Would the real Arglor please stand up?
Let me begin with a warning. A caveat if you will. Buyer Beware.
This post will have questions. More questions the answers. It will be a mild intellectual foree with the intention of making progress, but i forsee failure.
The cause of this failure? Identity.
The confusing black whole that is identity. Honestly what makes identity so difficult? One word, change. Heraclitus, well known philosopher is quoted as saying, “No man steps over the same river twice.” The point is that our world is in a constant flux, or steady cycle of progression/regression.
Let me stop here for a second. There is a difficulty when you work with philosophy, language gets in the way. Vagueness creeps in with the use of metaphor and similie, while contradictions arise with direct assertions. Language always tends “muck” philosophy up. Without too much mucking about, lets attempt this.
So Identity lets begin by identifying indentity……………… fuck it happened way to soon.
Identity seems to be linked in some way with change.
– Without identity, would there be change? This is a difficult question. This is due to the nature of change itself. One definition of change is the process that occurs between object A in time state 1 and object A in time state 2 where object At2 is different from object At1. I know, I’m getting technical. But it actually illuminates something. It illuminates the necessity of indentity. How can something change, if something cannot be defined or identified? If we are working with nothing, then who is to say it changes?
– If there were no change, would there be identity? This seems plausible. We can have a singularity that simply exists, but never changes. And yet we understand it is a singularity and so identity does exist.
Thought experiment:
So imagine two globuals that make up all of existence. Globual A and globual B. A has only one property, the property of not being B. B has only one property, the property of not being A. Here we have identity at it’s most basic existence. Identity exists simply as the negation of another identity. Doesn’t that seem to beg the question though? I feel a riddle being born, which came first the indentity, or the identity of identity. Can identity truly exist as a self-referential entity?
And so we breach the theory of knowledge. Foundationalist theories abound. So there must be a foundation, if not it is absurd. If something is self-referential then it is self-defeating. No new knowledge can be obtained by explaining something with itself.
So then why do we identify objects in the world so clearly and readily? Why is it i can say, my car, my existence, your child and therefore your problem? These all deal with calculated statments summing up the existence of objects within the world.
Pragmatisim that is why. We need identity to make it around in our world. If i can’t identitify the ground from the sky, what would stop me from attempting to fly? How would i even understand the concept of flying? So we adopt a quick and dirty understanding of identity while wreaking havoc and spurning confusion left and right.
But there is one part of identity that i failed to describe. (actually there are tons, but one big part). That part deals strictly with the thought games.
see also Identity and Change
Have fun with this… It was simply a mind explosion on the page. I didn’t clean up aftermyself either. Excuse the mess.
April 10th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Fabulous! Just read it. I will comment but I don’t know what yet. Good exploration of the issues. Lots of questions, no answers. Cool!
April 10th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
I hope you don’t mind – I put up a link from my blog.
April 11th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
quick and dirty, i love you. but really… who are you? who am i? what are we that we are not each other, or something else altogether? and that doesn’t even begin to breach the changing quality of love itself. (can actions/predicates have identity? or does the action/predicate simply serve to modify the identity of the subject and object, the things acting and being acted upon? does this mean there is no such thing as love?) ah screw it. I’m becoming less defined, as days go by Fading away, well you might say I’m losing focus Kinda drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself… Yes, I am alone but then again I always was As far back as I can tell, I think maybe it’s because Because you were never really real to begin with I just made you up, to [make] myself… There is no you, there is [no] me… 😉
April 11th, 2006 at 7:25 pm
Snaars- Awesome. [quote:3e2f40d508=”mayfly”] :wink:[/quote:3e2f40d508] Did you just quote NiN? Wow and the new song also. It was even a relevant quote. Good work. I see Mary brought up predicates, which leads to Liebiniz. Which would mean the ancient debates of the fundamental make-up of reality. I didn’t want to get into Liebiniz because he isn’t accepted at this day and age. His arguments are ignored, damn atomists. Except for philosophers, we accept him. Don’t agree of course, but we accept. Maybe later I’ll bring up Liebiniz’s arguments. Or Snaars can. Either way. He should be brought up.
April 11th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Tyler Durden: You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. i know, i know wilbur
April 12th, 2006 at 1:45 am
[quote:477cdf8867=”Arglor”]Did you just quote NiN? Wow and the new song also. It was even a relevant quote. Good work. [/quote:477cdf8867] yes. feed me information, i synthesize it, spit it back out (usually bastardized, see brackets). about halfway through reading your entry, i heard a voice in my head, i just made you up, to hurt myself… there is no you, there is only me… only… only… catchy little tune. [quote:477cdf8867=”Arglor”]I see Mary brought up predicates, which leads to Liebiniz. Which would mean the ancient debates of the fundamental make-up of reality. I didn’t want to get into Liebiniz because he isn’t accepted at this day and age. His arguments are ignored, damn atomists. Except for philosophers, we accept him. Don’t agree of course, but we accept. Maybe later I’ll bring up Liebiniz’s arguments. Or Snaars can. Either way. He should be brought up.[/quote:477cdf8867] no fair. i don’t understand. i guess i should wiki him or something. except you just went to bed. i think i’ll just bug you there instead. love m
April 12th, 2006 at 9:14 pm
Leibniz proposed that reality was composed of monads. Monads are the fundamental building block of reality for Leibniz. Each monad represents a simple substance, having no parts, extension, or form. Every monad caries within itself all the predicates that form its identity, including its relation to every other monad in the universe – and so the entire universe can be deduced from the predicates contained in a single monad. Each monad is causally isolated (after all, they have no extension!), so they cannot interact with one another. God is the entity that selected our universe of monads from all the other possible monads, which exist, but not in our universe. Leibniz’s monads are widely known, and the envy of many a philosopher.