You're forced by necessity to work, not by other people. Other people simply give you more opportunities to work.

You need food to live, and so some way or another must put in some work, whether that work be hunting animals and foraging for plants or employment in exchange for money to purchase food. Unless you can expect welfare and/or charity.

You're equivocating. To say that C is black and circular is to say that C has the colour-property black and the shape-property circle. Colour properties cannot have shape-properties (as per 2), but objects can have both shape- and colour-properties.

Identity is a rather complex question and approaching it through reductionism is not useful, i believe. We living organisms are ships of Theseus, as already explained, and I don't think that we are our atoms because those keep changing all the time. Tokens are by definition replaceable. — Olivier5

And that's precisely why I believe that realism cannot account for token identity in cases like this. Token identity cannot be reduced to the mind-independent "stuff" that makes things up (or their structure). I addressed the issue about living organisms like us here:

There’s certainly a sense in which I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago. I’ve grown and changed as a person - new behaviours and attitudes, likes and dislikes, experiences and memories, and so on. And my material body is not the same that I had 20 years ago, with almost every cell dying and being replaced over time.

But then there is also a sense of continuity, and a linguistic practice of referring to my old self as being my old self. Unless you want to argue for something like a persistent immaterial soul, you can’t make sense of the truth of this by referring to some alleged mind-independent state-of-affairs that such considerations and claims correspond to. It can only be understood according to an anti-realist account (of meaning and truth).

My token identity is maintained, despite the flux of my physical body, by the way I think and talk about myself (and the way others think and talk about me). I'm the same person that was alive 20 years ago because that's how I think and talk about myself. That's anti-realism.

May I ask: who is is interested in token sameness, and why? — Olivier5

Everyone who considers the ship of Theseus or grandfather's axe and others like it. It has a long tradition in philosophy, going back to Heraclitus and Plato. And in this discussion there's me and Hanover and Banno. We're interested because we're interested in the metaphysics of identity, and on what makes a proposition like "the ship that returned is the same (token) ship that left" either true or false.

I believe it is moot for token sameness. — Olivier5

Then you're not interested in the philosophical discussion we're having, which is very much about the token sameness.

They are of course two different glasses in terms of their material constituents and space occupied but people don't actually care for such considerations when they define and recognize things. — Olivier5

Of course they do. If you and I are at the pub each drinking a pint of beer it matters if I'm drinking from your glass or mine.

So, if you apply the word "same" at token level, Theseus left with a ship and came back with another, but if you apply the word at type level, he came back with the exact same ship that he left with. — Olivier5

Whether or not he returns on the same token ship as opposed to the same type of ship is the very issue under discussion. There's a conceptual difference between him leaving on a ship, the ship being repaired over time, and returning, and him leaving on a ship, disembarking, embarking on a sister ship, and returning. In the case of the former we can question whether or not he returned on the same ship, whereas in the latter case we can unambiguously say that he returned on a different ship (even if this sister ship shares the name and the structure of the ship he left on).

Indeed, but they are all identical (isotopes aside) in terms of structure. — Olivier5

The same type, but different tokens. When you and I each drink a glass of water we're not drinking from the same glass of water. Even if the two glasses of water have the same structure, there are two different glasses of water. The same with the case of the ship that leaves and the ship that returns. They may have the same structure, but they may be different ships.

Having the same type of structure isn't sufficient to establish token-identity.

On an ordinary account of logic, if I assume
1) 2+2=4
2) if 2+2=4 then the cat is on the mat

Then it follows

3) the cat is on the mat. — Ennui Elucidator

You're addressing the discrepancy with natural language?

Ordinarily we understand "If X then Y" as asserting that if X is true then Y is true because X is true, whereas in formal logic this isn't the case?

Only types are definable though, tokens are not. You cannot define THAT particular atom of hydrogen. For any practical intent and purpose, it is the exact same atom of hydrogen than any other atom of hydrogen. — Olivier5

There is more than one hydrogen atom in the universe. The existence of water depends on it. It's two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

You can identify ships of a same kind though, by their name. The ship that left last week bears a different name than the one built today. Ergo they are recognizably and functionally different. — Olivier5

It might not. They might reuse the name. There are many Olivers and Michaels in the world. The Titanic that was built in Liverpool yesterday isn't the Titanic that sank in 1912, even though they share a name and have the same structure and function.

Things are not defined by their constituents, therefore, but by their structure and function. — Olivier5

Two ships can have the same structure and function, yet they're two ships, not one ship. Again, you're conflating the type-token distinction.

The ship that returns has the same type of structure as the ship that left. But is the ship that returns the same token ship that left? Concluding that it's the same token ship because it has the same type of structure is a non-sequitur, and leads to all sorts of crazy conclusions (e.g. the ship built in Liverpool yesterday being the ship that left for Fiji a week ago).

As per your definition, note that you are not able to distinguish between a pile of wood pieces and a functional ship. As long as the material stuff is the same, it's the same thing, but what if the structure has changed and the material hasn't? Is it still the same ship then? Is a pike of wood piece taken of a ship equal to a ship? No it ain't. — Olivier5

We can say it's the same ship if we like. If I smash a mirror then the broken pieces are the mirror that I used to use to look at myself. If I smash a lamp then the broken pieces are the lamp I used to use to light up my room. The wreckage of the Titanic is the Titanic. The Romandisea Titanic (still being built) isn't (and will never be) the Titanic (that hit an iceberg and sank).

In my definition, structure has to remain similar if not absolutely identical. — Olivier5

In the example of them using the replaced pieces to build a second ship there are two ships with a similar structure to the original. Are they both the same (token) ship that first left?

And if they start building another ship in the shipyard with the same structure as the ship that left, is this new ship also the same ship that had already left for voyage? "We just finished building it yesterday, and it left for Fiji last week". Sounds crazy.

I think of it as about mind-independent structure and behavior. That's more practical in my experience. — Olivier5

That still doesn't address the question though. Imagine instead of discarding the replaced pieces they are used to build a second, identical ship. Which of the two ships (if either) is the original?

Saying that both ships have a mind-independent structure (of the same type) doesn't help you get at whether one of the two ships is the same (token) ship that left.

To start, you should check out the type-token distinction.

It doesn't really matter, other than in your mind experiment. They are the same model, bhave the same way; not distinguishable. Who cares which is which? — Olivier5

Philosophers discussing the metaphysics of identity, and whether or not "it's the same ship" is true and if so whether its truth should be understood according to realism or anti-realism, care.

It doesn't actually matter, as long as it floats the same way it's functionally the same boat. — Olivier5

Of course it matters. Imagine instead of discarding the replaced pieces they are used to build a second, identical boat. Which of the two boats is the original?

As I've repeatedly said, two different ships can have the same structure. Why is the ship that returns the same ship and not a copy with the same structure?

Then look to what you first said in this topic:

Speaking very roughly, just to get started, realism holds that ...stuff... is independent of what we say about it; anti-realism, that it isn't. — Banno

And what you said later:

That's specifically the issue - does it count as one ship or two?

And "count as..." is a lexical marker for issues of convention. — Banno

You accept that whether or not there are two ships or is one ship is an issue of convention, i.e. not independent of how we talk (or think) about the ship(s).

If we talk about the Perseus and the Theseus as being the same ship then they're the same ship. If we talk about the Perseus and the Theseus as being different ships then they're different ships. A realist can't agree with this, as set out by you above; according to realism, either the Perseus and the Theseus are the same ship or they're not, whatever we say, and that we can be wrong if we talk about them as being the same (if they're really different) or different (if they're really the same).

Yep, you are. But you are making a conclusion about realism from that. What is your argument for that conclusion? — Banno

Objective features of the world change, and yet the ship that returns is the ship that leaves. It's not the same physical stuff, but it's the same thing. That it's the the same thing is a conceptual/linguistic imposition, a way we view and talk about the world. That's anti-realism. There is no mind-independent fact that determines it to be the same ship. A realist is committed to say that it's a different ship, as the material that leaves isn't the material that returns. — Michael

If we don't see it as the same ship because it's now a plane then it's not the same ship because we don't view it that way. If we don't see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (even with similar parts) then it's not the same ship because we don't view it that way. If we see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (with similar parts) then it's the same ship because we view it that way. — Michael

On the one hand we have the realist who says that statements are made true by objective features of the world, but what objective features of the world must obtain for the ship that leaves to be the ship that returns? Presumably that the mind-independent material stuff that leaves is the mind-independent material stuff that returns. Which in this case doesn't obtain, and so the realist must commit to "the ship that leaves is the ship that returns" being false. However that might not be a commitment the realist is willing to make, and so they must accept an anti-realist account of "the ship that leaves is the ship that returns" being true; that it's true because we think of the ship that leaves as being the ship that returns. — Michael

Only when we use the term in a way previously unintended do we run into these challenges — Hanover

Then see the final two sentences here:

So to make it simpler, let’s say the ship that left was named the Theseus and that along with the part-replacements they adopted the name the Perseus.

Was the Perseus previously known as the Theseus?

And again I’m not just saying that we use the same name for the ship. In fact we might even use a different name, as a rechristening during the journey. I’m saying that it’s the same ship. How does the realist maintain identity when the material that leaves isn’t the material that returns? Why is it not considered a new ship - a copy of the original - whether with the same name or a different one?

That's specifically the issue - does it count as one ship or two?

And "count as..." is a lexical marker for issues of convention. — Banno

Which makes the truth a matter of convention, or even personal opinion (as I don’t need other people to agree with me; I can decide for myself whether or not it counts as one ship or two). That’s decidedly not the realist account of truth but an anti-realist account.

We all agree that the material has changed but the function remains. The disagreement is over whether it's the material or the function or the sense of continuity (or something else) that determines identity. This is where the principle of bivalence fails (and, at least in the case where it's the sense of continuity that determines identiity, where the notion of recognition-transcendent truth conditions fails).

"The ship that left is the ship that returned" is true if we define "ship" in terms of functionality. It is false if "ship" is defined as that which contains all the same boards. — Hanover

We don't start by defining "ship" according to some strict criteria and then use it in conversation. Rather we talk about a ship leaving, a ship returning, and then assess whether or not the two are the same (and then possibly derive the meaning of "ship").

Our assessment of whether or not the two are the same does not involve analyzing the meaning of the word "ship". We just consider the actual thing that leaves, the actual thing that returns, and the stuff that happens inbetween. And whether or not an identity persists doesn't have some single "correct" answer, as if it's a mind-independent fact that we either recognize or don't.

So to make it simpler, let’s say the ship that left was named the Theseus and that along with the part-replacements they adopted the name the Perseus.

Was the Perseus previously known as the Theseus?

This isn't a rejection of bivalence. This is just pointing out certain words are vague. — Hanover

It's both. Vague propositions often don't have a single truth value, precisely because they're vague.

You're claiming that what a 40 year old is cannot be determined because there is no single truth value to the statement "a 40 year old is X."

I'm not saying that it can't be determined. I'm saying that it can be determined to be true and it can be determined to be false.

What, specifically, is the difference between these? — Banno

It's the difference between there being two ships with the same name and there being one ship (which maintains its name).

There are other people named Michael in the world, but they're not me. Whereas I'm the same person you've been speaking to for years.

For your idea to be 'true and false' you require a narrative description because the departure and arrive are two separate events over time. Would this not be the same thing as saying a human being is both young and old? — Tom Storm

It doesn't require a narrative description, but your example of a person being both young and old is a good example. "Young" and "old" don't have a clearly defined age-range. Is someone who's 40 young or old? A 10 year old and an 80 year old will likely disagree, and as a young-at-heart 33 year old I'm on the fence. But it doesn't make sense to say that one of them must be wrong, or that I must commit to one side or the other (which would be the case if the principle of bivalence holds).

I think you have a very strange understanding of language if you think that when I say that the ship that returns is the ship that left that I'm not asserting a proposition.

It has but one truth value unless you've got an equivocation fallacy. — Hanover

It doesn't. If you say that it's the same ship and I say that it's not the same ship then it's not that one of us is right and one of us is wrong.

A realist can agree that the ship's components have changed and maintain that we can use the same name for the ship. — Banno

I'm not saying that we use the same name for the ship. I'm saying that it's the same ship.

Other possible examples are statements about the future (especially if there is free will or some things are actually random) and counterfactuals, although in these cases it's not that they're both true and false but that they're possibly neither true nor false.

I don't know what you mean. It's a statement about the ship that leaves and the ship that returns. It doesn't have a single truth value.

Provide an example of a statement that is both true and false. Are you saying within exact contexts and with exact definitions the same statement can be both true and false? — Hanover

The ship that leaves is the ship that returns.

Although my main support of anti-realism is in the rejection of recognition-transcendent truth conditions rather than the rejection of bivalence.

Good point. I assume you mean that these are "thigns" and "true" or "false" cannot be applied to them. Right, TiredThinker made a mistake in not specifying what kind "things" he is talking about. Most probably he meant "statements" ... — Alkis Piskas

What counts as a statement? Clearly not just any sentence.

People are real. — Olivier5

Anti-realism isn't unrealism. Anti-realism doesn't argue that people aren't real. Anti-realism argues that truth isn't recognition-transcendent and/or truth isn't bivalent. Realism argues that truth is recognition-transcendent and bivalent.

Realism

A semantic realist, in Dummett’s sense, is one who holds that our understanding of a sentence like (G) consists in knowledge of its truth-condition, where the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent or bivalent. To say that the notion of truth involved is potentially recognition-transcendent is to say that (G) may be true (or false) even though there is no guarantee that we will be able, in principle, to recognise that that is so. To say that the notion of truth involved is bivalent is to accept the unrestricted applicability of the law of bivalence, that every meaningful sentence is determinately either true or false. Thus the semantic realist is prepared to assert that (G) is determinately either true or false, regardless of the fact that we have no guaranteed method of ascertaining which.

...

According to the constitution thesis, the literal content of realism consists in the content of semantic realism. Thus, the literal content of realism about the external world is constituted by the claim that our understanding of at least some sentences concerning the external world consists in our grasp of their potentially recognition-transcendent truth-conditions. The spurious ‘debate’ in metaphysics between realism and non-realism can thus become a genuine debate within the theory of meaning: should we characterise speakers’ understanding in terms of grasp of potentially recognition-transcendent truth-conditions? As Dummett puts it:

"The dispute [between realism and its opponents] concerns the notion of truth appropriate for statements of the disputed class; and this means that it is a dispute concerning the kind of meaning which these statements have (1978: 146)."

Even if the metaphysical realist claims to not be arguing for semantic realism, semantic realism is entailed by metaphysical realism, and so showing semantic realism to be false is showing metaphysical realism to be false.

If one is realist about structures, then people can realistically be understood as semi-permanent mind-independent structures — Olivier5

In what sense are structures, as distinct from matter, mind-independent? Are you a Platonist? And in what sense do two different sets of matter have the same structure? And not just the same type of structure, as in the case of the twin ships built to the same specification, but the same token structure, such that the ship that leaves is the same ship that returns (i.e. not just a copy of the original)?

Yes, but they are the same model of ship and one could be hard pressed to distinguish one from the other.

My point is that structures are something we recognize as real. Reality is not just matter, it is also in how this matter is bound together in a whole and how they function when thus binded, how the whole behaves as a whole. — Olivier5

Two different ships can have the same model, have material bound the same way, function the same way, and yet they are two different ships, not the same ship, so that doesn't work.

Consider Theseus himself. During the trip, an estimated 90% of his own material constituants have changed. Water drunk and sweat, proteins eaten and used then decayed and excreted... Our body is always in flux. The boat of Theseus is us. And what Aegeus would have recognized as his son was not this or that set of molecules, but a structure binding them in a whole: his son's features, voice, manner of moving and speaking. Not his precise chemical composition.

Yes, see here. The fact that the mind-independent matter isn't the same and yet the person is the same shows that the person isn't reducible to the mind-independent matter, and so can't be understood according to realism.

Although we should clarify one thing first; are you a Platonist about abstract entities? Your talk about structure (as separate from the actual matter, and as a defence of realism) seems to suggest that you are?

Dummett's argument there is somewhat similar to Putnam's:

Challenges to Metaphysical Realism

According to Hilary Putnam, the metaphysical realist subscribes not just to the belief in a mind-independent world but also to the thesis that truth consists in a correspondence relation between words (or mental symbols) and things in that mind-independent world. Call this thesis correspondence truth (after Devitt 1991).

...

A much stronger anti-realist argument due to Putnam uses the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis to show that realism is internally incoherent rather than, as before, simply false. A crucial assumption of the argument is semantic externalism, the thesis that the reference of our words and mental symbols is partially determined by contingent relations between thinkers and the [mind-independent] world. This is a semantic assumption many realists independently endorse.

Given semantic externalism, the argument proceeds by claiming that if we were brains in a vat we could not possibly have the thought that we were. For, if we were so envatted, we could not possibly mean by ‘brain’ and ‘vat’ what unenvatted folk mean by these words since our words would be connected only to neural impulses or images in our brains where the unenvatteds’ words are connected to real-life brains and real-life vats. Similarly, the thought we pondered whenever we posed the question “am I a brain in a vat?” could not possibly be the thought unenvatted folk pose when they ask themselves the same-sounding question in English. But realism entails that we could indeed be brains in a vat. As we have just shown that were we to be so, we could not even entertain this as a possibility, Putnam concludes that realism is incoherent [Putnam 1981].

It is the same ship because it is structurally the same ship, or close enough to the original structure. — Olivier5

How is it structurally the same ship? It's new material. Do you just mean that the shape and placement of the material is the same? Well, two different ships made from the same schematics would have the same shape and placement of their respective material, and yet they are different ships.

And this mainly for Texan women or women anywhere cut off from access to legal abortion. If men can control a woman's body, then as counterbalance she gets a firm grip on his wallet. — tim wood

Most of these men aren't the lawmakers who passed the law, and many of these men oppose the law. Seems like a misplaced "revenge".

And just skimming the names here on who voted for the bill, ~17 were women. Gender doesn't seem much of a determining factor in the vote. It really just came down to party. All 99 Republicans voted for it, along with 2 Democrats, with 76 Democrats voting against.

The ship leaves port. The mast is replaced, then the keel; the various planks of the hull are replaced. At each step something is taken and something replaced. Take out the word "objective" and it's clear that the ship that leaves is the ship that returns" is made true by features of the world. — Banno

Take out the word "objective" and we're not talking about realism anymore.

Objective features of the world change, and yet the ship that returns is the ship that leaves. It's not the same physical stuff, but it's the same thing. That it's the the same thing is a conceptual/linguistic imposition, a way we view and talk about the world. That's anti-realism. There is no mind-independent fact that determines it to be the same ship. A realist is committed to say that it's a different ship, as the material that leaves isn't the material that returns.

This raises an interesting point to Michael's claim. If we replaced each plank one at a time, but with planks dissimilar enough from the original that the ship returned an airplane, we'd be hard pressed to call it the same boat. The material composition then matters, which means that external reality is critical for identity. — Hanover

The material influences our perception and understanding, but it isn't what makes claims of "sameness" or "difference" true. If we don't see it as the same ship because it's now a plane then it's not the same ship because we don't view it that way. If we don't see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (even with similar parts) then it's not the same ship because we don't view it that way. If we see it as the same ship because its parts have been replaced (with similar parts) then it's the same ship because we view it that way.

And if some people consider it to be the same ship and others a different ship, then that's fine. Anti-realism isn't committed to bivalence. To say that either the people who say it's the same ship or the people who say it's a different ship are wrong is mistaken. It really is just a point of view. It's the same ship to the former, a different ship to the latter.

There’s certainly a sense in which I’m not the same person I was 20 years ago. I’ve grown and changed as a person - new behaviours and attitudes, likes and dislikes, experiences and memories, and so on. And my material body is not the same that I had 20 years ago, with almost every cell dying and being replaced over time.

But then there is also a sense of continuity, and a linguistic practice of referring to my old self as being my old self. Unless you want to argue for something like a persistent immaterial soul, you can’t make sense of the truth of this by referring to some alleged mind-independent state-of-affairs that such considerations and claims correspond to. It can only be understood according to an anti-realist account (of meaning and truth).

So to answer your question, Jacob both was and wasn’t the same person he was before being named Israel. There are different senses that we understand being the same person, and some of these (excluding the case of the impermanent material body) don’t have mind-independent truth conditions, and so can’t be understood according to realism (which as I’ve mentioned before doesn’t have anything useful to say about identity).