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Post by fia on Dec 10, 2018 22:45:11 GMT
Follow-up nerd post:
So, we have a classic philosophical problem here.
In cases where 1 person splits into 2 people, if we are to continue believing Leibniz's Law, then neither new person is identical to the person before the split. That is to say, if Fannie and Courtney are BOTH split off from Annie, then neither of them gets to be Annie.
That would mean that Annie has effectively died.
One contemporary way of getting over this issue is to posit that neither of the new people are identical to the old person, but that the old person 'survives' in the two new people. So, it's not quite identicality, and the old person is not quite alive, but they are better than dead, in that they at least get to survive. (Those curious about this should read Derek Parfit, who was a nice man, and passed away only recently. He has lots of good writing on ethics and metaphysics that is accessible).
The other option might be to give up on Leibniz's Law. But I really don't recommend that; it makes your metaphysics kind of ugly, unless you accept some form of multi-valued logic, which is messy and not fun to work with.
This last option might still resonate with Tony though, since he is a scientist, and probably a fan of quantum mechanics, which has weirder things in it than multi-valued logic. So by Tony's lights Annie might well just be two people now, and he may be more fine with it than the average person (or the average philosopher, who might take the split as a tragedy).
I have to admit I am now realizing maybe, on my own theory of personal identity, it might be the case that Annie is dead.
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Post by DonDueed on Dec 11, 2018 3:59:21 GMT
Now I'm wondering just why Jones's clothes burned off during reentry. The obvious implication is that Loup put her in orbit, left her there undisturbed for six months, and then de-orbited her similar to the way our real-world spacecraft operate. This would mean that Jones entered the atmosphere at near-orbital velocity, which would produce a shock wave and enough heating to destroy the clothes. But there doesn't seem to be any particular reason for Loup to treat Jones like a human spacecraft. He obviously has the ability to give matter any velocity he wishes, without the constraints of the rocket equation. The reason our spacecraft reenter as they do is that it would be prohibitive to launch them with enough fuel so they could slow to comfortable speeds before reentering. Loup doesn't have that problem. He could have decelerated Jones before bringing her down. For that matter, he wouldn't have had to put her in orbit at all. He could have just shot her up with enough speed so it took six months for her to fall back down. But it doesn't look like he did that, since her clothes didn't burn off on the way up. So, did Loup do it this way merely to embarrass Jones? She doesn't seem embarrassable, really, but maybe her nudity would embarrass others (like Eglamore). Back when it first happened, the physics of Jones as a space projectile was hotly debated in the forums. Sky Schemer mentioned that if she was in geosynchronous orbit, she'd stay in one place above Gunnerkrigg until Loup pulled her back down. It was also discussed at length by noone3 , imaginaryfriend , and Igniz if her path was simply a ballistic arc, placing her basically anywhere in the world by the time she got back down. At the time, we didn't know how detail-oriented Loup was, or how his powers worked, so we didn't know which would be the case. I think we have our answer now. Are awards of cookies in order? I don't think we can make that call, based on anything we've seen so far.
No matter how Jones was launched or what happened in the meantime, Loup would have had to act positively to bring her down in the Court. That's true even for geosynchronous orbits, since it's pretty clear the Court is not situated on the Equator, and therefore Jones would cycle over a north-south path each 24 hours. It would be most unlikely that she would be over the Court at the specific moment Annie reminded Loup about her, so he'd have to actively fetch her (just as he would in any other scenario).
I do like the idea mentioned by Corvo above, that perhaps the clothes didn't burn away, but were shredded by the impact. It makes my original question moot, at least.
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Post by zbeeblebrox on Dec 11, 2018 6:24:14 GMT
It would be most unlikely that she would be over the Court at the specific moment Annie reminded Loup about her, so he'd have to actively fetch her (just as he would in any other scenario). That's not entirely true. Given the time slowdown in the forest, all Loup needs to do to time Jones right is increase or decrease their pace by just enough that she's lined up for the shot. If she's in LEO, every step they take in the forest could be dozens or hundreds of revolutions (depending on what the exact time conversion is), so he can make this adjustment mere seconds before they emerge from the time bubble. |
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Post by secondofnone on Dec 11, 2018 8:22:27 GMT
Tom, I've supported you for years, and wish to continue doing so. But I will no longer use Patreon. Could you offer alternate means? Perhaps www.subscribestar.com? |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 11, 2018 9:15:10 GMT
My current operating theory on what "Loup" meant by placing Jones in the sky is that he redirected gravity* to a point more or less above the Court and roughly doubled it. That's based on her clothes staying on, where she wound up, the idea that one syllable of dialogue equals roughly second time passing, and the principles of chronological-extrapolation-in-two-dimensional-sequential-art-via-analogizing-with-contemporary-film-media theory** combining to give me a working guesstimate of her acceleration. If he used the same method and amount of energy to recall her that would mean she experienced 3g total acceleration on the way down to a target point in the Court. Not surprising Forest!Annie could see her fall. Going by the damage, on impact she either knifed in deep or he went easy on her and/or the Court by softening her landing, or something else happened we don't know about. "Loup" might want to go easy on the Court so as not to alienate Antimony(s) but I don't know why he'd want to go easy on Jones. It could also be the case she hit something exotic that absorbed some of her energy (not impossible in the Court).
*When I say gravity I mean the earth's gravitational pull on Jones.
**I know, I know, it's a working title. So, jump cuts are not often less than three seconds so any transition drawn in a comic that can't otherwise be measured where the artist is a modern person steeped in the various conceits of film media can usually be assumed to represent a minimum of three seconds, all else held equal. If you see a story board and there is no information on transition or shot length then a given panel should require at least three seconds of film. If you are reading a comic and you see panel A where a person is walking, and that panel is directly followed by another panel (panel B) where the same person is still walking but there is no dialogue or other way to tell how long has passed in the comic, and you know that the artist/writer is a modern one, you can safely assume that the person has been walking three seconds or more.
An obtuse theory, likely with no practical application? Yes. Can it make you sound smart and sophisticated in class or at parties? Also yes. Smart and sophisticated enough that you can raid the buffets and wet bars at faculty and department functions to your heart's content because nobody will risk starting a conversation with you just to call you out over your churlish behavior? Absolutely. Smart and sophisticated to the extent of getting you laid? Perhaps.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2018 13:51:58 GMT
Follow-up nerd post: So, we have a classic philosophical problem here. In cases where 1 person splits into 2 people, if we are to continue believing Leibniz's Law, then neither new person is identical to the person before the split. That is to say, if Fannie and Courtney are BOTH split off from Annie, then neither of them gets to be Annie. That would mean that Annie has effectively died. I don't see yet how this is related to Leibniz' Law, which simply states that identicals are indiscernible (which is either untrue or a lead-in to another question, which I can't see the answer to in your post, see (I)) and indiscernibles are identical (which is valid in theory for the perfectly-discerning mind, and egregiously untrue in practice, but it's also how abstraction works, see (II)) or why this same argument should not lead to the conclusion that I effectively die if I lose my hand because I no longer fulfill the predicate "has two hands". Or: if there is some event in which I "can" lose my hand, and one possible outcome is that I do, and the other is that I don't, regardless of what happens, by your argument, I am not the same person afterwards unless the universe is fully deterministic. In other words, how do you establish continuity? and how exactly does the concurrent existence of Annie 1 and Annie 2, despite that they both would, in isolation, be the only outcome of some "forking" situation (entry to the Forest), disrupt it? (I) Suppose there exist two identical objects; then assume they exist at different points in space or in time; this makes them discernible by their position in space or in time. Whether location is an intrinsic property of the objects does not matter to their discernibility, provided I can establish such a concept as "space" or "time" at all. This implies that identical objects must all exist at the same position in space and time (which makes this trivially true, or rather raises the problem of how to establish continuity between objects moving across space and time). . (II) Humans probably aren't that good at establishing every possible property of an object, or proving that they have. I'd guess that "much" of human error lies in failing to discern important qualities and thus establishing identity where there is none. However, (∀p : p(x) = p(y)) => (x = y) is indeed how you establish "identity by all properties p that I consider relevant to the purpose at hand" (abstraction), which is, in fact, what the Annies seem to have done with each other to verify their mutual "reality" (looking at the Ether, both fulfill that they project a "correct" image there by the other's concept / totality-of-facts that defines "herself") but now (understandably) insist on establishing the other is "less real" by qualifying different properties to themselves as "essential" (such as who stopped the attack, or who helped Tony with his hand) -- maybe only because they discernibly differ in them. |
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Post by pyradonis on Dec 11, 2018 14:23:56 GMT
Tom, I've supported you for years, and wish to continue doing so. But I will no longer use Patreon. Could you offer alternate means? Perhaps www.subscribestar.com?The best means is buying his comic in print and telling all your friends about GKC. What is the problem with Patreon, by the way? |
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Post by DonDueed on Dec 11, 2018 14:24:11 GMT
It would be most unlikely that she would be over the Court at the specific moment Annie reminded Loup about her, so he'd have to actively fetch her (just as he would in any other scenario). That's not entirely true. Given the time slowdown in the forest, all Loup needs to do to time Jones right is increase or decrease their pace by just enough that she's lined up for the shot. If she's in LEO, every step they take in the forest could be dozens or hundreds of revolutions (depending on what the exact time conversion is), so he can make this adjustment mere seconds before they emerge from the time bubble. That raises another question. Did Jones experience the time slowdown? Did she spend a couple hours in space, or six months? Not that the difference would be very significant to her, of course, but if I were fAnnie I'd want to ask that question.
In any case, if Jones was actually in orbit (rather than on some ballistic trajectory, gravity-reversed, or just continually held in place by Loup), it would require some positive action on Loup's part to null out her velocity to bring her back down. That suggests that he could have set her down quietly with clothes intact and no crater if he'd wanted to. So maybe the best explanation is the "He just thought it was funny" one -- although I haven't noticed his having much of a sense of humor so far.
Speaking of the time slowdown... why did fAnnie's hair grow? Her mind didn't experience that six months, so why did her follicles? Plus she neither ate nor drank for those months... maybe she really is dead.
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Post by fia on Dec 11, 2018 17:33:08 GMT
Follow-up nerd post: So, we have a classic philosophical problem here. In cases where 1 person splits into 2 people, if we are to continue believing Leibniz's Law, then neither new person is identical to the person before the split. That is to say, if Fannie and Courtney are BOTH split off from Annie, then neither of them gets to be Annie. That would mean that Annie has effectively died. I don't see yet how this is related to Leibniz' Law, which simply states that identicals are indiscernible (which is either untrue or a lead-in to another question, which I can't see the answer to in your post, see (I)) and indiscernibles are identical (which is valid in theory for the perfectly-discerning mind, and egregiously untrue in practice, but it's also how abstraction works, see (II)) or why this same argument should not lead to the conclusion that I effectively die if I lose my hand because I no longer fulfill the predicate "has two hands". Or: if there is some event in which I "can" lose my hand, and one possible outcome is that I do, and the other is that I don't, regardless of what happens, by your argument, I am not the same person afterwards unless the universe is fully deterministic. In other words, how do you establish continuity? and how exactly does the concurrent existence of Annie 1 and Annie 2, despite that they both would, in isolation, be the only outcome of some "forking" situation (entry to the Forest), disrupt it? (I) Suppose there exist two identical objects; then assume they exist at different points in space or in time; this makes them discernible by their position in space or in time. Whether location is an intrinsic property of the objects does not matter to their discernibility, provided I can establish such a concept as "space" or "time" at all. This implies that identical objects must all exist at the same position in space and time (which makes this trivially true, or rather raises the problem of how to establish continuity between objects moving across space and time). . (II) Humans probably aren't that good at establishing every possible property of an object, or proving that they have. I'd guess that "much" of human error lies in failing to discern important qualities and thus establishing identity where there is none. However, (∀p : p(x) = p(y)) => (x = y) is indeed how you establish "identity by all properties p that I consider relevant to the purpose at hand" (abstraction), which is, in fact, what the Annies seem to have done with each other to verify their mutual "reality" (looking at the Ether, both fulfill that they project a "correct" image there by the other's concept / totality-of-facts that defines "herself") but now (understandably) insist on establishing the other is "less real" by qualifying different properties to themselves as "essential" (such as who stopped the attack, or who helped Tony with his hand) -- maybe only because they discernibly differ in them. Hi Korba –– you are right, of course, that not everyone likes or appreciates Leibniz's Law as a law expressing the necessity of identity (see in particular Max Black's essay on the identity of indiscernibles; Martin Wallace at Oberlin has a useful overview of the responses to Black). Just a quick point: it is not obvious that "discernibility" needs to be indexed here to human capacities. It could be discernibility according to, say, an omniscient being; anything that counts as a property will be relevant to determining identity. I was using Leibniz's Law just as one possible formulation of the necessity of identity. It is at least clear how, on Leibniz's Law, Annie 1 and Annie 2 are non-identical. (I) says that if they were indiscernible, they would be identical (but they are not indiscernible; indeed the contrapostive shows (I) does not hold for Annie 1 and Annie 2); (II) says if they are identical, they are indiscernible (note that if we assume the antecedent, the consequent turns out to be false in the case of Annie 1 and Annie 2). However, something that perhaps I should have been clear about: I was assuming that there may be additional conditions on identity for specific objects, beyond those given by Leibniz's Law. LL does not specify which properties are relevant for determining identity; on a wide reading, it applies to all properties, so if any objects a and b differ in any of their properties, they are non-identical. So in some ways Leibniz's Law is too strong, particularly when we talk about the identity of objects that persist through time. As you say, what if I lose my hand? So we do, for the identity of persons and animals across time, usually use weaker conditions on identity. What we usually do is that we say that identity is indexed to a time, and we might say that there are some essential properties that you must continue to have in order for you, the identical object, to persist at a later time, in spite of differing in some accidental properties from your earlier self (for example). So we might say LL holds most obviously if we hold a particular time fixed; there can't be two identical objects at the same time, unless they are actually a single object. And the only way for two objects to subsist in the same place with the same properties at one time is to have different persistence conditions (like a statue and its component clay: two objects, one place). However, there is almost no way of formulating personal identity such that it is possible for a person at time t1, P, to be identical to two future people at the same future time t2, Pa and Pb. This is because uniqueness is usually taken to be a strong condition on identity. And LL shows us Pa cannot equal Pb. So if we want P = Pa, and P = Pb, but not Pa = Pb, we are in trouble. That is why I was saying that there is a sense in which, if Annie split into Fannie and Courtney, Annie (in a sense) is dead; there is no one present who is uniquely identical to her. Parfit's response is to say uniqueness isn't super important; so Annie may not be around exactly as a unique being, but Annie may have survived. LL might be stronger than I needed, but given that we are currently in a condition with two objects/people that are discernible, I thought it was a simple way to go. |
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Post by icaruscollective on Dec 11, 2018 17:39:06 GMT
Speaking of the time slowdown... why did fAnnie's hair grow? Her mind didn't experience that six months, so why did her follicles? Plus she neither ate nor drank for those months... maybe she really is dead.
Given that we've consistently seen fiery effects around Annie's hair when she transitions to ether-vision, as a marking of her fire elemental heritage, we can imagine that for Annie, and perhaps for fire elementals in general, the connection point between the physical body and the etheric body is routed through the hair. So, although the rest of her body was physiologically subject to the time dilation, her etheric presence was, at least during one part of her conversation with Loup, shifted to perceive time "normally"; specifically, when she was able to observe the rest of the forest residents as moving through time much more slowly than her, meaning that her consciousness was synced up with the outside flow of time for at least that interval. Perhaps at other points as well, such as transitions away from or back to her body, or between temporal rates. At any rate, it seems that her etheric body had some capacity to override the time dilation effects, and since her physical body's connection to the etheric body appears to be mediated through her hair, it makes sense that that would be the part of her physical body most likely to have some level of immunity to the time dilation effects as well. Thus, her hair could and would grow while the rest of her body experienced a slower passage of time. |
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Post by mordekai on Dec 11, 2018 20:01:52 GMT
I always wonder how can Jones change her hairstyle, if she can't cut her hair or otherwise change their length... we have seen her at different points in her long life, and several of the hairdos she wears require different lengths of hair... EDIT: Lots of hair gel and some hair extensions, maybe...? Jones has elaborately curled, pinned, and crimped her hair over the years, which makes it look shorter sometimes, but it's always been the exact same length. It is plausible that high heat could bend, but not break, the molecular bonds in her hair, which would curl the strands and still keep in line with the "Jones can't be permanently damaged" rule.
But Jones' hair looks actually longer when she curls or pins up her hair... That's why I said she may use gel to keep it in place (it seems impossible to keep hair as short as hers up without gel, and gel-like products have existed from millennia... it's just than in the past they were quite greasy and disgusting to touch...) and extensions to make it look longer...
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Post by Deleted on Dec 12, 2018 19:51:11 GMT
Just a quick point: it is not obvious that "discernibility" needs to be indexed here to human capacities. It could be discernibility according to, say, an omniscient being; anything that counts as a property will be relevant to determining identity. To me, it now appears we agree on most counts. I can't object to (II) from an omniscient vantage-point; if this perspective doesn't include space and time "as we know it", all the better, since that also shuts down my argument against (I), that objects cannot escape relation in space and time to each other. Unfortunately, such a perspective can't be achieved. Pragmatically, humans have to decide which properties they can identify at all, and then which they find important to the purpose; as such, Leibniz' Law tells me nothing new, but only gives in (I) a somewhat-disguised formulation of the problem of continuity, or essential properties, and in (II) describes abstraction and/or the bliss of omniscience. Yeah. What interests me is not the general idea, which I can understand, but the make-up of those essential properties. So far, the comic seems to suggest that the most immanent and convincing (to herself) essential property of Annie is her Ethereal projection, but they seem to be competing to establish whatever they can as, if not essential, then at least (morally) elevating properties over their all-too similar competition. Why? because they need something to distinguish themselves, even if this wish arises precisely only from the sudden fear that you might be insufficiently unique (wherefore there is a conflict of interest). You are in egregious violation of the Nicene Creed. Not that it matters to me.  In fact, I wouldn't mind being primed on how this problem is resolved in theology... A more serious counter-argument: Uniqueness cannot be a (simple) property; I would rather call it a method of the object, as the true-or-false (let's not get fuzzy, right) and not necessarily constant result of evaluating if the set of its properties matches that of any other object in the world -- whether from an omniscient or subjective view.
Is location a property of an object? Under identical circumstances, two identical objects on which an identical force is exerted will perform identical movements, and so forth ("when calculating a ship's centre of mass, one does not imagine the harbour"), but "the human thing to do" (not at all necessarily the correct one) would likely be to distinguish the objects by their surroundings, even where they have no effect on the totality of the object's properties (which can only be guessed at by "poking them" in any case, or by comparison to such results).
In linguistics, you'll have found that homonyms with wildly different meanings tend not to last as such, in spite of whether this obfuscates or misconstrues the etymology, and funnily enough, the reverse also happens -- assimilation of terms that merely sound alike because of some plausible tertium comparationis.
To bring up the example with losing a hand again, if there is a general set of situations in which I could plausibly (to you, and to myself) lose my hand but about as plausibly not, such that in one possible outcome, contingent on some minor detail, I do lose it, while in the other I don't, and I told you the story in both of these outcomes, then you'd believe me both times. But when two very similar beings (clones, if you will) go through very similar situations in life, except for a minor but decisive detail in which they differ, and you were introduced to them both at the same time, then...?
I once had a dream to that effect, even (it involved a lot of glass, escalators and, as the final image, a sudden zoom into a glaucous iris, which could have belonged to either of two outwardly-similar people whose eyes I knew were nearly black). Yet I still think this can't lead to the conclusion of lost continuity, because there would be no such loss for either Annie in isolation (right?), and uniqueness is by my count not a property, but only the result of properties. Rather, I'd ascribe this to an expectation to be able to discern clearly between objects (or even assume "objects" at all) "because that's human", and even more, wanting to discern clearly between yourself and people similar to yourself.
Annie is suddenly presented with another entirely-plausible (imaginable) Annie and her associated storyline being not only plausible, which I'd assume would be no problem for her (wild speculation comes and goes), but also physically real, and thus having had an effect on non-private circumstances by which she has been defining herself -- and this happens in a comic wherein imagination reinforces reality through physical particles. In fact, I'm arguing against Annie being dead in some sense because the other Annie's existence doesn't seem to degrade her integrity at all (yet...?) except by how she feels robbed of these reinforcements from outside, and I think the comic is deliberately advancing towards her problems in defining who she is (Kat being a stark contrast to that by choice, I believe; the merger and loss of Ysengrin and Coyote, which inverts her situation as well as depriving her of two important connections, happening at the same time, too).
That should be all I can say about this.
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Post by donna on Dec 13, 2018 0:13:57 GMT
Thank you for that so I don’t have to type all that out! (The evidence Tony says is missing, is quite obvious... by fia) I agree with the others who say both Annies should be suspect. However they apparently rely heavily on the court Annie... who, by the way, has yet to claim she is Annie. She said “you could be the fake...”. But my real question... if I suddenly had a twin, I would be trying to prove she were fake. Neither one is doing that. Neither one...
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Post by fia on Dec 13, 2018 4:59:23 GMT
Just a quick note – I don't want to overwhelm the discussion, though @korba, I think there are many things we could discuss further together, see below – I do not, in fact, at the moment believe that Annie is intended by Tom to be 'dead' in the fiction. Although in contemporary (secular Analytic) metaphysics we don't like the idea that a unique object at time t1 could be identical, independently, to two objects at time t2, there is no reason yet given to expect that Tom respects or much cares about contemporary metaphysics. He probably doesn't think Annie is dead. In fact, here is one way for Annie to definitely not be dead: if it is the case that Courtney is not actually an offshoot of 'our' Annie, but is instead a doppelgänger, or Loup projection, or some other, newly created being. It gets trickier if it is the case that Fannie and Courtney are two later versions of a single earlier Annie that were simultaneously subdivided, like an amoeba. To @korba: I am not a theologist so I do not know how theologists resolve the Nicene Creed; my guess is, not very smoothly, because the way to understand trinitarianism is still the subject of debate. The most common take is (I gather) to say that one should not seek to understand the infinite Godhead with logic, but rather to submit oneself to God in faith. Or, as I like to put it, we don't know how to explain it, it is just true.
Now, about uniqueness: you are right that uniqueness does not sound like an intrinsic property of an object; but nonetheless we seem to think that it is important to (numerical) identity. Being one thing as opposed to two things can be construed as an intrinsic property of an object. It is in this sense that we mean 'uniqueness', I think, not in the sense of, 'there are no things that strongly resemble this object' or in the sense of 'special'.
Again, the point is not an epistemic point; it is not about whether we can know that any one object has or lacks certain properties. (Though it does seem like if we do know that an object has or lacks certain properties, conclusions about what holds metaphysically, say about identity, can be made about those particular objects).
Basically: let's try to keep separate our a priori metaphysical principles from our a posteriori epistemic access to reality.
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Post by Runningflame on Dec 13, 2018 6:23:08 GMT
You are in egregious violation of the Nicene Creed. Not that it matters to me. In fact, I wouldn't mind being primed on how this problem is resolved in theology... Sure, I'll give it a try. Which part of the Nicene Creed are you referring to? The statement that the Son is "true God of true God... being of one substance [ ὁμοούσιον] with the Father"? I'm not sure if that applies to the present discussion (leaving aside the obvious difficulty that Annie is not God), since the Creed asserts very specifically that this has always been the relation of the Son to the Father (in fia's notation, that there is no time t1 when the Son did not exist). To say that "the Father is God, and the Son is God, but the Son is not the Father" is a potentially misleading way of putting it (in fact, the Nicene Creed itself does not put it that way), because one tends to assume that "is" indicates complete equivalency, which is not what is meant here (otherwise we would immediately have a contradiction in terms). Trinitarian theology denies that the Son and the Holy Spirit are some kind of lesser "gods"; it affirms that they are God (eternal, uncreated, etc.) just as the Father is God; and it also affirms that these three Persons exist in an eternal unity, as one God. I'll stop there because I only have a basic understanding of the shades of meaning involved. It's very easy to say something one doesn't mean when trying to describe the indescribable God. (I also would like to point out that our philosophy and theology, like the other sciences, may not work quite the same way within the universe of Gunnerkrigg Court. So even assuming that "they're the same person if and only if they're identical"--if that's an accurate phrasing of the statement under consideration--is true in our world, it's not necessarily true in GKC.) |
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Post by Runningflame on Dec 13, 2018 6:35:53 GMT
Now, about uniqueness: you are right that uniqueness does not sound like an intrinsic property of an object; but nonetheless we seem to think that it is important to (numerical) identity. Being one thing as opposed to two things can be construed as an intrinsic property of an object. It is in this sense that we mean 'uniqueness', I think, not in the sense of, 'there are no things that strongly resemble this object' or in the sense of 'special'. Again, the point is not an epistemic point; it is not about whether we can know that any one object has or lacks certain properties... Basically: let's try to keep separate our a priori metaphysical principles from our a posteriori epistemic access to reality. Hmm. So are you saying that every thing is one thing (itself, uniquely) and there cannot be a thing that is two things? And therefore the statements "Court!Annie is Annie" and "Forest!Annie is Annie," when put together, are equivalent to saying "Annie is not one thing but two things," which is essentially a contradiction in terms? To the point about epistemology, I would add: we, the readers, don't yet have epistemic access to the reality of Annie's situation. We've been shown what appears to be a second Annie, and we've been told, "That's what [Loup] did," but we don't yet know what he did. So we can't conclude much about ontology from the limited evidence we have. Which (to come full circle) appears to be basically what Tony is saying. |
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Post by DonDueed on Dec 13, 2018 13:42:34 GMT
I'm not sure if that applies to the present discussion (leaving aside the obvious difficulty that Annie is not God) Well, duh! Of course Annie isn't God. Clapton is.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2018 13:50:25 GMT
Metaphysics certainly has no problem ascribing the same substance to multiple objects by rejecting that the objects are the solely valid representation of the world: which is a way of resolving the problem at hand. I'd previously tried to argue solely from the objects, but seems this doesn't quite work because we run into problems with what properties are immanent. Aristotle suggests that objects are instantiated from substances and given, in construction (or individuation), a defining set of parameters. Then he undermines my position by assuming that individual objects are "primary substances", but let's not dwell on that because it leads into the same questions: if "human" is a substance, how can "Annie" be? Can we derive objects from the substance "Annie", if we assume we can from "human"? If not, at which point can we draw the line between primary and secondary substance? In particular, there is even the question of whether properties apply to a substance or an object. Or rather I would propose that substances are arrived at (maybe only exist, but that's not necessary) by the comparison of objects. As the Annies are discernible objects (unquestionably), whatever properties they found identificatory while looking at each other could feasibly be called "substance", I think you are using essential vs. accidental which is just as fine (I would call the latter mutable, or maybe at least "programmable" in the sense that PROM is programmable once and then stays fixed). As for numerical identity -- I propose this compromise (?): that not the number of its instances is a property of a substance (rather another method), but rather that whether the substance can only be instantiated once is a true-or-false property of the substance, which carries over to the object. Call it prescriptive uniqueness, which I wouldn't apply to humans thus resolving the Annie problem "for the moment" (in the narrative). This need not be a posteriori at all; in fact, with divinities, you have to posit this uniqueness a priori and it is perhaps even among the divinity's defining characteristics (either by itself, or as part of a conjunction of properties), but that depends on your exact faith. (this next part in particular Runningflame, but still relevant to the post generally I believe) "homooúsios" means that some relation of identity is being applied, with the "explicit hint" at the violation of transitivity; it's being highlighted that the discernibility of the Persons makes them appear non-identical to us, and the state of the world is such that the division into Persons is necessary to express God, but in fact they are all wholly God, despite that none of them would be God if the other two did not exist. (Or that is how I understand it as an outsider.) Leibniz' Law (which I'm very sure was thought of long before Leibniz) can still apply, but with the restriction that it only applies to objects as they appear to subjects (the Persons are not identical), and not as the subjects are in substance (but God is all the Persons, both all the Persons collectively, and each Person individually solely by way of God's own existence). That is, the contradiction is resolved first by introducing idealism: a divide between perceptible objects and governing subjects. Numerical identity is explicitly, even ostentatiously undermined by the term "triune"; and I think underlying is the idea that the perceptible world is a (whether meaningful or not, is left open) shadow of its real state. I presume that Arianism was opposed not only because of veering too closely to polytheism (since in fact, it still assumes that God is not confined to one Person), but rather materialism, in that it was found transgressive by establishing a hierarchic division (the presence of creator and created, or subordinate wills, within the same God) from where a material division appears to be (which is not denied by Trinity). But I don't know this. I brought the Trinity up mainly because Annie finds herself in the reverse situation (and is obviously not God, but that doesn't seem relevant): either Annie in isolation would be unquestionably Annie, but when they appear together, this creates problems. One way to resolve it, I think, is assuming that both Annies are of the same substance (does the Ether express substance?) but are now divided into two instances; and if substance is determined by Ether-particles (is it even particles), this might lead to either Annie sooner or later establishing something of herself as an essential property (meaning the substances are not fixed in GkC) and thus erasing the other. But presently they coexist precisely because it is currently being called into question what "Annie" means mythologically. (seems I still have things to blather on about; what a surprise. More Later.) e: and I would very much agree that not the least requirement of ethics is not to describe inadequately what one can barely begin to describe. "all could be over in a single word", but what a task to invent that language |
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Post by keef on Dec 13, 2018 15:37:36 GMT
Follow-up nerd post: So, we have a classic philosophical problem here. In cases where 1 person splits into 2 people, if we are to continue believing Leibniz's Law, then neither new person is identical to the person before the split. That is to say, if Fannie and Courtney are BOTH split off from Annie, then neither of them gets to be Annie. That would mean that Annie has effectively died. - If an amoeba splits in to two amoebae, did the original die?
- It needs some work, but this could be an interesting defence in a copyright infringement case.
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Post by fia on Dec 13, 2018 20:04:43 GMT
Now, about uniqueness: you are right that uniqueness does not sound like an intrinsic property of an object; but nonetheless we seem to think that it is important to (numerical) identity. Being one thing as opposed to two things can be construed as an intrinsic property of an object. It is in this sense that we mean 'uniqueness', I think, not in the sense of, 'there are no things that strongly resemble this object' or in the sense of 'special'. Again, the point is not an epistemic point; it is not about whether we can know that any one object has or lacks certain properties... Basically: let's try to keep separate our a priori metaphysical principles from our a posteriori epistemic access to reality. Hmm. So are you saying that every thing is one thing (itself, uniquely) and there cannot be a thing that is two things? And therefore the statements "Court!Annie is Annie" and "Forest!Annie is Annie," when put together, are equivalent to saying "Annie is not one thing but two things," which is essentially a contradiction in terms? Yes, that is more or less the distillation of the point  ((Of course a lot is happening when you identify a thing as not only "one thing" and as "a thing" ("There is a thing" is a complex thing to say metaphysically), but once you have identified " a thing" as a somewhat independent existence it does become hard to say "that thing is two things".)) If an amoeba splits in to two amoebae, did the original die? Yes, sort of – there are people who would say that if one amoeba splits in to two amoeba, that the original amoeba no longer exists 'in the same way'. Some of these people would say the first amoeba is dead. Others would say the amoeba survives in a sense, but the daughter amoebas are not the same amoebas as the mother amoeba. The issue is of course the identity conditions of amoeba and the identity conditions of human people may be (and probably are) different. Partly this is because human people don't tend to reproduce by self-replication, so we have different concepts for when a human life begins and ends than for when an amoeba life might begin or end. Also partly this is because some people think human beings have souls and so their persistence conditions aren't bound to their bodies ((so if you don't have the same soul, you are not the same person; and sometimes, even if you have the same soul, you might be a different person, as with reincarnation)). |
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royh
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Post by royh on Dec 14, 2018 1:30:45 GMT
I just remembered something. A while ago, Jones told Coyote "You know I can take her if I wish" I wonder why she said that given Coyote could fling her into orbit. She's not the type to bluff. The only thing I can think of that seems sort of plausible is that maybe she could have, but didn't wish to, either then or now. Well, that or Loup was lying when he said he had done it before (it was a little weird that he said that given his insistence that he is not Coyote.) |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 14, 2018 2:14:26 GMT
I just remembered something. A while ago, Jones told Coyote "You know I can take her if I wish" I wonder why she said that given Coyote could fling her into orbit. She's not the type to bluff. The only thing I can think of that seems sort of plausible is that maybe she could have, but didn't wish to, either then or now. Well, that or Loup was lying when he said he had done it before (it was a little weird that he said that given his insistence that he is not Coyote.) Welcome to the forum! I think Jones meant that as a representative of the Court she had the right to take Antimony back against her wishes, maybe because of Coyote's promise. But it might also mean that Jones is really strong, immortal, indestructible, and probably indefatigable. Even if trapped in orbit or buried in the center of the earth, she'll be back like the Terminator sooner or later and she won't quit. So maybe she was telling Coyote, "You'll get tired of this before I will." |
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Post by Runningflame on Dec 14, 2018 6:57:04 GMT
I just remembered something. A while ago, Jones told Coyote "You know I can take her if I wish" I wonder why she said that given Coyote could fling her into orbit. She's not the type to bluff. The only thing I can think of that seems sort of plausible is that maybe she could have, but didn't wish to, either then or now. Well, that or Loup was lying when he said he had done it before (it was a little weird that he said that given his insistence that he is not Coyote.) Welcome to the forum! I think Jones meant that as a representative of the Court she had the right to take Antimony back against her wishes, maybe because of Coyote's promise. But it might also mean that Jones is really strong, immortal, indestructible, and probably indefatigable. Even if trapped in orbit or buried in the center of the earth, she'll be back like the Terminator sooner or later and she won't quit. So maybe she was telling Coyote, "You'll get tired of this before I will." ... Although that's kind of a moot point if it's 3000 years later and Annie is long dead by then. |
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Post by Runningflame on Dec 14, 2018 7:33:04 GMT
"homooúsios" means that some relation of identity is being applied, with the "explicit hint" at the violation of transitivity; it's being highlighted that the discernibility of the Persons makes them appear non-identical to us, and the state of the world is such that the division into Persons is necessary to express God, but in fact they are all wholly God, despite that none of them would be God if the other two did not exist. (Or that is how I understand it as an outsider.) Leibniz' Law (which I'm very sure was thought of long before Leibniz) can still apply, but with the restriction that it only applies to objects as they appear to subjects (the Persons are not identical), and not as the subjects are in substance (but God is all the Persons, both all the Persons collectively, and each Person individually solely by way of God's own existence). That is, the contradiction is resolved first by introducing idealism: a divide between perceptible objects and governing subjects. Numerical identity is explicitly, even ostentatiously undermined by the term "triune"; and I think underlying is the idea that the perceptible world is a (whether meaningful or not, is left open) shadow of its real state. I presume that Arianism was opposed not only because of veering too closely to polytheism (since in fact, it still assumes that God is not confined to one Person), but rather materialism, in that it was found transgressive by establishing a hierarchic division (the presence of creator and created, or subordinate wills, within the same God) from where a material division appears to be (which is not denied by Trinity). But I don't know this.
I brought the Trinity up mainly because Annie finds herself in the reverse situation (and is obviously not God, but that doesn't seem relevant): either Annie in isolation would be unquestionably Annie, but when they appear together, this creates problems. One way to resolve it, I think, is assuming that both Annies are of the same substance (does the Ether express substance?) but are now divided into two instances; and if substance is determined by Ether-particles (is it even particles), this might lead to either Annie sooner or later establishing something of herself as an essential property (meaning the substances are not fixed in GkC) and thus erasing the other. But presently they coexist precisely because it is currently being called into question what "Annie" means mythologically.
(seems I still have things to blather on about; what a surprise. More Later.)
e: and I would very much agree that not the least requirement of ethics is not to describe inadequately what one can barely begin to describe. "all could be over in a single word", but what a task to invent that language Your grasp of Trinitarian theology is quite good, as far as I can see. I would quibble with the word "division," which doesn't seem an appropriate way to describe tri-unity; "distinction" is better. Also, "none of them would be God if the other two did not exist" would probably not be a statement most theologians would make, although I suppose it could be considered vacuously true, at least; I would instead expect to hear something like "the Father is only the Father insofar as he begets the Son," and vice versa, and similarly for the Holy Spirit. Arianism, as I understand it, says that the Father is the only true God, and that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God, but is not "true" God--thus the Nicene Creed's contrary insistence that he is "true God of true God." So I'm not sure whether Arians would say that the Father and the Son are "the same God." If one is "true God" and the other is "God" but not "true God," it seems like they would be different God(s?). The distinction between God-as-we-perceive-God and God-as-God-actually-is reminds me of the prayer from The Screwtape Letters: "Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be." It is both hazardous and probably unavoidable to direct one's prayers to one's own understanding of God! Since you mentioned "divinities" plural, it put me in mind of Greco-Roman polytheism, where each individual god(dess) seemed to have a slightly different "instantiation" in every city where (s)he was worshiped. Perhaps the same is true in Gunnerkrigg Court? Coyote, in particular, seems like the type to exist in different forms in a lot of different places. And if this is part of Coyote's nature, it may be part of Loup's nature; and Loup may have now done something akin to this with Annie. Forest!Annie and Court!Annie would then be physical manifestations of two different "stories" or "myths" about Annie: the daughter of Tony who returned to the Court right away, characterized by short hair and face paints, and the Medium who stayed in the Forest for months, characterized by long unruly hair and (Ysengrin-approved) lack of face paints. Who's to say that one of them is real and the other isn't? Did Coyote put the stars in the sky, or were they always there? |
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Post by Runningflame on Dec 14, 2018 7:52:59 GMT
((Of course a lot is happening when you identify a thing as not only "one thing" and as "a thing" ("There is a thing" is a complex thing to say metaphysically), but once you have identified " a thing" as a somewhat independent existence it does become hard to say "that thing is two things".)) Yes, "a thing is two things" would appear to be a mathematical contradiction, wouldn't it? Especially since the English indefinite article is derived from the word "one." But I suspect that the difficulty lies as much in the (rather vague) word "thing" as in the numbers. If an amoeba splits in to two amoebae, did the original die? Yes, sort of – there are people who would say that if one amoeba splits in to two amoeba, that the original amoeba no longer exists 'in the same way'. Some of these people would say the first amoeba is dead. Others would say the amoeba survives in a sense, but the daughter amoebas are not the same amoebas as the mother amoeba. The issue is of course the identity conditions of amoeba and the identity conditions of human people may be (and probably are) different. Partly this is because human people don't tend to reproduce by self-replication, so we have different concepts for when a human life begins and ends than for when an amoeba life might begin or end. Also partly this is because some people think human beings have souls and so their persistence conditions aren't bound to their bodies ((so if you don't have the same soul, you are not the same person; and sometimes, even if you have the same soul, you might be a different person, as with reincarnation)). The example to bridge amoebae and humans: identical twins. In fact, that scenario is very similar to Annie's scenario: one human becomes two humans that are initially identical and then diverge slowly through differing experiences over time. I don't think anyone (in modern Western society, anyway) would claim that identical twins are the same person. But since we're not accustomed to thinking of a fertilized egg as a person, we aren't bothered by the question of whether the original ceased to exist when it divided into two. That's an interesting thing to think about. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Dec 14, 2018 8:10:18 GMT
Although that's kind of a moot point if it's 3000 years later and Annie is long dead by then. Coyote is famous for clever tricks, acting foolish, and many other things but patience is not his strong suit. |
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Post by philman on Dec 14, 2018 10:22:17 GMT
Although that's kind of a moot point if it's 3000 years later and Annie is long dead by then. Coyote is famous for clever tricks, acting foolish, and many other things but patience is not his strong suit. Unless he forgets he is Coyote again |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2018 17:18:45 GMT
fia ( keef ) -- Imagine two identical spheres. No, wait -- I have to make a concession right away. A sentence like "Imagine two identical spheres..." would be wrongly worded by Leibniz' Law, since we would have to separate those spheres spatially, making them discernible, thus not identical. (Imagining "the same sphere twice" is the other possibility, but leaves something to be desired as well.) Don't the spheres arise from the same substance, though, from which I can make arbitrarily many copies? Does it matter how these spheres are arranged (though it will probably be horizontally next to each other and not overlapping, and I didn't even say "spheres of Euclidean distance in R^3", since the term "sphere" itself is defined by the underlying metric space: compulsion of habit), or what material you think them composed of (it does, and so does that there needs to be any material at all; I'm guessing metal but perhaps it is something else for you)? Is the imagined R^3-sphere really "two-dimensional" (i.e. as an image, though not on my retinas) or three-dimensional (i.e. as the spatial understanding I will have of the image)? Indeed, by my view, it would be theoretically possible (but practically impossible) for two twins to be identical, if at every point in time they are exposed to identical (material) circumstances and they cannot transcend material causality, something I'll laconically deem Unknown to me. By the same token, both parts of the amoeba are identical until some simple property (i.e. a property that cannot be derived from facts, which uniqueness and number are not, I think) is added to them as a factual result of their division, which in practice will probably happen almost instantaneously (if you care for all the properties). Nonetheless, the point of division itself is not yet the point of individuation. But what do you say? Runningflame -- It's unclear (to me, at any rate) what the Arian position is and what is the interpretation of its opponents, but I take it that Arianism indeed denies the hypostatic union of the Persons: the Son is "God but created", i.e. God except in those attributes which nothing created can fulfill, and thus the Father exists only in so far as he creates (not only begets) the Son. Thereby the Son would be the true God, if not for his being created and all that implies: this is how the Son is God. The distinction is necessary due to how the material world is laid out (this is also the problem Trinitarians acknowledge, but their solution differs). The motivation of this claim is, ironically, that any substantial identity of the transcendent immutable Godhead with anything that can be discerned from it (but is the Christ mutable except in which he is human...?) would amount to polytheism (which I think resembles fia's argument of numerical identity being essential to the substance). Which introduces what interests me about it: the motivation is to consign the material world to a lower order of "reality" than that of the imperceptible God, but it argues this precisely from material and perceptible relations. Seems like a fruitful motif! (Not helping retrospective clarity is that Origenes' views were condemned alongside, in which the Logos -- to which belong both Father and Son, again in first and second order, but not God -- is created as the missing link between the Father and the Multitude of Things (this definitely calls to mind Plotinus' The One -- Noûs -- Individual Soul hierarchy), and is the order that pervades the material world: eternal, but created. Ironically, Origenes was quote-mined by both Arians and Trinitarians as being "more on their side than the other".) "Du gleichst dem Geist, den Du begreifst / Nicht mir." And Faust was lucky with his summons, too; had "Earth-spirit" already referred to Lulu by this point of German theatre, he would not have survived his delusions: instead he forced them upon the girl, who was saved at least. Somehow. As for your paragraph on the double fantasy being motivated by Coyote's tremendous power over the story (to the point that he knows or at least guesses it is one), I agree wholly! Coyote, after all, delights in creation, but not in what he creates only out of himself (the neglected Shadow Men): instead he apparently wants to shape those that created him out of the wish that something sentient shape them.
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Post by fia on Dec 15, 2018 19:19:12 GMT
fia ( keef ) -- Don't the spheres arise from the same substance, though, from which I can make arbitrarily many copies? [...] I grant that your position is self-consistent. I suppose that I was not thinking that identity conditions apply only to things as fundamental as substances; and I was not thinking that Annie was anything like a substance. Your view sounds sort of Spinozistic – and I do have a soft spot for Spinoza. But it's not always terribly helpful when talking about particulars like Annie. Indeed, by my view, it would be theoretically possible (but practically impossible) for two twins to be identical, if at every point in time they are exposed to identical (material) circumstances and they cannot transcend material causality [...] By the same token, both parts of the amoeba are identical until some simple property [...] is added to them as a factual result of their division, which in practice will probably happen almost instantaneously [...] Nonetheless, the point of division itself is not yet the point of individuation. But what do you say? This may be where I get off the boat. If you say that division is not yet the point of individuation, the best I can do is reply that I don't know how to understand what you mean. The Pythagoreans thought numbers and the distinguishability of objects are the same thing, or at least, come from the same source. If you say you are 'dividing' something, what you are saying is that you are making one thing be two or more things. If there are two things that are un-individuated, what do you mean by 'two'? I think you can articulate your view, but it seems like you're adding in a lot of extra assumptions/requirements for something to be "an object for itself" that don't obviously seem necessary postulates. I suppose that is why I gravitate more toward an Aristotelian view, at the end of the day, than a Parmenidean one..? Put it this way: if you have a Humean bundle-theory of substances, where substances are just bundles of properties, what you'd end up with is both something/a substance that consists of two objects; and one substance corresponding to each object. There would be as many substances as bundles of properties. And then everything really is different from everything else if you change but one measly property. So we do need an additional stipulation for what makes something be a thing rather than part of a thing or more than one thing, but the individuation conditions for me must make use of division/distinguishability at some point in the process. Otherwise the ontology starts to seem arbitrary. |
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Post by Runningflame on Dec 15, 2018 21:26:26 GMT
Indeed, by my view, it would be theoretically possible (but practically impossible) for two twins to be identical, if at every point in time they are exposed to identical (material) circumstances and they cannot transcend material causality [...] By the same token, both parts of the amoeba are identical until some simple property [...] is added to them as a factual result of their division, which in practice will probably happen almost instantaneously [...] Nonetheless, the point of division itself is not yet the point of individuation. But what do you say? This may be where I get off the boat. If you say that division is not yet the point of individuation, the best I can do is reply that I don't know how to understand what you mean. The Pythagoreans thought numbers and the distinguishability of objects are the same thing, or at least, come from the same source. If you say you are 'dividing' something, what you are saying is that you are making one thing be two or more things. If there are two things that are un-individuated, what do you mean by 'two'? I think you can articulate your view, but it seems like you're adding in a lot of extra assumptions/requirements for something to be "an object for itself" that don't obviously seem necessary postulates. I suppose that is why I gravitate more toward an Aristotelian view, at the end of the day, than a Parmenidean one..? Put it this way: if you have a Humean bundle-theory of substances, where substances are just bundles of properties, what you'd end up with is both something/a substance that consists of two objects; and one substance corresponding to each object. There would be as many substances as bundles of properties. And then everything really is different from everything else if you change but one measly property. So we do need an additional stipulation for what makes something be a thing rather than part of a thing or more than one thing, but the individuation conditions for me must make use of division/distinguishability at some point in the process. Otherwise the ontology starts to seem arbitrary. Seems to me that @korba 's definition of "individuation" is "not identical," and "identical" is "has the exact same properties." Would the following be helpful? If you have two identical things X and Y, you can do something to X that you don't do to Y, whereas you cannot do something to X that you don't do to X. (At this point, I imagine someone will say "Quantum entanglement!" --to which the response is, "So break the entanglement first.") Or, to put it another way, individuation means the capacity to make the individuals non-identical. |
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In fact, I wouldn't mind being primed on how this problem is resolved in theology...
