I searched and could find no clear answer to this question. They are obviously not bonded as they are in either liquid water or in ice. In any case, when water evaporates, it is referred to as water vapour. — Janus

I'm confused here. A lone molecule of water, to my mind, is one floating in space somewhere around a planet that happens to have water, and given the number of molecules that there are it's entirely plausible that one molecule of H2O managed to get into space. That one molecule is not wet. But water is. And when water evaporates it's referred to as vapour or in the gas phase but it eventually disappears, and the usual thought there is that the gas phase is when molecules separate and float about in a manner that approximates the ideal gas law.

There are wet vapours, but not all H2O is wet.

I can offer a common sense thought:
 
Clouds don't instantly appear because H2O molecules have been individualized in the gas phase. You only see clouds because enough H2O molecules have started to aggregate together, but that could only happen if they were individualized in the first place. Humidity is a measure of how much H2O is dissolved in the air relativized to how much can be dissolved in the air without it becoming a liquid.


But if you're questioning the discreetness of atoms or something like that then that won't be enough.

Yes.

Following my thought to its (seemingly) logical conclusion -- there are no lone molecules of water. Insofar that we're willing to use chemistry in a philosophical manner then I'd say that water is a molar aggregate of H2O molecules. The extension of "water" is not the same as the extension of "H2O".

Yeah I think that introducing "cause" creates more problems than it solves. Which causality?

Stochastic causality, for instance, could have a necessary relationship in the sense that there is a definite probability for some event, but as long as it falls in-between 0 or 1 then the event and its negation are possible.

A funny thought:

If water is H₂O then water is necessarily H₂O
It is possible that water is not H₂O
Therefore, water is not H₂O

I'd say this is a reductio as long as we accept the second premise. My thought here is that in common usage we don't distinguish between the elements that are within a glass of water. Technically speaking there are minerals dissolved air and other such things which are not captured by our usual usage of "water" -- we usually mean the whole glass and not just the H₂O in the glass.

Premise 2, being a statement of identity, can be reversed and I think the distinction between H₂O and water is easier to see there:

It is possible that H₂O is not water.

The lone H₂O molecule floating through space is not wet, and so there are some predicates which apply to water but which do not apply to H₂O, and so we can say that these are two different things.

Yes but they are still necessary for the properties of water like electrical conductivity, even if little in comparison - if they were not present, it would imply there was no water there or at least that the water didn't possess its characteristic properties. Hence why different concentrations lead to different properties. The isotope example is also interesting because its not trivial at all the changes it makes. D2O can kill things because of how different it is to water.

I think the concept of idealization always strengthens this kind of direction you are going in since at the very least it questions or complicates the idea that people are actually referring to what they say they are referring to when they use particular terms or phrases. — Apustimelogist

I best be careful then. If my account means that people cannot refer then it's in trouble since we do successfully refer!

Isotopes are a good example with respect to water: the notion of elements changed with isotopes because it was recognized there were different kinds of the same element when separated by mass. It changed how we chose to categorize.

So why I say YOU, is I am discussing the person that has actualized all the events leading to the very present. THIS person (the present you, not a counterfactual you that could have actualized differently), could not have been THIS person without certain factors. As far as the main factor that differentiates the range of possibilities that led to THIS present you from a range of possibilities that would NEVER include the YOU that is present right now, that would be the set of gametes that developed into the current YOU. That is to say, it's as far back as we can go whereby if the circumstances were different (there was a different set of gametes), there was no possible world that the current actualized YOU would have existed as YOU are right now looking back on your life. — schopenhauer1

This just seems to assume too much on the part of causation for me. And while I understand that we're talking about features of a body I think that, as far as the continuity of a person is concerned, we should probably include these other levels mentioned by @Ludwig V as well:

But while we are speaking precisely, we need to bear in mind that we exist at three levels (at least). a) the physical object (the body), the animal (homo sapiens - a misnomer if ever there was one - and the person (which is an essentially social concept). — Ludwig V

It seems to me that the other two levels aside from the body are just as important to the continuity of a person, though importantly I should say I don't think the body is irrelevant, only that it's sometimes relevant rather than always. It's because of this "sometimes" that I'm having a hard time accepting that there's a necessary relationship between genome and person, that there is no possible world in which some part of me was slightly different. I just don't have that level of confidence in causation.

What is happening here is a bit more than just an observation. No number of observations could show that in every case, what we would call water is what we would call H₂O. The problem of induction intervenes. What happens is more akin to an act of fiat, a decision on our part to only call stuff mad of "H₂O" water. So we look around and see that every sample of water we check is made of H₂O, and so decide that thenceforth if some sample of what we thought was water turns out not to be H₂O, we were mistaken, and it's not water.

Logically, as it points out in the article ↪schopenhauer1 cites, "What is not being claimed is that water is necessarily H2O, but conditionally, if water is H2O then water is necessarily H2O." The antecedent is not proven on empirical grounds so much as taken as a definition of water - it;'s decided by fiat that we will only use the word "water" for stuff that is made of H₂O.

This is the point made earlier, that if schopenhauer1 decides that schopenhauer1 has by fiat some specific genetic code, then in any possible world in which someone has that genetic code, that someone is schopenhauer1; and further, if in some possible world there is a person with all the attributes of schopenhauer1, but with a different genetic code, then that is not schopenhauer1 .

What it is important to note here is that this is a choice about how we use the names "water" and "schopenhauer1"; not solely an issue of empirical observation. — Banno

I think I'm tracking? We'll see. If the rigid designation takes place by fiat that's much easier to get along with, though I'm not sure that @schopenhauer1 agrees that this is just fiat -- it seems there's a causal connection that makes sense of the position. It's the causal properties or something along those lines which makes the genome so important rather than by fiat.

I certainly think that, in this conversation, the comparison between water/H2O and people/genomes is unhelpful. Water is H20. But people are not their genomes. — Ludwig V

Got it. So we agree on the latter, at least, and to be honest I'm somewhat hesitant about my distinction between water and H2O, though I think that the claim to necessity is what justifies what would normally be an incredibly inane distinction.

Whereas with people/genome it seems to me that the distinction is fairly obvious: even though the genome plays a critical role in our development that doesn't mean humans are their genome.

I thought about using auto-ionization as an example earlier but then thought that it could be seen as the idealization so I decided to drop it. But if we take auto-ionization as true then, yes, not every molecule in water is H2O -- some of them are H3O+ or OH-, though very little in comparison.

There's only one way that I can think of that makes sense of this. Essentially, it involves attributing to "possible" the logic that we see in "probable". The latter, at least for the purposes of mathematical theory, is essentially future-looking, because it is defined in terms of a future event - the outcome. The probability of my next throw of the die coming up 6 is 1:6. When I throw the die and it comes up 5, the probability of that throw coming up 6 is 0, i.e there is no probability of that throw coming up 6.
We could say that there is a possibility of club X winning the match against club Y. When club X loses the match, there is no longer any possibility of it winning. (Although you can say, counterfactually, that they might have won.) When the possibility of rain this morning is 60% and it rains, there is no possibility of it not raining. — Ludwig V

Yes on future-looking, but I'm uncertain on probability. If water actually is H2O, for instance, the probability of the statement is 1, and if it is not then it is 0.

My thought is that "water" is the common-sense term and "H2O" is the technical term. Now these do blend in common usage so of course we can use the locution "H2O" as we use the locution "water", but upon thinking about the problem from a technical perspective I'd say that these are two different terms if we want to be strict or philosophical with our usage. "Water", in comparison to Lavoisier, is an ancient word. Though this definition pushes against what I've been laying out:

Water viewed as a chemical substance, regardless of its physical state (and so including ice and steam), now recognized to be a compound of hydrogen (two volumes) and oxygen (one volume) having the formula H2O; (in early use usually) water as one of the four or more elements of ancient and medieval philosophy

But even here I'd note that a chemist differentiates between aqueous solutions and water, and the normal usage calls the sea "water" even though it's actually a mixture of water, ammonia, salt, etc. So that the common usage does not always pick out the very same thing even in our world, and so the claim to necessity is hampered by that possibility.



But I take your point here:

I'm in favour of case-by-case rather than trying to draw up rules. — Ludwig V

that there may not be a comparison between water and people, or H2O and genomes, after all. Fair point.

I believe this addresses common sense? But tell me if not. (EDIT: here thinking that common sense would be covered by the usage of "water", whereas the case against necessity is using "H2O")

Well, it might be easier - but that doesn't seem to make it easy. One thing that makes it much more difficult is that if you are talking about the person, not just the human being, you are talking about a being that is not passive, but participates in the identity game and has views of his/her own. Many people would think that it is outrageous to reduce (and they mean that word literally) a person to their gametes. Heredity is not identity. — Ludwig V

True. I agree that heredity is not identity.

I think we've both brought up those difficulties with @schopenhauer1, but the response has been more along the lines of when an object is an object. In those terms "water" is easier for me to think through than "human". When or how should a technical body of knowledge be used philosophically?

In terms of using scientific knowledge in a philosophical context I thought "water" might prove easier for us all.

I think it's the notion of "genetics" in a philosophical context that caught me. And that intersection between science and philosophy has always drawn me in.

Anyways, this is indeed extra-scientific as it is dealing with causality, possibility, and identity. These things are not going to be seen in a microscope or shouted at you from the universe in some way through an equation. Rather, it has metaphysical implications as to how possibilities are carried out over physical things, like objects.

And thus, I take a "natural kind", Moliere, to be something that one can break down into some substance. A chair by itself is a concept that depends on one's notion of what a chair does or how the maker intended it to work. That isn't a natural kind. However, a piece of wood from the chair would be of a natural kind as you can analyze its substance to some physical property. But of course, since ideas, and neurons, and concepts ultimately come from some "physical substrate", it can be argued this too is natural. However, now we are going far afield as it turns into the mind/body problem and how the neurochemical configures are the same as "chair", and we have lost the point of this thread.. Because that argument would not matter to the point I am making.. Once "chair" the concept is found to be a "natural kind" in the neurochemistry, let's say, it too would be subject to this theory as well.

Thus, natural kinds, like humans, and the gametes, are of a substance and a causal instance. At that point where the substance is present, that causal-historical point in time, that becomes the point at which that object can be said to carry with it the possibilities of that object. And thus, you the human looking back to see if you could have lived a counterfactual life, can only go back so far before the very possibility that brought about this person of this substance was no longer even a possibility to begin with. I identified this at the point of conception. — schopenhauer1

Cool. So we at least agree that this is an extra-scientific, or maybe scientific-adjacent, sort of question.

With respect to water there are a number of details that make me question the notion that water actually is H2O, though I can agree to some kind of a posteriori necessity when it comes to individuals.

Actually, this gives more understanding of the matter than if it was straightforward 1:1. That is to say, it is necessary for it to be water, but not sufficient. Certainly, without H20, it would not be water, even if various other mechanisms were in place that are involved in molecular bonds, structural relationships that are contingent to the molecular properties, and so on. — schopenhauer1

I'm not so certain that the account of a posteriori necessity works very well for water, though. Even the water in my cup right now. This is because I tend to agree with Hume on causation -- that it is a habit of ours as creatures who look for patterns, and that tomorrow water could turn out to be something aside from what we thought it was by exploring those patterns. This is a feature of most scientific knowledge: the knowledge is always provisional, and built around technical problems of a particular group of knowledge-producers. If water is H2O, then water is necessarily H2O -- of course! But is it actually H2O?

Do we, by adding all these properties from the various textbooks about water thereby obtain the "essence" of water? Well, not exactly, because now it's just a collection of properties we happen to bundle together into a name, and doesn't have an essential property that makes it what it is. We're interested in it mostly because we're thirsty, and identify it by how it looks and that it is wet, but H2O doesn't look like or feel like anything at all; rather it's a technical classification of what we see and feel.

I don't understand what natural kinds are supposed to be. The oft-cited example of water does not help me. In the first place, water is one of three forms of that particular molecular structure - (steam (gas), water (liquid), ice (solid)). Second, there are two forms of water (light and heavy) and no less than eight forms of ice. Third, Putnam's twin worlds seem to demonstrate that it is an empirical fact that water could have more than one molecular analysis, though his hypothesis that we might be unable to tell the difference seems wildly implausible to me. In addition to that a quick look at, for example, the Wikipedia article on this topic indicates that there is a wide range of views about what they are, which means that simply to accept that there are natural kinds is to accept a pig in a poke. — Ludwig V

The water example doesn't work for me either. I'm going to try and explain some difficulties here.

From a chemical perspective "water" is an aggregate of H2O's, and it's the aggregate properties which "emerge" when having molar quantities of H2O at temperature-pressure ranges we find on Earth that results in the physical properties that we colloquially refer to as water. And in terms of a theoretical description of a molecule the thing that's missing from the locution "H2O" is the structural relationship between the hydrogens and the oxygen that accounts for its various observed properties. In terms of reference, though, we don't ever really refer to any individual molecule -- we refer to the aggregate of molecules, and so the use of "this" doesn't exactly work very well to my eyes, or at least not as well as it does with the lectern example for me. The individual molecule does not have a name or the identity "water", and so while the molar quantities of H2O form water, if we want to be technical, water is not just H2O but H2O in molar quantities at a certain temperature-pressure point. A single H2O molecule floating across space is not wet, though water is.

I'd say that it's these complexities which don't bear an obvious relationship to the identity of "water". Further I'd say that the case of water is easier than the case of a human being, so figuring out how we're supposed to talk about the identity of water might shed some light on how we might talk about genomes and humans, so I thought I'd go down the route of explaining some of my thoughts in thinking through the difficulty of referencing a technical body of knowledge for the solution of a philosophical problem.

No need -- just a possible path that I'm laying out to try to understand how I might say the same thing. Since I've already pretty much admitted to not seeing the necessity I'm trying to put forward possible ways I'd agree with the notion instead, but they are just guesses at possible beliefs rather than what I actually believe, and also I'm wondering if it's still too far astray.

What is the relationship between "genetics" and "necessary causal role"? The first is at least a classification of a technical body of knowledge, and the latter is a philosophical notion. That's where I get lost.

One way is insofar as all the possibilities of the continuities of that person are had from the terminus of the conception of that person and no further back. Clearly, the gametes at conception are of a "natural kind". They are cells made of compounds, made of atoms, etc. — schopenhauer1

It should be clear that this is not clear to me, at least :D -- it's the "etc." part that looks like it would make a difference.

One of the things that's snagging me that I'm thinking is contributing to our differences in expression is the relationship between the technical words within a scientific discipline and how we are meant to understand those expressions within a philosophical context.

"Natural kinds" is clearly a philosophical notion, whereas "H2O" and "Genetics" and "DNA" aren't really. At the very least you won't find "natural kinds" in a physics or biology textbook in the way that the SEP describes "natural kinds", and philosophically I tend to group science with its activities -- if it's not even being taught to people who signed up for science classes (and certainly not being used by scientists) then can we properly say that these are scientific notions at all?

But stating it like that I hope you can see why I began to worry about going off on a tangent with respect to the original notion that started the questions. My questioning became more about science and its relationship to reality and our notions of the real in either a philosophical or everyday sense and less about the continuity of a person, even though perhaps the general question would settle the more particular question.

That's true.

I'm curious what you think about natural kinds and causation @Ludwig V -- it seems that since continuity of a person is the real underlying topic, though through the lens of the identity of objects (however we wish to construe that), I'm wondering if you believe natural kinds and causation have anything to do with the continuity of a person?

The suggestiong to my mind is if one could establish that human beings are a natural kind, and natural kinds of the sort that human beings are can be said to be different under such-and-such circumstances, then we could say when a person is, which in turn should at least hint whether genetics are necessary for the identity of a person as an object (given such and such beliefs, of course) -- but I'm wondering if this is just too far astray from the case you'd make for the continuity of a person? The example of a religion changing a person's name seems to indicate something more along the lines of how I think of personhood, but that also doesn't necessarily eliminate it from being included as a natural kind (considering that we're naturally social creatures, a case might be made...)

which I messed up by naming this thread that but I'll keep it for now for historical purposes of the debate) — schopenhauer1

I should say I messed up too -- communication is always two-way, so no worries.

However, the natural kind/human analogy is more equivalent. That is because there is an element of substance to the identity, and in the case of an "instance" of a natural kind (that instance of water, that instance of a human), we have the causal aspect of a place and time when there is a terminus when it goes back to a time when it was that instance of the object, and whereby we talk about "possibilities for that object", we are talking about the range of possibilities for that object and not something else or something prior. — schopenhauer1

I agree that water and humans are closer to one another than either are to chairs.

I think I get lost in the talk of causation and natural kinds. I tried to write out a few paragraphs after this and ended up just deleting them because they got too tangential every time.

"At what point would that person no longer have the set of all possibilities that that person could have? In other words, whether that person wore pink shoes or is an accountant or what not, is necessarily/rigidly designated to something. At what point would that something be something else that one is ascribing a personal identity to.

Surely, we can agree that certain physical-spatial-causal events are not transposable. At some point that chair became a chair, and not just pieces of wood, plastic, whatever. At the point at which it is a chair, it becomes a new "possibilities" of what can happen to that chair. We can talk reasonably about that chair qua chair versus other chairs, or other objects.

When hydrogen and oxygen combine in a process to make water, when water forms, it is now that substance and not its antecedents we are discussing. We can pick it out (H20), and it has an instance in causal-space-history (hence why I say it is not just a natural kind, but an instance of a natural kind.. that instance of water. — schopenhauer1

Do each of these examples have to have the same criteria?

The first seems to be asking after the psychological, the second a kind of everyday understanding of medium-sized dry goods, and the third relies upon a notion of science and how that relates to our understanding of objects. At least that's how I'd put it, and so think that the criteria would differ since those three topics would be answered differently if we were to put it in question form.

Unsurprisingly, I am not in fact twenty years younger than I am, so you don't have to worry about covering your arses. — unenlightened

But you ought be.

I notice that it was possible that you might not have made the account, though I get the point that it is no longer possible. — Ludwig V

True.

As to the second, for me, what is important is not so much the dubbing ceremony as the consequences, which are that other people use the name and you respond to it. That's at least part of what your identity qua person consists in. That obviously isn't true of names for objects. — Ludwig V

That makes sense to me. Without the conventions of the internet then the dubbing wouldn't matter -- it's the communal enactment of personhood which makes at least a pretty clear difference between how we treat persons and how we treat objects, just as the pronouncement of Man and Wife isn't really a cause as much as the cap to a ceremony which is enacted by a community.

But let me point out again that the expected individual does not exist at the moment of conception; all that exists is a fertilized egg, which is an individual egg, if you like, but is not yet an individual person. (Unless you are following the unusual idea that is sometimes propounded in the context of the abortion argument. I don't think it has any currency or point outside that argument.) — Ludwig V

I agree with you. I don't believe that conception is a good time-point to choose for personhood.

I'd draw a distinction between personhood, personal identity, and the identity of an object. But I imagine at this point that all we're really talking about is the identity of an object rather than the other two things -- insofar that we're just describing the body at a certain point in time I can grant a posteriori necessity: this body at this or that point has some true sentences which can be said of it, and the negation of those sentences is also false, and what makes it so is the particular body under discussion.

But in contradistinction to this notion I like to use my internet handle because it demonstrates how much the name has little to do with the body -- Moliere didn't exist until I made an account on The Philosophy Forum, which was far after all of these events. There's even a distinct time-point we can point to that's still in the record but surely the name and who I am isn't exactly the same. The only thing that happened to give me this name is dubbing myself as Moliere on The Philosophy Forum rather than the physical facts of my body.

I can agree with even this, yet still insist that a well-known necessary aspect of what makes a person THIS person (and not something else) is the causal-temporal point at which the two gamete components combined. — schopenhauer1

I think that @Banno managed to split the difference here between us:

The upshot in Identity and Necessity seems to be that while this person could not have had a different genetics, schopenhauer1 might have. — Banno

Here is the individual, this individual has the name Moliere, and this individual with the name Moliere at the time of conception had this set of base pairs, and this set of base pairs was necessary for this individual as stipulated by the use of rigid designation. This person necessarily had such-and-such a base sequence at a particular time -- I can grant that, and don't think our imagined scenarios define what actually happened in the past.

But I'm wondering if it's side-stepping some real point of contention :D -- like causality and genes and personality, and how those combine, or some such. Perhaps we just have different notions of what's plausible here, for instance?

I know you’re trying to get some sort of rigid designation to work out here with your conception, but “what” object is the rigid designator rigidly designated with? You might be tempted to say that it can be anything or it’s functional, but there are certain physical substances that differentiate one object from all the other objects, there is a point at which am object could no longer be that object. There is a point when water is not water for example (it’s not H20). — schopenhauer1

I'd pick up the existential or phenomenological angle for identity. Somehow what's significant to us, what we care about, isn't the same as the list of facts of our past, though perhaps the facts one would consult in making a case for an existential identity is a subset of the entire set of every fact of our past. Existential identity comes from caring -- and insofar that the imagined scenario still results in a person caring in pretty much the same way then we can say they are the same even if some details differ.

Water is a bit different from identity because we can speak of a chemical's identity, but I don't think that's an existential identity like I allude to above. But I think I'd say that if water in Bizarro-world was primarily comprised of H3O and still was the stuff we drink when thirsty and more or less did all the same things which water does then I'd say it's the same stuff, even though in Bizarro-world the description differs -- but this wouldn't be on the basis of it caring. I think at a certain level "water" is such a clearly human interest that it's strange to think that this interest must have a corresponding descriptive correlate to it. Rather I think we're really interested in water because it's connected to our being alive, and so we investigate water and see what it is we can see about it. Here our name is much more in a functional space -- it's what it does for us rather than what we've come to describe it as which we're picking out.

I think my favourite complexity is the one about the non-coding bases, which are 98% of the molecule. What is all that stuff doing there? I don't believe it is doing nothing. The question is, what is it doing? Talk about terra incognita — Ludwig V

it would be a rather daunting task for most to come up to speed on what is understood about noncoding DNA these days. — wonderer1

Yup.

I think my beliefs about DNA still pretty much rule out necessity between the particular sequence and identity, though I recognize that there are possibly significant differences too. But my intuition is that reality is not so rigid.

In some sense my name rigidly picks me out, and it would be true that the particular me could not, under any circumstances, be made out of ice from the Thames. But that's the name, and not the unique and particular description of my genetic code at the time of my conception. And for that it seems that DNA doesn't behave in a necessary relationship to the name that picks me out: rigid designators aren't ruled by causal patterns, but rather are just how we use names.

So in a way I could say that the genotype is a necessary but not sufficient condition for any identity to form. If you tried to gestate a whale zygote in a human the process would likely not end in life (though there are mules, too...) -- there's something necessary about having DNA at all, but I'm not so sure that the specific sequence that a person possess has a necessary relationship to the rigid designator which picks out who a person is.

Ok, fair. Yes, I think so, and I'm wandering too much there.

I'm willing to grant the premise you started with to see where it goes, though. I'm probably getting caught up in details that don't matter.

Or, now that I think of it -- organism. Or "unique"!

No I don't think so, though that might depend upon how we understand "genotype"

I wouldn't doubt that they are different, but it is not right to say they are so different that for Aristotle willpower suffices for happiness. He certainly does not think that. I don't know enough about Epicurus to say where the exact differences lie. — Leontiskos

Fair. I clearly don't either.

Thanks for pointing it out: now rather than just some random thought I have some questions and readings for figuring out the questions!

I'd say that to want change is to exercise willpower. — Leontiskos

I think that if willpower is anything it is an expression of agency, and to confuse agency with an inclination is not right. The agent and their will is what stands over inclinations. — Leontiskos

Interesting!

So clearly there are some differences in thought on willpower, at least if we take your reading of Aristotle and my reading of Epicurus as a starting point of comparison. At least this seems to me to be a clear point of disagreement in how we're thinking right now.

Perhaps, but in this case we are talking about a fundamentally different reality.

Let me put it this way. For Aristotle happiness is an activity. It is bound up with a person's agency. To say that a doctor could perform a brain surgery and make someone happy is to make happiness a passivity, a kind of imposable state. A contemporary objection to this idea comes in the form of the "experience machine," which would make one utterly "happy" and is nevertheless rejected. — Leontiskos

Hrrrm... I'm wondering to what extent that their theories of happiness are also at odds, or if it makes sense to say that Epicurus' theory of happiness is an activity -- but a different activity. Your assertions have caused doubt in my understanding of Aristotle, though, so I acknowledge that I'd have to do more homework to make an assertion either way here.

I'm wondering to what extent we could make the claim that ataraxia is a state of mind or an activity -- I know that the passive/active distinction was shared among philosophers at the time, but I'd have to go do homework to feel confident in making an assertion either way.

I think about my theory of mind from time to time, but I cannot say I have a firm position staked out. I think it's one of those questions that's incredibly difficult to answer. But hopefully I can at least take physicalism seriously enough that we can figure out some thoughts together -- and also thanks for pointing out that a physicalist theory of mind may be what's at stake. I'm a bit confused, now, as to what we're disagreeing upon because I thought I had said some fairly sensible things, but it seems not to be clicking.

There are physical differences which can account for differences in personal identity. I wouldn't go so far as to say that these are irrelevant. My question has more to do with when or what is relevant, and since there is a question of when or what I'd instinctively rule out a necessary relationship between the two. But here what you show I'd agree is a significant physical pattern that accounts for difference in personal identity. Sometimes the physical facts matter, and they matter significantly.

But if they only sometimes matter then I wonder what it is we mean by necessity.

And I don't have to make it easy for others to remain naive. :wink: — wonderer1

:D

I wouldn't have it any other way. Why else come to a philosophy forum unless you want to be disabused of your* ignorance?

*(EDIT: for clarity, "your" meaning mine or anyone's -- not *you*. Should have thought that through)

These are good observations. I think you're right to bring up how we think about counter-factuals. They are kind of funny in that they can seem real-ish in that we are judging them on the basis of what's plausible, and so they rely upon our notions about reality in some sense but then they are actually all false.

So part of the confusion may not even be in what's being said, but rather in our notions of what is plausible or how we should think about these false sentences -- when they are more or less relevant.

If I, in a counter-factual, was born with blonde hair but basically lived the same life as I've lived up until now then I'd say that my personal identity wasn't different -- the unique description of my life has a different fact in the counter-factual but I still lived my life basically as I do, except I was born with blonde hair so I'd say my personal identity is the same.

That is there has to be some difference in the counter-factual that makes sense as having an effect upon our personal identity, not just any difference at all. And DNA is certainly closer to the causes we'd consider in thinking about personal identity than, say, what color the nurses' eyes were who helped deliver me (though I think that this is just as much a fact of my history as the unique code). But claims to necessity are a bit hard for me to accept, at least.

Similarly our fingerprints may be unique to us, but if I was born with a different unique finger-print pattern I don't think my personal identity has shifted. The particulars of the finger-print pattern have not been a significant source of identity, even if they are a unique pattern inscribed upon my palm. And this is exactly the sort of thing that comes to mind with DNA for myself: the specific and unique pattern clearly can have effects, but I'm not so certain that those effects are related to personal identity in a necessary relationship.

But you've already admitted as much so my best guess at your claim now is that there is a unique description of who we are, and any change in that description in a counter-factual would yield a different unique description, and that unique description is one's personal identity. Is that right? Also, do you believe we're sharing the same notion of necessity, or the same notion of personal identity, or is there something else that I'm missing?

The argument is about necessity, not sufficiency. — schopenhauer1

Maybe our understanding of necessity differs? To my mind if you can switch a part of the code and have the same results then there is not a necessary relationship between code and an organism's identity. Since you can do that -- not in science fiction but in science -- it just doesn't strike me as something I'd call necessary for personal identity. That is I can see it plausible that if I had a different code I could still be the same person in a counter-factual scenario because I don't think identity is necessitated by code. It would depend upon which part of the code was switched -- I could also have a genetic disease due to this, for instance, and I'd say I'm a different person then. But if one base got switched out in an intron then that is a scenario that seems plausible to me to possibly make no difference in the course of my life, and in relation to the topic, for my personal identity.

Is our identity the same as our experiences? Either way, OK, identity here is a relationship between DNA and experience -- however, would that we could know something like differences in experience! How would we know something like this to be able to assert that DNA yields a difference in experience?

I should have started with this but didn't think of it until this morning, but something that throws a wrench in this idea is the existence of introns and exons. DNA is the stable chemical but RNA is the chemical which codes for proteins. The organism is more than their DNA, and because of introns you can switch out whole parts of some organisms DNA and have it be the same organism: That is, sometimes you can switch out an A for a T or a G and have nothing happen other than this replacement, but the organism will continue to function even though the code is slightly different.

But this is to speak functionally. It's the motives of a court which give DNA priority, but surely our identity is more than what the law sees?

This is the argument from queerness. I googled "argument from queerness" and found only responses and an old archived SEP article.

I think that "queerness" is not easy to establish -- or, at least, is as hard to establish as "not-queer". I don't know how we get to a place where we know, or are even able to judge, what queerness is.

Just to make sure I read over your OP again. I think the disconnect is between:

And then, that body or mind is subject to changing experiences that could alter the course of their outlook, life, personality, etc. At that point, you can argue identity. But in no way, a person born of different gametes, even given the same set of experiences, would be "you". — schopenhauer1

these two sentences. In a way this reminds me of the free will debate: determinism vs. free will and so forth.

I think that what differs between these two sentences is the notion that if, at the time I was conceived, a different set of DNA, like the sperm nearby, would have started the process of birth then I'd be a different person. But in the second part you're acknowledging that there are processes after conception that can change twins to explain the initial idea that our gametes are necessary parts of our identity.

What I'm saying is that twin studies suggest that gametes aren't up to the level of necessity. So the scenario you're positing is if in the past when I was conceived I was conceived with different gametes, and you're saying that's absurd and I'm saying "Why?"

I am making a claim that if the gametes are different than the one that was your set of gametes, whatever the case may be (whether they are similar to you or not), THAT person who was conceived a second before or after with different gametes is NOT you. I really want to establish THIS point, at the least. That THIS point is not a matter of debate or interpretation, but just a fact that that person born from a different set of gametes is not you. — schopenhauer1

That may be the claim -- but why believe it?

I think far too much emphasis is put upon DNA when it comes to identity. DNA doesn't relate to who you are in some kind of easily explicable relationship. Just imagine that your own DNA has been mapped, as can be done, and you look at the map: a series of letters consisting of A G T and C. Which part of them causes you to type what you type here? None, of course. But if you cannot establish a relationship between the genetic code of an individual and what they do then I'd say you're mistaken that the genetic code is a necessary identifier. At least existentially what we do is who we are. And @unenlightened has already pointed out how identical twins have identical DNA, but not identical identities. (though it's worth noting here that DNA morphs, too -- so just how identical the DNA is is up for dispute -- 99.99% matching between code is very similar, but not identical identical, and biological processes have a way of finding difference)

I think the real reason DNA is highlighted is because it helped courts. Finally, a marker of identity to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this blood was theirs!

But surely we are more than our legal identities, and that those are certainly up for interpretation.

There are many apologies for Abraham's behaviour. Seen at face value, he was morally culpable. — Banno

Yup, I agree. I also do not agree with the apologies -- when I say that Fear and Trembling doesn't end in aporia for me, I side with the conclusion that Abraham was a moral monster.

(↪Moliere, hence "faith", especially in some authority, is morally questionable.) — Banno

I agree that faith in an authority is questionable. The Euthyphro demonstrates the difficulty there -- faith in an authority can serve as a kind of way of passing the moral buck to someone else when you're always responsible for how you act regardless of the faith you place: faith soothes, but does it justify?

The Binding of Isaac is such a good moral story to me because I grew up with it. Johannes de silentio's doubt doesn't end in aporia for me but it's still a very popular story with enough valances of meaning to keep it alive and contemplate. I suppose it comes to mind because I'd say that the commitment to non-violence strikes me as something of a heavenly belief, whereas the acceptance of violence in this world, when necessary, strikes me as an earthly belief. In metaphor The Binding of Isaac can be read as this tension between heavenly and earthly commitments: the first born son inherits the wealth and guarantees that you have a legacy, so to sacrifice your first-born is to put faith back in God that your legacy is greater because of him and that he will keep his promise to you -- that is, the ethics of today, which Kierkegaard clearly felt, were so alien then that killing your son wasn't even something morally worth considering. Instead: There are the goods of this world and then the goods of the higher world that God knows, and only he knows, and it's only through faith that you can reach them even when you do not understand him.

I reach for faith because it seems right, and rhetorically at least it seems to imply anti-realism. So it fits how I feel, at least. Further I wonder if there may be points of consonance here between what are usually competing worldviews or ethical considerations -- if it's all faith then perhaps this is a path to talking.

These are the considerations that lead to virtue ethics, to working on oneself rather than grand moral schemes. — Banno

That makes sense -- it's a sort of literature for this purpose of working on myself, and surely all this is real.

But you have your foundational principles - that is, you take them to be true. Hence you are a moral realist. — Banno

I've rewritten this several times, just to say that up front. Pick away.

This could be a way of introducing what's important rather than what is true. It's that we have foundational principles at all that makes us count as a moral realist -- but note how this is different from whether or not they are true foundational principles. I'm fine with moral realism as a kind of default position so that one must raise doubts, especially in philosophy (and especially given the unpopularity of ethics). But doubts can be raised, and I hope I've done enough to show that my doubts are not based in a scientism, but rather are what I'd call a rather old fashioned moral doubt: the kind that people refer to when they speak in terms of faith. If Jesus is coming back, then shouldn't he have come here by now? If moral realism is true, then shouldn't we know something about what's good?

I think your division between truth and justification holds with respect to claims on knowledge. So insofar that ethics is a knowledge my doubt would deflate. It's that claim to knowledge which I doubt anyone possesses: if no one knows then we are all ignorant, which would mean that we're all functionally nihilists. In that case morality may sound reasonable, but that doesn't mean it's rational or known.

Maybe someday. But now, while we kill each other for all the various reasons printed in our newspapers? Faith is the only response I can think of as reasonable in such a world as this. The other is that killing is good (sometimes) which is the very claim that causes my doubt. If killing is good (sometimes) then I am the one who knows nothing about goodness, and what I want is to know how it is that killing is good (sometimes). I want a moral justification for violence, given that our entire way of life is based upon violence.

But what I doubt is that our way of life is actually good. Any way of life that depends upon killing others to perpetuate itself seems to have missed the moral lesson, to misunderstand, to be ignorant -- and all presently lived ways of life are ignorant in this exact way.

So, as I said, I'm the one that's the odd-ball out. It's an odd case to think killing is bad, simpliciter. I can make way for necessary evils or some such, but I can never really understand how killing is good, actually or really. I'm no pacifist because that's an unrealistic standard -- but I cannot deny that the pacifist has a handle on moral goodness better than most, if anything true about goodness can be said at all. Most would make excuses, and understandably so given how much we rely upon violence since we live in nation-states, a most violent social-organism -- and note how the instinct to point out how the past is bad kicks up here, as if that would excuse us rather than point out how we're all still the same as we've always been: excusing violence with the language of goodness. And if that's all we do with morality, in its actual effects rather than in the philosophy room, then what worth is there in speaking this way? Why is it important?

The Aristotelian tradition is not at all will-centered in my opinion. Of course that doesn't mean that it might not involve a greater emphasis on the will than Epicureanism. — Leontiskos

Well, which is it, do you think? Are they the same or are they different?

I am saying that the person who doesn't go to the doctor will never be cured, and no one who sees a doctor has a total inability. In the general case I think there needs to be some baseline of willpower in order to seek the cure in the first place. I want to say that the doctor-patient relation is synergistic. — Leontiskos

And I am saying I don't believe there must be willpower in place for someone to desire change. I'd go so far as to say a person has to want change, but that there are those without willpower and those are the cases in the most need of help.

Willpower is an odd concept -- what is it to act against an inclination other than to be inclined this way? And I'd say some people are so abled, so inclined, and some are not. But the doctor doesn't just say "Well, that guy was born to be sick", but acknowledges difference and gets to work. If they don't go see the doctor, for instance, the doctor can go see them.

Does it have to be one characteristic?

One could be honest because telling the truth gives you blessings in the afterlife. It's not that that honesty, right now, is what matters but because there is a judge after death who will look at your life and be able to tell that you lied or not that you tell the truth.

But I have to say that I think this is one of the worst ways to be honest: it works, but that person is saddled with so many bad feelings just to ensure something that is more easily recognized as worthwhile without anxiety or guilt -- I am committed to honesty, but honestly, the only reason I am so committed is I've come to see how stupid I am. It's because I trust others that I think honesty is a good policy, and in so doing it seems to mostly work out even though there are times where I've been betrayed.

So I'd say there is no one thing that characterized the mindset of honesty. It could be anxious, it could be self-interest, and it could be out of a simple desire to be good.

Or, if we are like Kant, it could be due to an obsession with universality :D -- but I don't think that's usual.