Free Will

[Skepdick]

"Memory alone, as I reckon it, doesn't seem to be a very good candidate for the kind of continuity I was askin' TS about."

Your question is incomplete though. What about all the possible versions of "you" in all the alternative timelines?

Would "you" still be the same "you" if you had eaten an extra slice of cake on your 10th birthday?

So, TS, what you're sayin': the TS readin' these words is not the TS of five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days, etc., previous?

If so, then why, and how, is there any continuity between all these TSs?

The simple answer? There is no continuity!

You are missing TS of 6,7,8,9,10,11... second ago.
You are missing TS of 6,7,8,9,10,11... minutes ago.
You are missing TS of 6,7,8,9,10,11... days ago.

You are confusing the discrete for the continuous.

[henry quirk]

Skep: You are confusing the discrete for the continuous.

Nope. There is a continuity, unbroken, consistent to, for example, me.

The me of five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days, etc., ago is the me writing these words.

Sure, my substance changes (I get older, balder, etc.), but I (my mind, self-awareness, etc.) persists.

Sure, I change my thinkin' (I moved, for example, from atheism to deism), but I persist, I'm aware of those changes, can explain those changes, am the changer, so to speak.

I'm lookin' for TS to explain that continuity.

[Skepdick]

Skep: You are confusing the discrete for the continuous.

Nope. There is a continuity, unbroken, consistent to, for example, me.

The me of five seconds, five minutes, five hours, five days, etc., ago is the me writing these words.

Sure, my substance changes (I get older, balder, etc.), but I (my mind, self-awareness, etc.) persists.

Sure, I change my thinkin' (I moved, for example, from atheism to deism), but I persist, I'm aware of those changes, can explain those changes, am the changer, so to speak.

I'm lookin' for TS to explain that continuity.

Well, yes. The "I" persists. Like "the universe" persists.

But those are precisely the illusions of western thought. Nouns.

Persistence IS memory. There is no you of five seconds, minutes, hours or days if you can't remember anything.

[Belinda]

It's said that after some period of years, most or all of the substance of a person has been replace thru cell division. If true, then Joe at age 50, is literally a different person from Joe at 20. But Joe persists. Joe at 50 is certain that he is/was Joe at 20.

How can this be if identity over time is a fiction or illusion or abstraction?

Good question. I think it is down to memory. For instance what is sad about people who have Alzheimer's disease is they lose their memories and then they no longer know who they are.
Memories hang together because people like to make sense of them , so they turn memories into a narrative. E.g. I remember my first day at school,so that is the reason why I remember the boy who sat next to me in the classroom. Because I remember that boy I was interested to learn he had gone to live in Queensferry. Because I remember he lived there I now remember why I wanted to look up his family when I visited the place.

At first blush, yeah, memory, remembering, seems to be the key to a person's continuity of self.

Three problems though...

First: if man is just his substance, then his memory is rooted in that substance. If, over the years, literally all of that substance is replaced, why is, how is, memory preserved?

Second: memory is notoriously unreliable. We lose, or didn't have a handle on to begin with, details. What we retain is the gist of things. Remembering is as much imagination as memory.

Third, folks with severely interrupted memories still are themselves. There are few documented cases of true amnesia, but in each of these, while the person lacked memories of themselves and of their own history, they were, accordin' to those who knew them, still themselves. The absence of self-knowledge, the lack of memory, didn't seem to obliterate who they were.

Memory alone, as I reckon it, doesn't seem to be a very good candidate for the kind of continuity I was askin' TS about.

"The gist of things" is what I named 'narrative'. Efficient memory is like a sort of filing cabinet where memories are sorted according to the names we give them. E.g. 'My Old School' or 'My Son's Babyhood' or 'Chores I Must Do Today' .

Actually old people who become demented with Alzheimers eventually do not know who they are. And then there are those people who have multiple selves or personalities, and they too do not know who they really are.

"Accordin' to those who knew them": sometimes people become unrecognisable and can be identified only by dental records or documents in their possession.

[Terrapin Station]

It doesn't do anything but identify existents as the actual existents they are. I have no idea what, "range over," means. Perhaps if you think of a universal concept as a kind of short-hand. If I'm cooking and ask my wife to hand me the yellow pot, since the concept pot means anything with all the attributes of a pot, saying, "pot," saves me the necessity of describing every detail of the pot except the one, (yellow) that differentiates the one I mean from all others. The universal concept, pot, means all actual pots with all their possible attributes, with nothing left out.

So first, a term for leaving out some details so that we have words like "pot" that can pick out multiple items (that's basically what "ranging over" means) is an "abstraction."

And actually every word that can work this way, including words like "yellow," are abstractions.

[henry quirk]

Skep: *the illusions of western thought. Nouns. **Persistence IS memory. ***There is no you of five seconds, minutes, hours or days if you can't remember anything.

*No, persistence, in context, is a descriptor, a placeholder, for what sumthin' real does.

**I explained why alone memory is not up to the job.

***No, true amnesia is absence of memory, not eradication of past.

[henry quirk]

B: *"The gist of things" is what I named 'narrative'. Efficient memory is like a sort of filing cabinet where memories are sorted according to the names we give them. E.g. 'My Old School' or 'My Son's Babyhood' or 'Chores I Must Do Today' .

**Actually old people who become demented with Alzheimers eventually do not know who they are. And then there are those people who have multiple selves or personalities, and they too do not know who they really are.

***"Accordin' to those who knew them": sometimes people become unrecognisable and can be identified only by dental records or documents in their possession.

*Memory alone can't be, as I explained, the continuity of self. we, you and I, are more than grocery lists.

**That may be the case, but dementia is on-going degeneration and true, rare, amnesia is not. Apples and oranges.

***Not in the case of true amnesia.

[Skepdick]

***No, true amnesia is absence of memory, not eradication of past.

"The past" doesn't exist anywhere except in human memory and in human records such as books.

Theories about the past. Big Bangs, Dinosaurs roaming earth etc. All of those exist in human memory/books too. Reconstructed from the evidence.

[henry quirk]

Skep: "the past" exists only in human memory and in human records such as books.

And in tree rings, and sedimentary rock, and in relics, and in traveling light, and in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

[Skepdick]

And in tree rings, and sedimentary rock, and in relics, and in traveling light, and in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

All of that is the present, not the past.

You are only inferring "the past".

[henry quirk]

And in tree rings, and sedimentary rock, and in relics, and in traveling light, and in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

All of that is the present, not the past.

You are only inferring "the past".

It's the cold, hard, evidence of what came before: inference is not required.

[Skepdick]

It's the cold, hard, evidence of what came before: inference is not required.

That's what I am saying. The "before" exists only in your head.

[henry quirk]

It's the cold, hard, evidence of what came before: inference is not required.

That's what I am saying. The "before" exists only in your head.

No, it doesn't.

[Belinda]

It's the cold, hard, evidence of what came before: inference is not required.

That's what I am saying. The "before" exists only in your head.

No, it doesn't.

Maybe, even if there were no more human beings, man's past eternally exists in absolute mind, or in God's mind.

[Skepdick]

It's the cold, hard, evidence of what came before: inference is not required.

That's what I am saying. The "before" exists only in your head.

No, it doesn't.

Look what we have here.

A post from henry. In the this very present moment . Where is the "before"?

Look at the history of this entire forum. Every post. Ever. Stored in a database in this present moment. Where is the "before"?

If you delete the database (memory) all posts disappear in an instant.