Philosophy Now Forum

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 11:50 pm "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."

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 11:50 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 3:29 pm 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?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 12:34 am 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.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 11:46 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 10:27 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 2:52 pm 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.

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Thu Aug 12, 2021 4:40 pm 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.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 1:40 pm ***No, true amnesia is absence of memory, not eradication of past.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:00 pm And in tree rings, and sedimentary rock, and in relics, and in traveling light, and in etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

Skepdick wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:03 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:00 pm 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 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:16 pm It's the cold, hard, evidence of what came before: inference is not required.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:58 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:16 pm 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 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 4:31 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:58 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:16 pm 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.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 4:31 pm

Skepdick wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:58 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 2:16 pm 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.