Unsurprisingly, I am not in fact twenty years younger than I am, so you don't have to worry about covering your arses. — unenlightened
...as well as who we think he is and choose him to be. Direction of fit helps here, again, in that we choose what counts as schopenhauer1. It appears problematic mainly because folk are looking for something in the world that is schopenhauer1, whereas to a large extent the direction of fit is the revers of this - we get to choose. — Banno
...which is to say what makes that object and not another object in ANY possible world. — schopenhauer1
It remains you who has the different circumstances....what life would be like if you were born in different circumstances. — schopenhauer1
It remains you who has the different circumstances. — Banno
You have to choose one approach or the other. They are not the sort of thing you can mix and match to suit your mood. — Banno
I donl't get this. The possibilities are of the person - It's you who might have had pink shows on. I don't see a question clear enough to have an answer.My quest here is to find an objective thing that differentiates a person from being all possibilities that that person can hold. — schopenhauer1
The Schopenhauer1 of 1999 lacked all the experiences of the Schopenhauer1 of 2023. This is why I previously asked: "Are you the same person (same identity) today, than "you" were yesterday (or 20 years ago)?"
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Are people different? We've noted that monozygotic twins start out with the same genetic makeup, so that set of DNA can't be sufficient. Is it even necessary? No, because our DNA mutates over time, so the DNA you have today is not identical to the DNA "you" had as a zygote or at birth. So you can't even say a specific set of DNA is a necessary condition. — Relativist
My quest here is to find an objective thing that differentiates a person from being all possibilities that that person can hold. Clearly the stopping point for that person to be all counterparts of that person would be at conception. How could it be otherwise? — schopenhauer1
Tetragametic chimerism is a form of congenital chimerism. This condition occurs through the fertilization of two separate ova by two sperm, followed by aggregation of the two at the blastocyst or zygote stages. This results in the development of an organism with intermingled cell lines. Put another way, the chimera is formed from the merging of two nonidentical twins (a similar merging presumably occurs with identical twins, but as their genotypes are not significantly distinct, the resulting individual would not be considered a chimera). As such, they can be male, female, or have mixed intersex characteristics.
I donl't get this. The possibilities are of the person - It's you who might have had pink shows on. I don't see a question clear enough to have an answer. — Banno
In such a case there were two separate conceptions resulting in one person. — wonderer1
That doesn’t counter my gametes theory, it just elaborates on an interesting variation of it. — schopenhauer1
I'll second that.Perhaps we should augment the principle of the identity of indiscernibles with another principle: the indiscernibility of identities. — Janus
I'm afraid I can't resist elaborating on this. Where inanimate objects are involved we get to choose - or perhaps more accurately we get to choose the criteria. Common sense would say that once the criteria are in place, the objects fit or don't - not up to us. But then, there's Wittgenstein on rules, so in that sense, we do get to choose even then.whereas to a large extent the direction of fit is the revers of this - we get to choose. — Banno
I agree that it is very, very hard to deal with all the complexities of any interesting question. The trouble is that the devil is almost always in the detail, so I'm reluctant to ignore complexities, even if it isn't possible to sort them all out. A grand simplification always gets me going, I'm afraid. Perhaps it is better to think in terms of focus rather than simplification and then it is easier to at least acknowledge complexities.but to simplify the question: — Janus
I have to confess that I don't really understand what modal identity is. A brief explanation or a reference would help me a lot.one would need to very carefully differential between modal identity and personal identity, between a=a and what makes schopenhauer1 who he is. — Banno
I don't look at it quite that way. It seems to me that the idea of a causal chain is always an over-simplication. The spark may cause the explosion, but not without the explosive - and how did the two get together? The idea of a causal web is usually a better way to look at things - as many, many accident reports illustrate. When looking for a causal chain for a specific event, it is more helpful to identify a causal web and then select the most helpful causal chain.the instance of that person still needs to have started somewhere, that person started with the casual-temporal-spatial instance of the combination of gametes of an individual. — schopenhauer1
This is a good point because this started as a discussion of hindsight and counterfactuals - what life would be like if you were born in different circumstances. My point in that discussion was that at some point there could be no changes in circumstances without not existing at all. — schopenhauer1
My quest here is to find an objective thing that differentiates a person from being all possibilities that that person can hold. — schopenhauer1
I don't get this. The possibilities are of the person - It's you who might have had pink shoes on. I don't see a question clear enough to have an answer — Banno
But then, that too, would be a result. — Ludwig V
The idea of a causal web is usually a better way to look at things - as many, many accident reports illustrate. When looking for a causal chain for a specific event, it is more helpful to identify a causal web and then select the most helpful causal chain. — Ludwig V
The question is, if I had been an accountant or a rock star, would I have become a different person? For me, it depends what you mean by a different person. A stronger example might be the question whether could I imagine being a bat, which means with a bat's perceptions and desires. I don't think so. A weaker case is the one about wearing pink shoes. I agree, not only that I might have worn pink shoes this morning, but that I can imagine myself wearing pink shoes. This question may well be too unclear to be answerable. But then, that too, would be a result. — Ludwig V
But the event is the creation of a fertilized egg, which is beginning of a process which will result - years later - in a new person. That process of development involves a web of other factors. Why do you pick that event out? Think of it this way. Some eggs hatch into caterpillars; the caterpillars grow and eventually become pupae; the pupae hatch out and a butterfly emerges. The caterpillar eggs are not caterpillars, pupae or butterflies. The butterflies are not pupae, caterpillars or caterpillar eggs. Why do you say that a human egg (fertilized, like my caterpillar eggs) is a person?The microscope doesn't need to be that granular when we reference the event. — schopenhauer1
Why do you say that a human egg (fertilized, like my caterpillar eggs) is a person? — Ludwig V
I agree that it is very, very hard to deal with all the complexities of any interesting question. The trouble is that the devil is almost always in the detail, so I'm reluctant to ignore complexities, even if it isn't possible to sort them all out. A grand simplification always gets me going, I'm afraid. Perhaps it is better to think in terms of focus rather than simplification and then it is easier to at least acknowledge complexities. — Ludwig V
"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. — Moliere
which I messed up by naming this thread that but I'll keep it for now for historical purposes of the debate) — schopenhauer1
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 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. — Moliere
A man-made object like a chair seems more about social notions like "use" and "intention", and indeed seems more subjective. — schopenhauer1
Even a chair can be tricksy, though, here's a Picasso sculpture of a chair: — mcdoodle
I'm wondering if you believe natural kinds and causation have anything to do with the continuity of a person? — Moliere
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...) — Moliere
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
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... — Moliere
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