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Are you the same person you were yesterday?

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007penguin
 
Reply Thu 2 Jun, 2005 07:01 pm
Are you the same person you were yesterday?
Will you ever be a different person?
Will you ever be the same person?

If you have a ship made out of planks of wood:
Is it still the same ship is you replace a plank or two with new wood? Is it still the same ship is you replace all the planks of wood?
What about if you replace everything: The masts, the sails, the planks, etc?
Is it still the same ship?
Is the ship still the same ship after a voyage as it was before the voyage?
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Type: Discussion • Score: 1 • Views: 2,400 • Replies: 23
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boomerang
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jun, 2005 07:29 pm
I am a different person than I was yesterday and I will have the scar to prove it.

And, no, I will never be that same person again and, yes, I will be different everyday.

Because everything you see and live and read changes who you are, I think, and unless you can find a way to un-live it, you will never be the same.

As to the ship: I believe the first fraction of a inch it travels leaving port has already changed it into something else without ever replacing anything.
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Setanta
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jun, 2005 07:54 pm
No man ever crosses the same river twice, for the man changes as well as the river.

-- Herakles, 6th Century BCE statesman and homely philosopher
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007penguin
 
  1  
Reply Thu 2 Jun, 2005 09:51 pm
boomerang: you have a good point. I agree, I suppose.
and "Herakles, 6th Century BCE statesman and homely philosopher" has a very good point, too.
So are you both saying that no one or nothing will ever be the same as it was before?
And to boomerang: What if the ship doesn't ever move an inch? (it sounds unlikely, I know.) In my opinion, time would change the ship, regardless of how far it has traveled (if it has traveled at all).
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fresco
 
  1  
Reply Fri 3 Jun, 2005 01:21 am
<<Gurdjieff states that one of our most important mistakes we make is our illusion about our unity. He writes: "His "I" changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings, and moods, and he makes the profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago." Our every thought and desire lives separately and independently from the whole. According to Gurdjieff, we are made of thousands of separate I's, often unknown to one another, and sometime mutually exclusive and hostile to each other. >>

(GOOGLE/"Gurdjieff")
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aidan
 
  1  
Reply Fri 3 Jun, 2005 02:42 am
Interesting - but do you think because I am the "I" that I am, with all of the attendant personality traits and experiences that have helped create this particular "I", that I might tend to make choices that preserve the "I" that I am most comfortable with, thus changing it very little (aside from the inevitable changes that aging, disease, and unavoidable tragedy bring) and sometimes not at all?
Do you think change is optional or inevitable? Can one choose to remain unaffected by the stimulus or circumstances around him?

A lot of people, certainly not all and maybe not even most, but a lot of people, seem most comfortable with stasis and strive to make that their reality. I find any real change in a person really exciting, but also very rare.
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agrote
 
  1  
Reply Fri 3 Jun, 2005 06:37 am
Re: Are you the same person you were yesterday?
007penguin wrote:
Are you the same person you were yesterday?


Yes. The cells making up my body might be different, or my personality may have changed, but I am still the same person because I have the same brain and it still works.

Quote:
Will you ever be a different person?


No. I cannot be another person, because if I was another person, I would not be I. I cannot be not-I; I cannot equal not-I.

Quote:
Will you ever be the same person?


I will be the same person until I stop being a person

Quote:
If you have a ship made out of planks of wood:
Is it still the same ship is you replace a plank or two with new wood? Is it still the same ship is you replace all the planks of wood?
What about if you replace everything: The masts, the sails, the planks, etc?
Is it still the same ship?
Is the ship still the same ship after a voyage as it was before the voyage.


There are no fundamentally true answers to these questions. Man-made objects are just rearrangements of matter - they are not alive. Whereas the sortal term 'people' refers to a set of things which are naturally distinguished from other things - they are alive and conscious, whereas other things are not alive and conscious. (Alive meaning they can perform the seven life processes, or soemthing like that; conscious meaning they have thought and they are self-aware, etc.). Nature doesn't know what a ship is - we could call anythign we invent a ship if we wanted to. We already call space-travelling vessels ships - they have very little in commo nwith boats. So as to whether a ship remaisn the same ship - it's up to the manufacturer. If a boat-builder considers his boat to be a specific collection of particles of matter that can sit on water and carry his weight, then good for him. If he sees it as a spatiotemporally continuous floating thing - sort of an abstract entity, rather than a lump of matter - then that's okay too.

It's like churches. Some people see a church as a building, others see it as the gathering of people to worship God. It's entirely up to us. My parent's church, for example, is often held in a leisure centre downtown, rather than the actual 'church' building.

People, on the other hand, have intrinsic identity as people, I believe. The criteria for having an identity as a ship can be changed as we see fit, but the criteria for being a person will remain the same.
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val
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 05:22 am
fresco wrote:
<

Quote:
<Gurdjieff states that one of our most important mistakes we make is our illusion about our unity. He writes: "His "I" changes as quickly as his thoughts, feelings, and moods, and he makes the profound mistake in considering himself always one and the same person; in reality he is always a different person, not the one he was a moment ago." Our every thought and desire lives separately and independently from the whole. According to Gurdjieff, we are made of thousands of separate I's, often unknown to one another, and sometime mutually exclusive and hostile to each other.


Then, how could he wright his book? The Gurdjieff of 5' ago has the same ideas of the Gurdjieff 1' ago? Strange coincidence, don't you think?
0 Replies
 
Xgunner
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 06:57 am
its a matter of degrees
0 Replies
 
fresco
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 09:41 am
Val,

Gurdjieff claimed that "a permanent I" could be achieved by "correct work" which he presumably had undertaken.

His movement in fact attracted many celebrities in the first half of the 20th century including Katherine Mansfield the novelist. The movement is still active and has inspired offshoots like "The School of Practical Philosophy" which has world wide coverage. (see Google).
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Ray
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 01:27 pm
Same person, different traits, different thoughts, different experience, but the same concious being.
0 Replies
 
djbt
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 02:48 pm
Question for me is - how would I know? If I've only experienced being me for the last 5 minutes, but had all my brain's memories, how could I possibly know if it wasn't me experiencing 6 minutes ago?
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fresco
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 03:56 pm
djbt

You ask about "self knowledge".

According to some of the literature, the fact that we constantly have internal conversations and act contrary to our previous resolutions suggests the "disordered committee nature of self."
It is the non-judgemental observation of this committee which can strengthen a "transcendental unified self"....i,e. "true self knowledge" is knowledge of that disorder!.... and that so-called "normal relations" constitute a cacophony of such committees talking past each other loosely bound by transient mutual interests.
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djbt
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 04:01 pm
I'm not sure that was quite what I meant.

To give a bit of a silly hypothetical, what if my 'soul' (that which experiences, if such a thing exists) swapped with yours just... now. We'd never know any different. I'd think I'd always been you, you'd think you'd always been me.
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fresco
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 04:17 pm
I know what you mean, but there remains a philosophical problem with the definition of "same".
.... any two "items" are trivially the same (both objects of a comparison) and also different (there are two of them). Using words such as "soul" in an attempt to transcend physical change is either an ad hoc but vacuous solution, or may allude in some sense to the concept of a transcendent self as I have illustrated above. Somewhere in all this there has to be an agreed "constancy", and this cannot be based on reductionist scientific definitions.
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kuvasz
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 05:11 pm
0 Replies
 
djbt
 
  1  
Reply Mon 6 Jun, 2005 05:22 pm
fresco... interesting, am pondering.

Why does there need to be "constancy"? Might there just not be any? It would seem the brain changes every, er, what's the smallest unit of time? Quantum moment? Seems to me, no transcendent self that experiences regardless of change over time, no self at all. As a side note, back to a ramble I went on with Watchmaker's Guidedog at the end of the 'Should ethics apply to non-human animals' thread, transcendant self that experiences regardless of change in time and space-time implies (to me at least) transcendant self that experiences regardless of change over space, which would mean, with wanting to get too metaphysical ("When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics...") that we are all one big happy (or not so happy) self, caused, by being spread across brains with a memory, to believe we are all separate, distinct selves.

Or perhaps not.
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fresco
 
  1  
Reply Tue 7 Jun, 2005 12:01 am
(kuvasz...."the law of accident" could be a real headache for insurance companies !)

djbt,

It seems to me (!) that from one perspective the separation could indeed be illusary. The "self" is essentially "social" and is evoked within the commonality of action and language. In the extreme we may be no more "separate" than bees in a hive.

From another perspective, the question of "separate selves" is in essence a pragmatic and legal one about culpability and responsibility. As Gurdjieff suggests, we may spend our lives fulfilling promises made by "someone else" !

Whether a unified or separatist perpective is taken depends on the particular philosophical impetus and "religions" seem to be directed at resolving these perpectives by balacinging "free will" with "unity".
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agrote
 
  1  
Reply Tue 7 Jun, 2005 08:24 pm
djbt wrote:
fresco... interesting, am pondering.

Why does there need to be "constancy"? Might there just not be any? It would seem the brain changes every, er, what's the smallest unit of time? Quantum moment? Seems to me, no transcendent self that experiences regardless of change over time, no self at all. As a side note, back to a ramble I went on with Watchmaker's Guidedog at the end of the 'Should ethics apply to non-human animals' thread, transcendant self that experiences regardless of change in time and space-time implies (to me at least) transcendant self that experiences regardless of change over space, which would mean, with wanting to get too metaphysical ("When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics...") that we are all one big happy (or not so happy) self, caused, by being spread across brains with a memory, to believe we are all separate, distinct selves.

Or perhaps not.


We do have brain continuity. The cells are replaced, but the DNA is the same and the new braisn are biologically caused by the previous brains. I essentially have the same brain as I did 3 years ago.
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cicerone imposter
 
  1  
Reply Tue 7 Jun, 2005 08:36 pm
Absolutely! I haven't changed since I was six years old. I'm now nearing seventy. LOL
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