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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory' and 'Human Freedom and the Self'

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6 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail

16058	Dion and Theon coexist, but Theon lacks a foot. If Dion loses a foot, he ousts Theon? [Chrysippus, by Philo of Alexandria]
	Full Idea: If two individuals occupied one substance …let one individual (Dion) be thought of as whole-limbed, the other (Theon) as minus one foot. Then let one of Dion's feet be amputated. Theon is the stronger candidate to have perished.
	From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Philo (Alex) - On the Eternity of the World 48
	A reaction: [SVF 2.397 - from Chrysippus's lost 'On the Growing Argument'] This is the original of Tibbles the Cat. Dion must persist to change, and then ousts Theon (it seems). Philo protests at Theon ceasing to exist when nothing has happened to him.

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 1. Objects over Time

1350	Continuity is needed for existence, otherwise we would say a thing existed after it ceased to exist [Reid]
	Full Idea: Identity supposes an uninterrupted continuance of existence….Otherwise we must suppose a being to exist after it has ceased to exist, and to have existed before it was produced, which are manifest contradictions.
	From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)
	A reaction: I take the point to be that if something is supposed to survive a gap in its existence, that must imply that it somehow exists during the gap. If a light flashes on and off, is it really a new entity each time?

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 2. Objects that Change

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?

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 13. No Identity over Time

21322	We treat slowly changing things as identical for the sake of economy in language [Reid]
	Full Idea: All bodies, as they consist of innumerable parts, are subject to continual changes of their substance. When such changes are gradual, because language could not afford a different name for each state, it retains the same name and is considered the same.
	From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)
	A reaction: This is hard to deny. We could hardly rename a child each morning. Simlarly, we can't have a unique name for each leaf on a tree. Economy of language explains a huge amount in philosophy.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 1. Concept of Identity

21320	Identity is familiar to common sense, but very hard to define [Reid]
	Full Idea: Every man of common sense has a clear and distinct notion of identity. If you ask for a definition of identity, I confess I can give none. It is too simple a notion.
	From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 4)
	A reaction: 'Identical' seems to be a two-place predicate, but the only strict way two things can be identical is if there is actually just one thing. In which case just drop the word 'identity' (instead of defining it), and say there is just one thing here.

1367	Identity can only be affirmed of things which have a continued existence [Reid]
	Full Idea: Identity can only be affirmed of things which have a continued existence.
	From: Thomas Reid (Essays on Intellectual Powers 3: Memory [1785], III.Ch 6)
	A reaction: This doesn't mean that Reid thinks there is nothing more to the identity than their similitude. But he, like Hume, denies that there is personal identity at any given instant. Reid is better at criticism than at formulating his own theory.