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Full Idea
When a man swears to the same tree having stood for fifty years in the same place, he means ...not that the tree has been all that time the same in the strict philosophical sense of the word. ...In a loose and popular sense they are said to be the same.
Gist of Idea
A tree remains the same in the popular sense, but not in the strict philosophical sense
Source
Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
Book Ref
'Personal Identity', ed/tr. Perry,John [University of California 1975], p.100
A Reaction
A helpful distinction which we should hang on. Of course, by the standards of modern physics, nothing is strictly the same from one Planck time to the next. All is flux. So we either drop the word 'same' (for objects) or relax a bit.
Related Idea
| 21315 | A tree remains the same in the popular sense, but not in the strict philosophical sense [Butler] |
| 21317 | Despite consciousness fluctuating, we are aware that it belongs to one person [Butler] |
| 21314 | Consciousness presupposes personal identity, so it cannot constitute it [Butler] |
| 21313 | If consciousness of events makes our identity, then if we have forgotten them we didn't exist then [Butler] |
| 21318 | If the self changes, we have no responsibilities, and no interest in past or future [Butler] |
| 8066 | Butler exalts conscience, but it may be horribly misleading [Anscombe on Butler] |
| 3144 | Everything is what it is, and not another thing [Butler] |