display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 12503 | Identity means that the idea of a thing remains the same over time [Locke] |
| Full Idea: In this consists identity, when the ideas a thing is attributed to vary not at all from what they were at that moment, wherein we consider their former existence, and to which we compare the present. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.24.01) | |
| A reaction: Since we recognise that we might, in odd circumstances, have the identical idea while the object has been swapped, this is wrong. It sounds like the identity of indiscernibles. Identity is a concept applied to reality, not to ideas. |
| 16059 | Change of matter doesn't destroy identity - in Dion and Theon change is a condition of identity [Chrysippus, by Long/Sedley] |
| Full Idea: The Growing Argument said any change of matter is a change of identity. Chrysippus presents it with a case (Dion and Theon) where material diminution is the necessary condition of enduring identity, since the diminished footless Dion survives. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by AA Long / DN Sedley - Hellenic Philosophers commentary 28:175 | |
| A reaction: [The example, in Idea 16058, is the original of Tibbles the Cat] This is a lovely bold idea which I haven't met in the modern discussions - that identity actually requires change. The concept of identity is meaningless without change? |
| 12505 | One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning [Locke] |
| Full Idea: One thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning. …That therefore that had one beginning is the same thing, and that which had a different beginning in time and place from that, is not the same but divers. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.27.01) | |
| A reaction: Chris Hughes has a nice example of a bicycle which is dismantled, parts are swapped with another, then the originals collected up and reassembled, which appears to give the bike two beginnings. This is necessity of origin, not essentiality. |
| 16516 | The ship which Theseus took to Crete is now sent to Delos crowned with flowers [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The day before the trial the prow of the ship that the Athenians send to Delos had been crowned with garlands. - Which ship is that? - It is the ship in which, the Athenians say, Theseus once sailed to Crete, taking the victims. | |
| From: Plato (Phaedo [c.382 BCE], 058a) | |
| A reaction: Not philosophical, but this is the Ship of Theseus whose subsequent identity, Plutarch tells us, became a matter of dispute. |