed is an illusion of adopting a particular metric in terms of time, and what timespan we measure change over. Woody Allen said, "Tradition is the illusion of permanence," and in the same way, identity is similar. But I want to contrast this with something different. When I was younger, my sister had a large, black Afghan hound (39" at the withers, which is over standard). One day, I was walking him, and the lead became unhooked from his collar. When I reached toward him to grab the collar, he turned on me. He followed me as I ran back to our house, biting at me all the way. Since that day, I have had an instinctive fear of large dogs, and indeed any large animal makes me nervous. (Which hurts, because I love horses and Irish Wolf Hounds.) Anyway, the me that I had been the day before had vanished in the space of a day. The thing is, the brain has multiple systems for integrating experience into personality, and the features that determine what gets integrated, where, how, and how strongly, are not unitary. So if you look for a unified process called "identity," then you may be looking a long time.

Second, just to throw this out there, there is a concept from Heidegger that I have found very useful over the years. I don't have a quote, but his idea is that, "there is sameness in difference, and difference in sameness." The concept of similarity requires difference, because if two things aren't in some way different, then they are the same thing, not two similar things; likewise, difference requires similarity, because if there's not anything in which two things are identical, then there is no way to compare the two (in order for this red ball to be different from that blue ball, they both have to have color, otherwise there's no way to say in what way they are different).

Anyway, just a couple notes. Nothing to really add to the discussion.

[KichigaiNeko]

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A couple minor points.

Metaphysical assumptions about consciousness and mind, especially ontological assumptions, strongly shape the answers one can see, imagines, or accepts. I view consciousness and "the self" as mere ideas in the brain. They are "constructs." So, no, they aren't perpetual, and their "identity" and what identity means are highly dependent on how these constructs are created, maintained, and used by the brain.

I'll get off that a moment and point to an interesting nuance. Over the years, I have changed in my religious beliefs, and my feelings about certain religions, and have changed substantially, both in how I view their religion, and my own. (My thoughts about consciousness have changed as well.) But all these changes have occurred gradually, over a long period of time. In some sense, the idea that things are remaining largely fixed is an illusion of adopting a particular metric in terms of time, and what timespan we measure change over. Woody Allen said, "Tradition is the illusion of permanence," and in the same way, identity is similar. But I want to contrast this with something different. When I was younger, my sister had a large, black Afghan hound (39" at the withers, which is over standard). One day, I was walking him, and the lead became unhooked from his collar. When I reached toward him to grab the collar, he turned on me. He followed me as I ran back to our house, biting at me all the way. Since that day, I have had an instinctive fear of large dogs, and indeed any large animal makes me nervous. (Which hurts, because I love horses and Irish Wolf Hounds.) Anyway, the me that I had been the day before had vanished in the space of a day. The thing is, the brain has multiple systems for integrating experience into personality, and the features that determine what gets integrated, where, how, and how strongly, are not unitary. So if you look for a unified process called "identity," then you may be looking a long time.

Second, just to throw this out there, there is a concept from Heidegger that I have found very useful over the years. I don't have a quote, but his idea is that, "there is sameness in difference, and difference in sameness." The concept of similarity requires difference, because if two things aren't in some way different, then they are the same thing, not two similar things; likewise, difference requires similarity, because if there's not anything in which two things are identical, then there is no way to compare the two (in order for this red ball to be different from that blue ball, they both have to have color, otherwise there's no way to say in what way they are different).

Anyway, just a couple notes. Nothing to really add to the discussion.

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Insightful and informative none the less apophenia

[Mystic]

Going back the ship, Genkaus said if central aspects remain the same, it's the same identity (in one sense). If this was true, humans in general can be said to be one identity or many humans to be of one identity because they share the same basic contruct. Obviously, when we think of ourselves as a person, we feel we continue to exist so as long as we don't die (and some people believe we continue to exist even after death). Moreover, in legends, people can even turn into animals (like some Jews being turned into Apes in Quran) or even TV shows or movies it happens, the point is we can imagine ourselves to be totally different, but that it's still "us".
What is this "I"? This I to me must be a soul.

Now how do we prove we have knowledge of this continuous persisting I. I don't think it can be proven by argument but I think it can be proven by reflection.

Basically I believe the following faiths are properly basic and cannot be proven by an argument:

1) Faith in Free-will
2) Faith in Praise (and condemnation (it's opposite)/ inclusive of good and evil/ honor and dishonor)
3) Faith in family bond
4) Faith in human rights
5) Faith in justice
6) Faith in perpetual identity

Naturalism wise, we can't be given knowledge of these things. They rather are there as beliefs because they work. It makes us flourish so we believe in it. It makes us act better so we believe in it.

If naturalism is false, then being given knowledge of these things is very possible. It will be metaphysical spiritual knowledge.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...take the example of the ship, while it would be correct to say that its identity is changing continuously due to the passage of time, such changes are minor. So we regard certain main features of the ship as its identifying features and consider any new changes as being continuously integrated into its identity.

You mention identifying features. How do you identify features unless those features already exist awaiting to be identified? Or to put it another way, how can humans recognize patterns unless the patterns already exist?

[genkaus]

Going back the ship, Genkaus said if central aspects remain the same, it's the same identity (in one sense). If this was true, humans in general can be said to be one identity or many humans to be of one identity because they share the same basic contruct. Obviously, when we think of ourselves as a person, we feel we continue to exist so as long as we don't die (and some people believe we continue to exist even after death). Moreover, in legends, people can even turn into animals (like some Jews being turned into Apes in Quran) or even TV shows or movies it happens, the point is we can imagine ourselves to be totally different, but that it's still "us".
What is this "I"? This I to me must be a soul.

That is a huge, unjustified leap.

If you are going to use my arguments, you'd do well to understand their implications first. Like I said, if the changes are minor and the central, identifying features remain the same, we consider the identity to persist and new changes to be integrated into it. What you missed is that once these changes are integrated, the main identifying features may not remain the same. Assume, for example, that your face is the identifying feature for your identity. Any changes taking place continuously over time are so small enough so as not to change your face completely and
these changes are integrated into it. Even so, gradually, your identity is changing, since you look nothing like what you did as a child. For having a functional and useful concept of identity, we are ignoring an important aspect of the reality of change which has to be accounted for.

Secondly, even if we consider there to be a basic construct that remains unchanged - which would be an incorrect assumption - there is no indication that this construct is the soul. It'd be one thing if you said, "let's call this construct one's soul" - in which case, you'd be redefining the word. But you have not justified that the classical definition - immaterial and supernatural aspect of a person's identity - applies here.

Now how do we prove we have knowledge of this continuous persisting I. I don't think it can be proven by argument but I think it can be proven by reflection.

If it can be proven by reflection, then it can be proven by argument.

Basically I believe the following faiths are properly basic and cannot be proven by an argument:

1) Faith in Free-will
2) Faith in Praise (and condemnation (it's opposite)/ inclusive of good and evil/ honor and dishonor)
3) Faith in family bond
4) Faith in human rights
5) Faith in justice
6) Faith in perpetual identity

Then you'd be wrong. Given that I've already provided arguments for perpetual identity here and in other threads I've given arguments for free will, justice and human rights and I have no automatic faith in praise or family bond - none of these would be considered basic and all would have to be proven by argument.

Naturalism wise, we can't be given knowledge of these things. They rather are there as beliefs because they work. It makes us flourish so we believe in it. It makes us act better so we believe in it.

On the contrary, given that I've never assumed supernatural while giving arguments for any of the above, I'd say that naturalism wise, we can have knowledge of these.

If naturalism is false, then being given knowledge of these things is very possible. It will be metaphysical spiritual knowledge.

Like I said before, it is incorrect to assume any of these as absolutes or take them to be true on faith. Further, the idea that of naturalism is false then the knowledge comes from some metaphysical, spiritual realm does not show that naturalism is actually false. Which is what you set out to do here.

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You mention identifying features. How do you identify features unless those features already exist awaiting to be identified? Or to put it another way, how can humans recognize patterns unless the patterns already exist?

You don't. We first need to identify and categorize patterns and features before we use them as identifying features.

[downbeatplumb]

As anyone who has any dealings with dementia sufferers will know identity is not permanent. How "you" are can change hugely as the structure of the brain changes. Nice people turn aggressive, people forget their wives and children.

The personality of a person is to some extent just brain function of that particular body at that time.

The spiteful grandfather or grandmother is still seen as being those older kind people even when their personalities become altered by their illness.

The person is the same but the output of their brain has altered because of a change in the hardware.

[Mystic]

I understood your argument Genkaus. I'm saying identity is not on the basis of similarity of construct (or else we would consider people similar to us as the same identity) and that it's irrelevant to the perpetual identity.