That doesn't solve the problem, though. Which of the two resulting ships is identical to the original one? The Mended ship, or the Reconstructed ship? Both? Neither?

Neither, because dividing a thing into parts creates distinct objects with distinct identities. That's why the problem is a ruse, it associates "identity" with the name for a thing, rather than with the thing itself. If we divide a thing, remove a part, and wish to maintain the same name for one of the parts rather than another, that's a matter of convention, not identity.

I don't think it's a ruse. It's a legitimate philosophical problem. And I think that the correct answer is that the Reconstructed ship is identical to the original ship. This solution, however, does not work for organisms though. In the case of a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly, you arguably need spatiotemporal continuity of form under a sortal.

Neither, because dividing a thing into parts creates distinct objects with distinct identities. — Metaphysician Undercover

Think of it this way. Imagine that you have a watch. Suppose that you disassemble it. Has the watch ceased to exist? Some metaphysicians say "yes": there is nothing there, other than the parts of a watch, which used to compose it, and now they compose nothing at all. Other metaphysicians say "no": the watch itself has not ceased to exist, it has merely ceased to be unified: it now exists as a scattered object.

No matter what position you take in that debate, in the example of the watch, the problem with the Ship of Theseus still stands: it is not self-evident that when you divide an object into parts, the original object ceases to exist, even if new objects with distinct identities are created in such a case.

No matter what position you take in that debate, in the example of the watch, the problem with the Ship of Theseus still stands: it is not self-evident that when you divide an object into parts, the original object ceases to exist, even if new objects with distinct identities are created in such a case. — Arcane Sandwich

That's why the correct answer is neither. The issue you sight is not a problem of metaphysical "identity", it's an issue of naming conventions.

That's why the correct answer is neither. The issue you sight is not a problem of metaphysical "identity", it's an issue of naming conventions. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you have a deflationary approach to metaphysics? Is that it?

So you have a deflationary approach to metaphysics? Is that it? — Arcane Sandwich

I don't think so, but I don\t know.

Is this what you believe, yes or no?

Yes it's what I believe. I also just noticed that I spelled "cite" wrong.

Yes it's what I believe. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ok.

I also just noticed that I spelled "cite" wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

No one cares, except for Grammar Nazis. Your point was understood despite your grammatical mistake.

Thanks. This is an idea I've been researching, and I would appreciate your
view of it. — Wayfarer

This relates to your recent post as well (), but I am going to place it in this thread. (And I realize Arcane Sandwich will disagree with this.)

I was listening to an interview with Rachel Coleman on her recent paper, “How is it with the nothing?, Her emphasis is a Thomistic critique of Heidegger. It reminded me of the way that you oppose Scientism or J opposes Frege, and it helped crystallize some of my thoughts on the subject.

As I see it, the modern period is characteristically domineering rather than receptive. It is a kind of grasping at being God, which is the antithesis of Philippians 2:6. Everything is in our hands; everything is up to us; knowledge is primarily something we do; we are the occupants of the view from nowhere; and making-knowledge is the highest form of knowledge. Now Scientism is a kind of grotesque epitome of this attitude, and one which is widely recognized to be aberrant. But it is only an epitome. That is, the basic mindset is much more widespread than Scientism. For example, if there were a harsh drought then Scientism would be the place where the fire starts. But the drought is a problem even apart from the fire, and it is precisely what gives rise to the fire.

Now when I see your response to Scientism (or J’s response to Frege), it reminds me of antinatalism as an analogy. On this analogy everyone recognizes that suffering is a problem, and also that antinatalism would technically solve the problem of suffering, but also that antinatalism is a kind of overreaction or over-correction to the problem of suffering. In just the same way I would say that Idealism (a denial of mind-independent reality) is an overreaction or over-correction to Scientism and the surrounding “drought.”

Now perhaps the most effective response to Scientism has been Heidegger. Heidegger sees that what is ultimately at stake is not a doctrine or theory, but rather a posture, and in particular a posture towards being. But for Catholics Heidegger’s response is flat-footed in its own way, and here I am thinking of Catholics who critically engage Heidegger, such as Cyril O’Regan, John Deely, Ferdinand Ulrich, and to a lesser extent, John Caputo. Essentially the idea is that Heidegger is right to emphasize a receptivity to being and a shedding of that domineering attitude (which comes to a breaking point in Scientism), but that Heidegger’s thought ultimately leads nowhere. It over-corrects into, and over-relies on, nothingness. This is similar to what Coleman’s paper on Ulrich seems to argue (note: I do not have access to the paper itself).

In any case, what is required is an attitude toward reality that is receptive and not merely domineering and activistic; an attitude that does not pretend that one can exhaust reality but nevertheless recognizes that reality can be truly known. That our interaction with the real is not just running quantifiable scientific experiments on inert matter, but that being nevertheless does possess its own character and subsistence that meets us as a true, mind-independent “interlocutor.”

The difficulty with over-correction is that it fails to give the devil his due. It fails to see what is right and true in Scientism, or in Frege, and instead wants to fully negate the thought. Instead of looking at the problems that Scientism or Frege address, it is only willing to look at the problem that itself wants to address, and when only one problem is considered the answer will inevitably be one-dimensional, like antinatalism.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on Scientism.

As I see it, the modern period is characteristically domineering rather than receptive. It is a kind of grasping at being God, which is the antithesis of Philippians 2:6. Everything is in our hands; everything is up to us; knowledge is primarily something we do; we are the occupants of the view from nowhere; and making-knowledge is the highest form of knowledge. Now Scientism is a kind of grotesque epitome of this attitude, and one which is widely recognized to be aberrant. But it is only an epitome. That is, the basic mindset is much more widespread than Scientism. — Leontiskos

Agree. I've often remarked that the mentality of modern culture can be summed up in the motto 'nihil ultra ego'. The Cartesian ego becomes the fulcrum, the arbiter, of truth, buttressed on the ramparts of scientific truth. And this is fundamental to liberal individualism. (Not that I would prefer any kind of social collectivism per Asiatic cultures.)

Democratic space must remain inside itself. To put it in Latin: It must be immanent. Tocqueville noticed that aristocratic man was constantly sent back to something that is placed outside his own self, something above him. Democratic man, on the other hand, refers only to himself.

The democratic social space is not only flat but closed. And it is closed because it is has to be flat. What is outside, whatever claims to have worth and authority in itself and not as part of the game, must be excluded. Whoever and whatever will not take a seat at the table at the same level as all other claims and authorities, however mundane, is barred from the game. — Remi Braque

(I'm a bit disquieted to find myself in agreement with these sentiments, as part of me sees it as reactionary conservatism, but it can't be helped.)

However - the post of mine that you quoted from, while related to all of the above, attempts to analyse it from a specific perspective: that of the history of ideas, and the decline and fall of classical metaphysics. There's a quote given in the Joshua Hochschild lecture that we've discussed previously:

Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence. — Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences

For what it's worth, I agree with this sentiment. I see the advent of materialism as inextricably connected with abandonment of the understanding of universals (scholastic or Aristotelian realism.) Not that there wasn't a great deal of dogma in those musty schools that had to be jettisoned, but that something vitally important went with it. Why? Because of the very nature of universals or Augustine's 'intelligible objects': real but immaterial. And as you will know, it was the capacity of nous to apprehend those immaterial realities which was the very essence of the rational psuchē. Thereafter the link between intellect and faith was severed, culminating in Luther's salvation by faith alone and the fideistic nature of much of modern Christianity.

That's the background to the idea I'm trying to sketch out in the post I asked you to comment on. I think I might make it subject of an essay (even if I'm out of my depth in much of it.)

...an attitude that does not pretend that one can exhaust reality but nevertheless recognizes that reality can be truly known. — Leontiskos

Why would you make "reality can be truly known" a condition of the preferred attitude? What principles would support this?

This reminds me of a book of D.C. Schindler's I really liked. It seems to me that a major problem of modernity is not only that consciousness is assumed to be simply a representation of reality, but one where the relationship between reality and appearance is more or less arbitrary. Reality does not entail consciousness; it and its contents are accidental and contingent.

And so, since we can never "step outside conscious," we can never step into reality. Yet this ignores the great reminder that Hegel offers, that the Absolute must contain both reality and appearance.

Schindler's book focuses on the Doctrine of Transcendentals, particularly our relation to Beauty. It's probably one of the more accessible works on this topic.

Schindler first diagnoses why our modern condition is so poisonous. “[E]ncountering reality is a basic part of the meaning of human existence.” And, moreover, “there is something fundamentally good about this encounter with the world.” “Modern culture,” however, “is largely a conspiracy to protect us from the real.” Our “encounter” with reality, with everyday life, is increasingly mediated by technology, buffered by layers and layers of devices, screens, “social” media, and various other contrivances. Schindler writes that “the energies of the modern world are largely devoted to keeping reality at bay, monitoring any encounter with what is genuinely other than ourselves, and protecting us from possible consequences, intended or otherwise.”

In response to this, Schindler proposes his creative retrieval of the transcendentals. In the transcendentals—beauty, goodness, and truth—man participates in and, in a real sense, “becomes what he knows.” Schindler maintains that rejecting the notion that the cosmos is true, good, and beautiful, “in its very being,” we are actually committing a gravely dehumanizing move. We are cutting ourselves off from the ability to experience reality at its deepest level. This means that the study and understanding of the transcendentals is not some abstraction, disconnected from everyday life. Rather, a proper understanding of the transcendentals allows one the deepest and most concrete access to the real...

Beauty

Schindler first tackles the transcendental of beauty. This is contrary to the order most frequently employed by the tradition. There are both philosophical and practical reasons for this, however. With respect to the latter, Schindler notes that if “our primary . . . access to reality comes through the windows or doors of our senses” this means that the “way we interpret beauty bears in a literally foundational way on our relationship to reality simply.”

Schindler rejects the notion that beauty is just in the eye of the beholder, that is has no connection to objective reality. Rather, “beauty is an encounter between the human soul and reality, which takes place in the ‘meeting ground,’ so to speak, of appearance.” And beauty is a privileged ground of encounter because it “involves our spirit and so our sense of transcendence, our sense of being elevated to something beyond ourselves—and at the very same time it appeals to our flesh, and so our most basic, natural instincts and drives.” By placing beauty first, one establishes the proper conditions for the “flourishing” of goodness and truth.

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/05/08/the-intelligibility-of-reality-and-the-priority-to-love/

Anyhow, the second part of the book focuses on the idea that love is primarily oriented towards Beauty, not Goodness (recalling Plato's Symposium and St. Augustine's ascent via eros). Thus, love is not simply a desire, but in some sense prior to desire, and this agrees with the Patristics who saw man's fallen state as essentially derived from the misattribution and disorder of love. But, due to Beauty standing at the intersection of Goodness and Truth, it also means that love relates to will and intellect, not just will.

Such a view certainly makes more sense of Dante's Virgil, a stand-in for human reason who spends most of his time instructing the Pilgrim on "what and how to love," often through rational insights.

I suppose another way to look at it is the classical semiotic triad. There, the tripartite relation is irreducible. The sign vehicle/logos is what joins the thing known and the knower in a sort of nuptial union (a gestalt), making them one. The modern view tends towards the sign vehicle being an impenetrable barrier between knower and known, and then in the post-modern tradition the object of knowledge simply vanishes because it cannot be known and there is just sign vehicle floating free, constituting reality.

Or a longer, in-depth review: https://lonergan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/LoveModernpredicamentSummary.pdf

:clap:

'“Modern culture,” argues D.C. Schindler “is largely a conspiracy to protect us from the real.”

I have copped some hostility in the past for saying that the aim of modernity is to create a safe space for the ignorant. I'm sure it's the same idea.

I got a marvellous book a couple of years back, Radiance of Being, Stratford Caldicott (avery poignant story of his premature death from cancer too). I really related to his story, also, as he had been deeply studying Mahāyāna Buddhism before converting to Catholicism. There's a strain of Christian Platonism that I'm very drawn to, although I have real problems with the institution and its history.

- :up: