The Necessity of Genetic Components in Personal Identity
This is from a breakaway of a Ryle thread in his lecture on fatalism:
I am making a claim that if the gametes are different than the one that was your set of gametes, whatever the case may be (whether they are similar to you or not), THAT person who was conceived a second before or after with different gametes is NOT you. I really want to establish THIS point, at the least. That THIS point is not a matter of debate or interpretation, but just a fact that that person born from a different set of gametes is not you.
The reason this is important, is that it then establishes some other more interpretive things. That is to say, you cannot in reality have a person born under different circumstances (prior to the point of conception) because those circumstances would almost certainly result in a different set of gametes, and hence a different person than the one that is reflecting back on the altered history. If a matter of seconds matters to whether it being a different person, then all the other circumstances that led to the conception would also be different and almost certainly would be a different person. So you can only IMAGINE after the fact that you could be different, but not ever in fact be different. If you were born at such and such time, in such and such place, at such and such moment, any minor difference that would impede those gametes at that time getting together, would mean that the person born would not be YOU (the person reflecting back on their possible alternate history).
After the above has been agreed upon as a matter of fact, then we can possibly get into arguments of identity after the conception/birth of the person. If the person born was from the same gametes as you, would that person in fact really "be" you with various changes in their upbringing, etc.? You can even at this point, ask about indiscernibles regarding twins or clones because those are about the same genetics, and same gametes. I think for example, the case of maternal twins (twins from the same cell that splits), proves that identity is not necessarily wrapped up in genetic origin, otherwise twins would be considered the same person, which would seem absurd. In order for a person to be identified as a separate "person" or "being", one would have to take into account that they have their own X to some degree (body, and/or mind). And then, that body or mind is subject to changing experiences that could alter the course of their outlook, life, personality, etc. At that point, you can argue identity. But in no way, a person born of different gametes, even given the same set of experiences, would be "you". It would be an approximately similar person, however. So being of the same gametes is necessary but perhaps not sufficient to identity.
That being said, a TON of counterfactual ideas about "being you" are discounted if you at least admit that prior to conception, there is no way any other set of circumstances would have been the YOU who is reflecting back on their counterfactual history because any slight change in the antecedent causes would have [s]affected[/s] effected the set of gametes that would have been conceived, if they were to even be conceived at all.
I am making a claim that if the gametes are different than the one that was your set of gametes, whatever the case may be (whether they are similar to you or not), THAT person who was conceived a second before or after with different gametes is NOT you. I really want to establish THIS point, at the least. That THIS point is not a matter of debate or interpretation, but just a fact that that person born from a different set of gametes is not you.
The reason this is important, is that it then establishes some other more interpretive things. That is to say, you cannot in reality have a person born under different circumstances (prior to the point of conception) because those circumstances would almost certainly result in a different set of gametes, and hence a different person than the one that is reflecting back on the altered history. If a matter of seconds matters to whether it being a different person, then all the other circumstances that led to the conception would also be different and almost certainly would be a different person. So you can only IMAGINE after the fact that you could be different, but not ever in fact be different. If you were born at such and such time, in such and such place, at such and such moment, any minor difference that would impede those gametes at that time getting together, would mean that the person born would not be YOU (the person reflecting back on their possible alternate history).
After the above has been agreed upon as a matter of fact, then we can possibly get into arguments of identity after the conception/birth of the person. If the person born was from the same gametes as you, would that person in fact really "be" you with various changes in their upbringing, etc.? You can even at this point, ask about indiscernibles regarding twins or clones because those are about the same genetics, and same gametes. I think for example, the case of maternal twins (twins from the same cell that splits), proves that identity is not necessarily wrapped up in genetic origin, otherwise twins would be considered the same person, which would seem absurd. In order for a person to be identified as a separate "person" or "being", one would have to take into account that they have their own X to some degree (body, and/or mind). And then, that body or mind is subject to changing experiences that could alter the course of their outlook, life, personality, etc. At that point, you can argue identity. But in no way, a person born of different gametes, even given the same set of experiences, would be "you". It would be an approximately similar person, however. So being of the same gametes is necessary but perhaps not sufficient to identity.
That being said, a TON of counterfactual ideas about "being you" are discounted if you at least admit that prior to conception, there is no way any other set of circumstances would have been the YOU who is reflecting back on their counterfactual history because any slight change in the antecedent causes would have [s]affected[/s] effected the set of gametes that would have been conceived, if they were to even be conceived at all.
Comments (374)
-schopenhauer
How is it that in no way that ton of ideas about who you are done affected antecedent causes to the degree that it would have disaffected an unintended formative identity?
Not quite sure what you are saying but if you are asking why this discounts a lot of counterfactuals about things like, "What if I was born a...".. The reason is, that any circumstance that led to a different circumstance of conception between a specific sperm and egg would have led to a different person, one that was not the sperm and egg that was to gestate and develop into YOU.
DNA matching is indeed the gold standard of identity, but only in the way that fingerprints are a silver standard and facial recognition a bit unreliable. That is, DNA was identified and installed as an empirical criterion, not a conceptual criterion.
To put it another way, DNA is part of the story about how I came to be - a cause. So perhaps you are picking up on causal determinism? But it is not the whole story. What happens to me while I am growing plays just as important a role as DNA. Compare an oak tree. It starts from DNA, but the tree that it becomes depends also on how it grows in the environment that it happens to be in. If the acorn had landed elsewhere, it would have been a different tree. Perhaps we can agree that DNA is a necessary, but not sufficient, cause of a new person being created, thus recognizing that other factors play their crucial parts.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is very helpful. It indicates that the foundation of personal identity, for you, is spatio-temporal continuity in the narrative of a life. If that's right, then you are denying that people who undergo changes that they think they have become a different person are simply wrong. I admit that is a bit problematic, but I don't see how you can dogmatically rule that out. Perhaps we need to think more carefully about what being a person is, and how it is something different from being a human being.
But if people can change in the course of their life, without those changes being so radical that they become a different person, what makes the gametes so important and sensitive that ANY change in them produces a different person. It seems absurd to suppose that if I was conceived 5 minutes earlier or later, the resulting person would not be me.
Quoting Ludwig V
I'd think you can only imagine being yourself with such supeficial changes, but what about less obvious, but more profound differences? Suppose the genes this 'alternate you' got resulted in a person with an IQ 40 points lower than yours? Suppose the genes alternate you got resulted in schizophrenia? Would
you think the alternate you to be you in that case?
So, I see you didn't pay close attention to some of my OP. I said here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Like many others here, I can't make much sense of the things you say, and I would have to recommend that you talk to a neuropsycholgist about that.
You don't even need to speculate about that. Psychosomatic diseases can already impair someone this way so that at one point they are lucid and at another, they cannot access their thoughts as clearly...
So all of this is not addressing my point which is that genetic identity (same sperm and egg made you who you are) is NECESSARY even if NOT sufficient...
I read it, but i decided it would be a cold day in hell before your nonsense achieved much agreement. So I decided not to wait.
Why say it's nonsense? Why can't what I say achieve agreement? This is perplexing. And why the overall vitriolic response? This is poisoning the well, no?
But it was said here:
Quoting Ludwig V
So that's my point. There would be no YOU conceived. That person is someone else. You keep taking the POV of someone who can transpose their current personhood onto a different person. I contend, even if that person was conceived five minutes earlier, and had the same life experiences, that would be a different person. That would not be you, but someone else.
:up:
Quoting Janus
Indeed. But I suspect people who don't necessarily believe in a theory of a transposable "soul" into different physical bodies, STILL TALK AS IF that is the case because they are not keeping in mind the necessity of genetic origin for a person to have been the same person when providing counterfactual scenarios.
:up:
Quoting Janus
Yes, I think it's actually quite easy to do to say, "Oh wouldn't be weird if I grew up in this or that place, time, or otherwise." And it can be entertained in hindsight via imagination. But never (in any modern conceivable way) would that actually have been YOU.
Not quite catching what you are saying, but it may have been addressed in my post here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/861568
That may be the claim -- but why believe it?
I think far too much emphasis is put upon DNA when it comes to identity. DNA doesn't relate to who you are in some kind of easily explicable relationship. Just imagine that your own DNA has been mapped, as can be done, and you look at the map: a series of letters consisting of A G T and C. Which part of them causes you to type what you type here? None, of course. But if you cannot establish a relationship between the genetic code of an individual and what they do then I'd say you're mistaken that the genetic code is a necessary identifier. At least existentially what we do is who we are. And @unenlightened has already pointed out how identical twins have identical DNA, but not identical identities. (though it's worth noting here that DNA morphs, too -- so just how identical the DNA is is up for dispute -- 99.99% matching between code is very similar, but not identical identical, and biological processes have a way of finding difference)
I think the real reason DNA is highlighted is because it helped courts. Finally, a marker of identity to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this blood was theirs!
But surely we are more than our legal identities, and that those are certainly up for interpretation.
So also like @unenlightened you (willfully?) ignored this:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Especially please pay attention to the necessary but not sufficient part. And yeah I also said this if you want to go down the sci-fi scenarios:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Just to make sure I read over your OP again. I think the disconnect is between:
Quoting schopenhauer1
these two sentences. In a way this reminds me of the free will debate: determinism vs. free will and so forth.
I think that what differs between these two sentences is the notion that if, at the time I was conceived, a different set of DNA, like the sperm nearby, would have started the process of birth then I'd be a different person. But in the second part you're acknowledging that there are processes after conception that can change twins to explain the initial idea that our gametes are necessary parts of our identity.
What I'm saying is that twin studies suggest that gametes aren't up to the level of necessity. So the scenario you're positing is if in the past when I was conceived I was conceived with different gametes, and you're saying that's absurd and I'm saying "Why?"
No, twin studies don't negate necessity, but sufficiency (perhaps). That person would not be that person at some level without the gametes that they were conceived from. They might be another person that had similar experiences, but not that exact person. You can combine it with causality and points of view and experiences, but it is a large part of it. Generally speaking, no one has the EXACT same experiences as someone else. But let us say there was someone adjacent with a different set of DNA but had a very similar upbringing. Clearly, that's not the same person. It is acknowledged, however, that someone's experiences and epigenetics can affect a person's personality, dispositions, and interactions. This may all go into identity of a person, but it's not like that one can just copy and paste these after-birth experiential aspects onto another person and call it "the same person". One can change in the form of the same genetic person, but one cannot transfer over one's identity to another genetic person, barring some science fiction scenarios perhaps.
I should have started with this but didn't think of it until this morning, but something that throws a wrench in this idea is the existence of introns and exons. DNA is the stable chemical but RNA is the chemical which codes for proteins. The organism is more than their DNA, and because of introns you can switch out whole parts of some organisms DNA and have it be the same organism: That is, sometimes you can switch out an A for a T or a G and have nothing happen other than this replacement, but the organism will continue to function even though the code is slightly different.
But this is to speak functionally. It's the motives of a court which give DNA priority, but surely our identity is more than what the law sees?
One of the things I hate in these debates is when people dont acknowledge what was already acknowledged. Please look back to my posts above about sci-fi scenarios and the Ship of Theseus.
That being said, while I acknowledge that while DNA goes under contingent changes after conception, it is the initial combination of gametes that sets the stage for these variations. That is why it is necessary but perhaps not sufficient. By and large, the genetic code provided from the two gametes provides the unique variation that provide the initial individualization, and stays constant while the variations in experience and epigenetics can thus further shape the individual. Also note that these experiences aren't parallel, but in combination WITH these initial genetic instructions that makes the individual. It's not just a vanilla tabula rasa that then takes on any experience. They both shape each other.
And again, twins and clones can be offered as some sort of counterpoint, but it's not if you look at the argument. The argument is about necessity, not sufficiency. Another thing to consider is that you can clearly have the same genetics (like a clone), and it is a different person based on experiences and perhaps even genetic variations in coding, etc. They also take up differences in space. That is to say, two genetically identical people taking up two different bodies/minds are still two different people. However, they certainly wouldn't be their identity as them without that initial DNA combination contributing to their genetic blueprint. It is unique not that it is the only one, but that it is part of them and comprises what makes them them.
Maybe our understanding of necessity differs? To my mind if you can switch a part of the code and have the same results then there is not a necessary relationship between code and an organism's identity. Since you can do that -- not in science fiction but in science -- it just doesn't strike me as something I'd call necessary for personal identity. That is I can see it plausible that if I had a different code I could still be the same person in a counter-factual scenario because I don't think identity is necessitated by code. It would depend upon which part of the code was switched -- I could also have a genetic disease due to this, for instance, and I'd say I'm a different person then. But if one base got switched out in an intron then that is a scenario that seems plausible to me to possibly make no difference in the course of my life, and in relation to the topic, for my personal identity.
You are still starting with the same set of conditions. Your development as a physical being relies on the initial template and the development that ensues. Any changes, still are in relation to this individualized code. Its not just starting from a tabula rasa.
Sure there are possible different genetic codes that result in the same phenotype, but the scenario under consideration here is not one of minimal DNA substitution, but of relatively wide spread differences in DNA resulting from random selection of gametes.
Consider the uniqueness of the fingerprints of siblings.
Regarding the uniqueness of brains:
If [wishes were horses] then [beggars would ride].
But wishes cannot be horses {because they do not have the right DNA???}. and therefore, beggars go on foot unless they can steal a horse, and then they become horse thieves, not beggars.
It is in fact impossible for anyone to have been born other than how and when they were born simply because one is only born once. But this need not prevent me from declaring that 'if I were twenty years younger, I'd give y'all a good kicking to knock some sense into you.' because such counterfactuals are not claims of fact but stipulations of an imaginary scenario, which can be whatever the fuck I want to fantasise, thank you very much.
Unsurprisingly, I am not in fact twenty years younger than I am, so you don't have to worry about covering your arses.
[quote=Ryle]So when we try to say that some things that happen could have been prevented; that some drownings, for example, would not have occurred had their victims learned to swim, we seem to be in a queer logical fix. We can say that a particular person would not have .drowned had he been able to swim. But we cannot quite say that his lamented drowning would have been averted by swimming- lessons. For had he taken those lessons, he would not have drowned, and then we would not have had for a topic of discussion just that lamented drowning of which we want to say that it would have been prevented. We are left bereft of any 'it' at all.[/quote] (my bold)
At this level of plausibility, such a counterfactual can function as part of an argument for - swimming lessons in schools, for example. And speaking of schools it a common part of history lessons to "Imagine you were a Roman citizen of the 1st century AD, and describe how you would have lived on a typical day" and similar counterfactual tasks. Counterfactuals can be instructive and interesting in spite of all being false.
Yeah I never made a claim that it's not useful as an imaginative exercise. However there is a type of thinking that seems to naively think that you could have been different than who you are. It's sort of a naive notion that one can keep one's personhood transposed in various scenarios. There is only a very precise avenue for "you" to be "you". And that quote there is illustrative of the fact that if someone had an altered situation, they wouldn't even be the person who is doing the counterfactual thinking.
It actually also demonstrates the preciseness for which the causal origination of your own personhood had to happen. Everything basically had to causally lead up to that point, otherwise, no you look back upon one's life in the first place.
It brings up another point too, that there may be some things that can be counterfactual without completely destroying one's identity. However, up to the point of one's own conception, that certainly cannot be the case.
If I, in a counter-factual, was born with blonde hair but basically lived the same life as I've lived up until now then I'd say that my personal identity wasn't different -- the unique description of my life has a different fact in the counter-factual but I still lived my life basically as I do, except I was born with blonde hair so I'd say my personal identity is the same.
That is there has to be some difference in the counter-factual that makes sense as having an effect upon our personal identity, not just any difference at all. And DNA is certainly closer to the causes we'd consider in thinking about personal identity than, say, what color the nurses' eyes were who helped deliver me (though I think that this is just as much a fact of my history as the unique code). But claims to necessity are a bit hard for me to accept, at least.
Similarly our fingerprints may be unique to us, but if I was born with a different unique finger-print pattern I don't think my personal identity has shifted. The particulars of the finger-print pattern have not been a significant source of identity, even if they are a unique pattern inscribed upon my palm. And this is exactly the sort of thing that comes to mind with DNA for myself: the specific and unique pattern clearly can have effects, but I'm not so certain that those effects are related to personal identity in a necessary relationship.
But you've already admitted as much so my best guess at your claim now is that there is a unique description of who we are, and any change in that description in a counter-factual would yield a different unique description, and that unique description is one's personal identity. Is that right? Also, do you believe we're sharing the same notion of necessity, or the same notion of personal identity, or is there something else that I'm missing?
These are good observations. I think you're right to bring up how we think about counter-factuals. They are kind of funny in that they can seem real-ish in that we are judging them on the basis of what's plausible, and so they rely upon our notions about reality in some sense but then they are actually all false.
So part of the confusion may not even be in what's being said, but rather in our notions of what is plausible or how we should think about these false sentences -- when they are more or less relevant.
I don't have any clear idea of your theory of mind, and I don't expect the points I raise to get much traction in the minds of people unable to seriously consider physicalism. However, my point is that individual variation, that might be seen as being on the order of the variation in fingerprints, can have profound effects in the case of the 'wiring' of our brains. Furthermore the idiosyncracies to brain wiring play a huge role in who we are.
For example, consider these two images, where the difference might appear as superficial as that between fingerprints:
I speak from experience in saying that sort of difference has a profound effect on who one is. Of course I understand most people can get away with being blissfully ignorant of how their own idiosyncratic neural wiring results in them being who they are, but such naivete is not an option for me. And I don't have to make it easy for others to remain naive. :wink:
Edit: Image Source - https://autismsciencefoundation.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/minicolumns-autism-and-age-what-it-means-for-people-with-autism/
There are physical differences which can account for differences in personal identity. I wouldn't go so far as to say that these are irrelevant. My question has more to do with when or what is relevant, and since there is a question of when or what I'd instinctively rule out a necessary relationship between the two. But here what you show I'd agree is a significant physical pattern that accounts for difference in personal identity. Sometimes the physical facts matter, and they matter significantly.
But if they only sometimes matter then I wonder what it is we mean by necessity.
Quoting wonderer1
:D
I wouldn't have it any other way. Why else come to a philosophy forum unless you want to be disabused of your* ignorance?
*(EDIT: for clarity, "your" meaning mine or anyone's -- not *you*. Should have thought that through)
I'm not sure why. It is the blueprint for which our bodies function. No one is doubting that it combines with contingent circumstances, but as I stated, circumstances aren't combining on a tabula rasa, but a blueprint from which the genetic combination is comprised of.
Quoting Moliere
No, fingerprints are not part of your identity, but DNA is. Just because both are physical, doesn't mean they are both either valid or not valid. DNA is more foundational to your uniqueness as it holds various blueprints for your physical and psychological makeup. Again, you are not a complete blank slate.
But it goes beyond that, because there is a causal aspect to it in terms of individuality. It's not just "identity" but it's also "uniqueness". I am going to differentiate that in the idea that each set of gametes hold variations that are unique to it, that when combined are not like other, even similar cells. But it goes beyond that even. As, the timing of when the gametes are meeting actually make a huge difference. One second earlier or later, and it was no longer you, but someone else. So it is almost an instance in time, combined with the unique set of gametes that is part of the uniqueness, along with its role as blueprint for the functions of your physical development and ongoing regulation.
But, I also explained that it's not the end of the story in regards to "identity", because yes, experience and contingency plays a role in how your personality, memories, relationships, beliefs, and sense of self is shaped.
Does this change the fact that each organism has a unique genotype?
I'm willing to grant the premise you started with to see where it goes, though. I'm probably getting caught up in details that don't matter.
That said, identifiability is not exhaustive of what we mean by identity (at least in the case of humans), so perhaps we could say it is necessary to establish, but not sufficient to explain, a human identity. If this is right then @schopenhauer1 is right to say that if my genotype were different then I would not be, could not be, the same organism, and therefore could not be the same person.
Hopefully, it means that one might sometimes survive gene therapy. But if I have established that there is never any difficulty distinguishing oneself from an imaginary person, then we can really drop genetic integrity as the necessary feature of identity, and stick with actual existence as the defining feature, which is easier to detect.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43674270
You frame this issue as "... but that wouldn't have YOU". In brief, I think the issue is partly created by the way it is framed. Given that I exist, my possible supposition that my gametes could have been different from the ones I actually have is hampered by the absolutely certain fact that they weren't. If the question was differently framed, I think it would get a different answer. Suppose you are a parent trying to make a baby. Do you seriously think that whether you performed the action 5 minutes ago or in 5 minutes time matters. You may realize that there may be some differences - even serious differences, but do they make any difference? I don't think so. The difference is that there's no me to make any difference. (cf. Ryle)
It makes a difference because indeterminate future is one without you. The five minutes changes the gamete to someone elses genetics.
But this is a universal objection that applies to chess moves or anything whatsoever. If I had moved my bishop on move 17 thus and so, it would have been checkmate and I would have won. But I didn't, and it is certain that I lost. This is simply how counterfactuals work by imaging a world that is not this world and stipulating a difference and drawing more or less plausible and significant conclusions as to how the difference pans out. In saying "if I had been born in ancient Rome..." I am not saying anything about my DNA because I don't have a clue what it is. I am imagining having been in Rome at that time in the same way that I can imagine being a woman, or a dog, or Superman.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is a stipulation of your own about an imaginary situation that didn't happen because - here we all are. You are free to imagine that happening, and someone else is free to imagine exactly that sperm and egg coming together at any other time they care to stipulate. What you cannot do is declare that your imagination is the only real one, without me at least saying, "yeah, as if..."
I am claiming that it is necessary not sufficient, which is harder to say about almost any of the other subsequent things in the causal history. If we took those away, they might or might not contribute to identity, but what is absolutely needed is that initial gamete combination and blueprint.
Good thinking.
Though in my mind your argument is unequivocal, you touch on some other principles of individuation which may suffice better than DNA because DNA also shows that we are mostly alike. And then we get events like blood transfusions or transplants, or where DNA can become mixed, which confuses the matter.
You mentioned time, for instance. Times implies space or location. Location suffices to distinguish one system from another, and as such, to distinguish the identity of one system from another. I would say that the DNA of that specific system of that specific time and space, is but further evidence of its individuation.
So, one of the original points I was making was about counterfactuals that are possible, and ones that are not. There are counterfactuals that may be possible. For example, it may be possible that you could have won a game had you trained better. However, perhaps your capacity for winning was never going to allow you to win the game, no matter how much you practiced. That one was something that could be possible or not possible depending on which factors were involved.
In the case of a counterfactual person, there is no possibility that you could have been anything else had the causal history been different prior to your conception. That is just a non-starter. You can imagine all you want, but that is just hindsight fantasy. So we can distinguish between counterfactuals that are real possibilities versus ones that can never be real possibilities. Being born in different causal circumstances is not a real possibility.
Yes I mentioned the Ship of Theseus. But this doesn't discount the causal-temporal nature of those two gametes creating the initial template for which changes occur contingently through life-history of the person, combined with experiences.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, I think it needs to be a factor as it was that particular instance of gametes combining that made you.
I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that no counterfactual about the past (or the present) is possible. History can be rewritten, but the past is fixed and determined . Only what happened can have happened, and no amount of thought can change it. And of course the future is open just to the extent that there are no facts about it yet.
It is impossible that I moved the bishop and won the game, because I moved another piece and lost. What is being made clear is that it is very easy to get confused between the imagination and the real, and this is because imagination is in use all the time to model and predict the world as it unfolds. If I do this, you will do that, if I say this you will say that, If I go to the shop, I can buy some beer. If I hurry, I can catch the bus. and part of the learning process is to imagine past counterfactuals and 'run them'. If only I had hurried, I could have caught the bus. Next time...
The professional gambler has a talent for using the form book to imagine the race being run and pick the winner with better odds than the bookmaker; the amateur just guesses at random. The architect draws imaginary buildings that may sometimes be realised. Philosophers live almost entirely in their imagination, and get annoyed when reality has other ideas.
I expect the lack of 'clicking' is mostly a matter of me trying to get by without providing enough details. The point I was hoping to get across was that the role that gamete roulette plays in neurological differences, while for practical purposes invisible (by comparison with say, hair color), is on a whole nother level in determining what it means to be the individual result of the spin of the wheel.
I don't want to go in depth in trying to make a case, but some additional info on my basis for thinking so...
https://www.ninds.nih.gov/health-information/patient-caregiver-education/brain-basics-genes-work-brain
:up:
Sure, I think that's more-or-less Ryle's point. And I'd largely agree. However, I think as Ryle also points out, we are mixing up cause-and-effect with logical necessity. I am moving from the realm of cause-and-effect (which indeed would seem to work along the lines you are describing about past and future), and into the realm of logical necessity. That is to say, there are possibilities that in theory could have happened given various circumstances, but were not actualized. However, there are some things which by necessity were never going to be possibilities even going forward into the future or otherwise.
Quoting unenlightened
For sure.
Quoting unenlightened
Indeed. Philosophers play hypotheticals all the time. But I think the broader implication here is interesting in terms of what it means to be in the first place. Your circumstance for living is non-transposable. It is not a repeatable event.
No, it does not. Because the person who would have been born 5 minutes earlier never existed and never could have existed. There's only person one who exists. You can say that there are possible people who would have existed if I had been conceived 5 minutes earlier or 5 minutes later. But you can't say anything about them, not even whether they would have been the same or different - except by arbitrarily stipulating that they would. Where would your evidence be for saying that they were the same as me, or different from me in ways that matter or different from me in ways that don't matter?
I think your interpretation of what I am saying is 180 degrees off. I am saying what you are saying I think. That is to say, the person born five minutes earlier or later is NOT you. It would have been someone else.
So maybe I considered moving the bishop and decided to do something else. When I did something else, it was no longer possible. But it was possible when I considered it. Surely?
How could it be someone else if I don't exist?
Yes, I guess that's the point I am making too. But when discussing the past, it's always going to be in relation to the YOU existing now.
Epistemically possible? Sure.
Metaphysically possible? I don't know of any good reason to think so.
Well, bits of metaphysics that I can never know do not concern me greatly. I'm funny like that.
I don't think you're interpreting that right, but @wonderer1 can chime in. I think he is saying that there are some moves that are necessitated as non-possibilities.
In a sense, yes. Which is why I went back to the past before I existed - when there was no me for anything to be in relation to.
To put the point another way, if any discussion about the past is always going to be in relation to Ludwig V, is it always going to be in relation to schopenhauer1, my sister Mary Anne and the postman. Why am I so special?
Yes, and I would agree with that characterization. It is exactly that reason that this issue is interesting. There wouldn't even BE a YOU to begin with. It's a non-starter. It's something you can imagine in hindsight, but is not a possibility in actuality.
But, supposing I am the first child of my parents, there would still be a first child. Why wouldn't that be me, but different?
I happen to know that they intended to call their first child Ludwig if it was a boy. I forget what the choice would have been if I had turned out to be a girl.
And then, presumably, the name Ludwig would have rigidly designated their first child if it was a boy, or their second if that was a boy and so on. Then gametes would be irrelevant.
That's the point I'm refuting (and you seemed to agree with in your last posts?). That is to say, the first child would be different, and therefore that is not the YOU who is reflecting now. That would be that guy who may or may not reflect back on himself as YOU are doing now. And even if he reflects back about his birth, the "definite description" of the "first born son of the union of so and so" would not be you, just as if someone else was president that was not George Washington, that would not be him, even though he does fit the definite description of first President of the United States.
Quoting Ludwig V
And even if it was another George Washington, that was not the George Washington that we know of. And that is very much now making my point that part of the differentiator of identity is not contingencies like the ones you are saying, but the exact set of gametes that was to become that person.
Quoting Ludwig V
Indeed it would have rigidly designated but now you are making a sort of category error. The person is unique in its designation. There are many Ludwigs and George Washingtons, but that it picks out that one is the point. And this question goes further and asks, "And what makes it that one as opposed to another one?
So what is it about the gametes here is the important thing?
Edit: I may as well ask to clarify specifically about why exactly the timing bit is important since that comes under the original question too.
I think I need more information before I decide whether to agree with you.
Before I answer, Id like to ask you to look at some of my responses in previous lists as I think I could covered this. To summarize, the gametes are not a blank slate and the experiences and contingent biochemistry adds to identity, it combines with that initial blueprint. Experiences arent by themselves just free floating. And yes, the causal link to the start of a person matters too. Before the gametes there was no person.
Well yes for sure, back then I may have considered it, and back then I could have chosen it. But back then it wasn't a counterfactual, but an imagined future to which there was no fact for it to be counter to. Then I made my move. The constrained scenario of a chess game is quite instructive here because it is full at each move of imagined moves, and imagined countermoves, and it is very instructive to go through an old game of one's own with an experienced player who can point out problems one had not seen and possibilities one did not consider, and all of these are counterfactual, but constrained by the clear rules to possible legal moves and their outcomes. It doesn't change the outcome of the game one is studying, but it can potentially change the outcome of future games if one becomes a better player, and a better imagineer of move sequences. One sees how useful the imaginary can be, and some of the ways it can function in thought..
You could say that the job of a counter-factual is to consider impossible possibilities.
Maybe the genotype can be altered, but then the result of the alteration would presumably be unique to the individual whose genotype had been altered.
I agree with you that the existence of any entity is enough to establish its identity; conversely, we must know its identity, in the sense of being able to identify it, in order to know it exists or has existed. Obviously, it is also true that the existence of an entity is easier to establish than its genotype. You would need to establish its existence first, identify it correctly, in order to be able to know you are testing for the genotype of any one particular entity.
In terms of counterfactual scenarios, though, I think @schopenhauer1 is correct to say that, in consideration of the genesis of any particular organism, any circumstances which would have produced a different genotype at conception, would result in a different entity existing.
For example, if the sperm that "won the race" in your case had not made it, someone else, not you, would have existed in your place; and such a thing may have happened if your parents began sexual intercourse just a few moments later or if they had been more or less energetic, and so on; just the tiniest variation could have resulted in your failing to have existed..
Yes, I get the intuition. It seems to make sense, more from the causal link standpoint than the blueprint one because I am not sure that DNA can be identified with us as opposed to picking out us in a way that is somewhat incidental.
But then again when I think about identity or what it means for a counterfactual person to be you, I don't really find sound criteria or meaning anyway.
I see it as a necessity but not sufficient as being a biological being and its unique genetic combination that contributes to your identity both biologically and neurochemically.
This is incorrect. There are various factors that happen prior to conception that contribute to development.
Circumstances are effectively the environment and given that the environment is forever changing what happens prior to conception has an obvious effect on items within said environment. The only way out of this is belief in some form of dualism.
So saying that person A is person A is basically a waste of time. There is nothing here and I confused why there is a needless back and forth debating why YOU is important as some non-existent being that is never non-existent because YOU exist. It is just words used to screen clarity I feel.
That a thing cannot itself is kind of true, but to say that something cannot be effected by anything else is rather silly.
Quite so. I think the difficulty here is that if one is looking forwards, possibilities could become actual. But if one is looking backward, they could not. If one then says that the moves one actually made are now necessary, it looks as if someone is trying to deny that what was a possibility then, is not a possibility now. If that were true, one could not consider them after the game. Which is absurd.
The idea that what is, is necessary is an exaggeration of the familiar point that a move that was possible in the middle of the game can no longer be made after the game is over.
Quoting Janus
But then, any circumstances after conception that affect the development of the DNA will also result in a different entity existing. Surely? The development from DNA to person is not a railway track, but a path through rough country - to an indeterminate destination.
The fact that, on this account, the DNA is a necessary condition, but not sufficient, allows for the possibility that there are other conditions that could have produced the same result. No?
Quoting Apustimelogist
Well, a DNA molecule is not a person, so it seems clear that the identity of the molecule is not equivalent to the identity of the person. The DNA molecule is not the resulting person, but one of the causal conditions that produces that person. But then, some people think that causal conditions are necessary, which seems to me to abolish the meaning of "contingent" and so deprive "necessary" of its own meaning.
Quoting I like sushi
I think that's why it is important not to frame these issues by reference to the first or second person. They are a lot clearer if one asks the questions in the third person.
The other thing that muddles this debate up is the idea that if Theseus' ship has the tiniest, most unimportant part of itself replaced, it is a different ship. Surely we all know that the point at which the changes to the ship make it a different ship is not clearly defined.
Absolutely. But it's interesting, because it is very unlikely that one will again come across the exact same chess position, and be able to make a different choice in the exact same situation, and yet one learns how to look, and how to analyse other positions and make other choices better. So counterfactuals function as useful notions here.
Quoting Janus
But What function does this counterfactual serve? And more, what rules does it follow such that the consequence can be drawn? The answer is none. and it comes down pretty much to If things had been different, they wouldn't have been the same.' I must remember to make sure the right sperm wins the race tonight. But how?
I am being told nothing useful, but out of that I am supposed to learn that I am not allowed to use exactly the same form of expression in ways that can usefully exercise an empathic understanding - "If i had been a soldier in Cromwell's New Model Army, I would have been having difficulty with the harsh discipline." - because "wrong sperm and egg".
No, not at all, I say! If I had been a soldier in Cromwell's army, then necessarily the right sperm and egg would have miraculously come together at the appropriate time to make that happen. And there can be no objection that imaginary miracles do not happen in reality, because we are not talking about reality, and imaginary miracles occur all the time - I wish I was on a Caribbean beach right now. This whole thread is a case of overreach by the thought police.
It is pretty clear. Piece by piece if every part is replaced it is still the original as it is their ship. Someone collecting and reassembling the parts produce their own ship not someone elses original ship.
Words can sometimes trick the mind.
Is this meant seriously? If so, it seems like a bizarre reaction to the thread to me.
Yup, I was just saying that when I think about it more deeply, I just discard identity or self from an objective standpoint entirely.
The genes obviously contribute but seems intuitive one might change genetic information or phenotypic traits of a person and retain the identity. Its not clear where the dividing line is. I can even conceive of changing lots of genetic information which otherwise has little effect on the parts of the person crucial for its identity.
I think really in physical systems of many components the whole notion of objective identity might be moot because we can draw the boundaries where we like on same/different.
Often we can pre-stipulate identity on counterfactuals though. What if I were born in Rome in 1823?
One question is if counterfactual causal chains leading to the development of gametes would mean different gametes (even if same genetic components), meaning different people? Is the counterfactual of "What if I was born in Rome in 1823" make it trivially that I am not that person since the causal chains leading to the gametes would be different necessarily?
What if I was synthesized of artificial components and artificial genetics but the same biological development and identical history of events?
I guess that certainly wouldn't be me (or would it?) but then can't I just imagine myself if that was the case? Whose to say that isn't me if I am imagining it (it isn't real anyway). If thats what counterfactuals are... just postulating what if... and postulate changes to relevant part.
What then exactly does it mean to say that different gamete wouldn't be me other than pre-stipulating the gamete is me? Must have another consequence other than just labelling it as me or not me. If we use the distinction of causal chains to say something is me or not, there must be some substance to what that me is other than just pragmatic bookkeeping? But again, that seems moot on the physical components case.
I think it must have something to do with experience. The other gamete would not be having my experiences that I am having. I would never have been born, no lights would have been turned on (a common phrase I have heard to describe phenomenal experience) in the same way that I know someone else right now is having experiences I am not having and don't have access to.
Other than that, its hard for me to envision what it actually means for the other gamete to not be me. But then again, I think this is getting into a awkward metaphysical territory surrounding identity in experiences and also things like the hard problem of consciousness. It might even be presupposing a kind of dualism I don't agree with. What does it mean to be having my own experiences as opposed to someone else's (in the sense of previous paragraph)? Doesn't seem well defined to me.
My intuition is that if experience has is its basis in the degrees if freedom found in biology and physics, it will have similar moot problems of identity as with physical component systems.
If we have the momentary unfolding of biophysical processes or functions in flux then is the continuity of consciousness illusory?
If knowledge and memory is also embedded in this momentarily unfolding flux then is there a fact of the matter about being the same as I was 5 minutes ago? After all, to generate the right expressions of memory or knowledge only requires the right momentary states in terms of physical states of my neuronal membranes. Continuity is not necessary and it is questionable whether my brain is ever in the same two states even for similar experiences at different times.
Well, I'm not sure about that, but it seems to be the standard answer these days. What I was after was the doctrine that any change, not matter how small, make it is different ship, or a different person.
Seriously, but not literally. just as philosophers can be likened to therapists, so they can be likened to the policemen of thought, keeping thoughts in order, and in this case trying to arrest perfectly ordinary thoughts going about their lawful business. Its an analogy, Jim, but not as we know it.
Still has a causal link tied with it. The start of an object isnt just the substance so it was more nuanced. Also isnt there volumes of philosophical literature on identity, essence, and similar issues?
Seems rather dismissive, so I wonder if its just you dont like when I argue it rather than X legitimate philosopher in SEP.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I already said. It is interesting though to think though what if you could replace it with something else functionally identical? Would that interrupt the identity?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Not sure what you're getting at.
This seems dismissive of a large topic in philosophy:
Quoting Apustimelogist
In one sentence you dismiss the work of many philosophical writings in that subject, because you thought about it deeply.
I am not sure what you're saying I dismissed
This is where the third person view helps. Since I wouldn't have existed, how would we know that the replacement wasn't you? Equally, then, how do we know that the proposed minor variation - even if it caused a massive difference - would have been at all different from me? It's based on the assumptions 1) that the DNA would have been different in some way that made a difference to the result and 2) that every difference is equally important.
Quoting unenlightened
All of that is true. But the important thing here is that although one may never encounter the exact some position again, the process of analysis can reveal similarities among those differences. Some of them will matter, and some will not. When one can do that, one can learn from past experience. But if every difference is equally important and equally makes a position different in the sense that past experience is irrelevant, then past experience can teach you nothing.
Quoting unenlightened
I like that answer. Very neat.
Quoting Apustimelogist
It is well established that the links between genes and specific characteristics are very complicated and often surprising.
"A large part of DNA (more than 98% for humans) is non-coding, meaning that these sections do not serve as patterns for protein sequences." From Wikipedia article - "DNA"
From this it follows that a random variation in one base of the molecule is unlikely to cause a variation in the phenotype.
Here are some more complications:-
"Many features of a phenotype result from more than one genetic modification. An organism's phenotype results from two basic factors: the expression of an organism's genetic code (its genotype) and the influence of environmental factors. Both factors may interact, further affecting the phenotype." from Wikipedia - "Phenotype"
"When two or more clearly different phenotypes exist in the same population of a species, the species is called polymorphic. A well-documented example of polymorphism is Labrador Retriever colouring; while the coat colour depends on many genes, it is clearly seen in the environment as yellow, black, and brown." Wikipedia - "Phenotype"
"A genetic disorder is a health problem caused by one or more abnormalities in the genome. It can be caused by a mutation in a single gene (monogenic) or multiple genes (polygenic) or by a chromosomal abnormality. Although polygenic disorders are the most common, the term is mostly used when discussing disorders with a single genetic cause, either in a gene or chromosome. The mutation responsible can occur spontaneously before embryonic development (a de novo mutation), or it can be inherited from two parents who are carriers of a faulty gene (autosomal recessive inheritance) or from a parent with the disorder (autosomal dominant inheritance). When the genetic disorder is inherited from one or both parents, it is also classified as a hereditary disease. Some disorders are caused by a mutation on the X chromosome and have X-linked inheritance. Very few disorders are inherited on the Y chromosome or mitochondrial DNA (due to their size)." Wikipedia article - "Genetic disorder"
The whole notion of identity and discerning it. I don't even have to look this up, and I would guess there would be hundreds or more papers written on things tangential to this regarding identity, essence, genes, and the like. It just seemed you were a bit too hastily dismissive of any sort of notion related to that. But we don't have to dwell on this odd dismissiveness and hostility to the concept.
It's also a function that you missed a broad portion of the debate on the thread here and then just came in with these ideas focusing mainly on the genetic component aspect of my argument, and not the idea that it is combined with the causal. There is a casual aspect that it encompasses these two things coming together at a place in time that is not repeatable because as I had mentioned earlier with twins and clones example, there is a spatial, causal, as well as genetic component to it. I also mentioned that the genetics aspect is not some blank slate. It does have uniqueness that contributes to various aspects of the self that would be different than if the gametes were another set. It isn't just "any set of gametes" that makes you, you. It has to be those gametes, along with the other factors I mentioned.
Also, the debate started out on what can be counterfactual and what cannot. I made the claim that before your birth, there could be no possibility that YOU could be anything else. There would not have been a you if anything had changed that prevented those set of gametes from combining, even if by a few seconds. If another set of gametes combined, THOSE gametes would NOT be you. And that is an indication that indeed, it is a necessity that the gametes be the ones that combined with causal factors.
If the criteria for establishing identity are physical, that is unique patterns or configurations of physiognomy then DNA would just be the most precisely measurable pattern. Whether those DNA patterns can change, as physiognomy obviously does would not seem to matter.
Take for example, oak leaves: every leaf has the same basic form (as every human does), but no two leaves are identical in every part. Each individual leaf grows from a bud and eventually turns reddish brown and falls to the ground where it will disintegrate over time. That is the whole usual story (some leaves may be eaten instead) of each particular leaf, but the details will not be exactly the same in any two cases,
Quoting unenlightened
To establish the facts?
Quoting unenlightened
Nothing I've said rules out imagining fictional scenarios. But I took this thread to be a critical examination of what it might be most plausible to think establishes identity. If it is the body, the physicality, that establishes identity, then you could not have been a soldier in Cromwell's army, but as I said earlier, if it is an immortal soul that establishes identity as is imagined in, for example, Hindu teachings, then you could have been a soldier in Cromwell's army.
Quoting unenlightened
A somewhat hysterical overreaction, don't you think?
Quoting Ludwig V
Don't you mean "Since I wouldn't have existed, how would we know that the replacement wasn't me?"?
I think it is uncontroversial from a science perspective that each sperm would produce a different genotype and hence a different phenotype (body).
On the other hand, if we were to adopt the "soul waiting to be born" scenario, then you could have been the same entity in a different body, if a different sperm had reached the goal first.
Right. Perdurance seems to me a more realistic way of looking at identity.
Same effectively means similar enough to be called the same. It is not some absolute term.
I am sure philosophers have broad range of beliefs on the issue. I doubt I am the only person drawn toward that kind of view.
Cool. Whats your view? Do you really understand mine?
Quoting Ludwig V
I admit was thinking in a much more simplistically. These are some excellent points and the kind of complexities I find very interesting about biology! I will have to consider more subtleties like this into my view.
That definitely is an interesting way of looking at it, certainly worth thinking about. I think the stage view looks a bit more appealing to me. I guess it really depends what you want from a theory of identity.
Quoting Janus
Very much so, but I think there are still important questions about whether you would consider your phenotype the same as your identity. Realistically, yes I am sure every conception event leads to a different person who is very different from every other person. But then I think that our biology incidentally does this (as a matter of just how our biology seems to work), it doesn't let us probe exactly the limits on how we might perceive a change of DNA to affect identity like you would in an experiment. I think DNA can be a good way of identifying different individuals, but is that just incidental to the actual identity itself? Do all DNA changes, do all phenotype changes correspond to identity change? Is DNA essential to what characterizes my identity as a person (could something else perform a similar role)? All that is why I said in another post my intuition was that maybe the historical chain role in the gamete fusion scenario may be just as if not more important as the blueprint role. The blueprint role is in many ways limited if the actual phenotype that emerges depends hugely on the environment... in fact it must always depend on the envrionment. I imagine just in many cases, the environment is very well controlled (e.g. inside a womb), which in some ways is incidental. Someone could have genes which normally produce five digit hands but in the wrong prenatal environment, they only end up with 4. The role we attribute to genes normally is not inherent to the genes but, we can just assign that function because of how nature happens to be commonly.
Well I haven't had a deep look at the topic so myabe, but this type of view is my general inclination, which I think I could argue as holding in this area too. I would gladly discuss opposing points though. But I did say I get the intuition of what you said; it makes sense to me from an intuitive standpoint that the different gamete would not be you. At the same time, it brings up the question of what that statement actually means - that the different gamete person would be you, or the same gamete person not being you - beyond just the labelling of something as "you". When I think more about it, I am inclined away from a kind of essentialistic view of the self or even criteria for identity (or even truth) counterfactually.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I did read the thread or I wouldn't have acknowledged some people made some good points.
I was just clarifying my views on the genetics as I was preoccupied with that bit.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, sure, I just think its interesting to think about whether the genetics are the most important bit or not. If you have different gametes that all are genetically different, its not exactly a good experiment for answering that question. So I was think about that beyond whether just being a different gamete would make you a different person counterfactually *to the question of the role of genes in general in identity... whether they are incidental or not to identity*.
Edit: Just clarifying * ... *
Do you mean in the sense that I might think of my identity as consisting in being a mother, a scientist, an artist, a policewoman or whatever? Some people believe in an immortal soul and would say it is that soul and not their body that constitutes their identity.
If we don't accept the idea of a soul, then what alternative do we have but to think of the body as the manifestation of identity in the broadest sense, beyond considerations of profession and so on?
If each body has a unique genotype and phenotype, then DNA would be the most accurate way to establish bodily uniqueness, since differences of form can sometimes be hard to discern as can be the case with identical twins.
Yes, I think I understand your view.. at least the notion that alternative gametes wouldn't be you.
I guess my view is just that there isn't an objective fact of the matter about identities or self.
We plan to construct a building. We will name it the "Nakatomi Tower". Before we begin we draw our design plans of Nakatomi Tower. In the course of planning we develop three plans, Blueprint A, Blueprint B, and Blueprint C. Each design is slightly different, maybe more rooms, different plumbing, etc. One plan has an extra floor, and another has one floor less. All three Blueprints are for the building we plan to construct and name "Nakatomi Tower." The plan location will be at the corner of 5th and Main. At first we settle on Blueprint A and began construction. However, we began to run out of money quicker than we thought, so we have to take some elements from Blueprint B and C as well as eliminate some floors al together. Finally, after years of construction the building was finished. At the opening ceremony, the owner of the building announced the name of the building "Nakatomi Plaza." After many decade, many new additions to the building were added, modifications were performed, and eventually the building took on the name of just "The Plaza".
As Wittgenstein said in The Blue Book, "Philosophers very often talk about investigating, analyzing, the meaning of words. But let's not forget that a word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of the word of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what a word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it."
Quoting Janus
Uhh maybe not necessarily against that way of looking at it but I was thinking more just about exactly what parts of your physicality you consider you, what bits are essential, what bits could be changed and you would intuitively still consider yourself yourself.
Quoting Janus
I wouldn't say soul but then again I do think what I am experiencing in an ongoing way is what I liken to the self strongly. I imagine its plausible that my brain being transported into a vat, my self could be maintained. Then again, I don't think I identify all parts of my experiences with myself even though they are going on in parts of my brain... which are part of me???
Quoting Janus
Yes but clearly its not all essential and I think identifying myself just as a population of cells misses something in the same way that I don't think there is necessarily a single way of identifying or labelling or drawing boundaries within/around bodies or animals, other objects etc., even though doing so and thinking about it may have practical benefits or be interesting in some ways.
Quoting Janus
Yes true, DNA certainly makes it easy to discern or pick you out; but then again, my dead body will have my DNA. I think there is at least a debate to be had about whether my dead body is me. Since I wouldn't be alive anymore. Maybe you would say it is me.
I'd say that whatever changes don't kill you would not change your identity.
Quoting Apustimelogist
When we think of ourselves as experiencing something, don't we generally think that what we experience is other than ourselves?
Quoting Apustimelogist
You can lose parts of your body that are not critical to your survival and still be a living, experiencing body. However, if you lose your eyes or lose your hearing you will not experience in those domains. A mere population of cells does not necessarily experience anything like you as an organism consisting of a self-regulating population of specialized cells does.
Roughly speaking the boundary of your being is your skin; it is natural enough to think of whatever is sensed within that boundary as part of oneself and whatever is sensed outside of that boundary as other.
Quoting Apustimelogist
I would say your dead body is the dead you, which is very different than the living you, because it is no longer capable of internal self-regulation or of experiencing anything at all, either internal or external to it. It has become like any non-living object, but every particular non-living object is still thought to have a unique identity.
Quoting Relativist
My answer to that would be yes, even though the body has changed, in fact changed all its cells a few times, those cells still have the same unique genotype, and the basic structure of the body is still usually recognizable all through its changes barring severe disfigurement.
What is it that undergoes the changes if not you? It's no different with each leaf that grows from a bud in more or less the same configurations as all the other leaves of the same type and then falls from the tree and withers away due to other organisms of decay.
As to whether identity can be reduced to genetics, I think not. People can overcome their genetic predispositions, although of course they can also enact them. But they are not wholly determined by them.
I think my position can resolve a lot of these nuances if we just phrase it that the gametes components are necessary but not sufficient for identity. I think Janus point earlier is that there is clearly a boundary of organism with non-organism. There is clearly a unit of this person versus that person. Indeed a brain in a vat might complicate things , but the brain itself seems to be the seat of mental events, so in a sense there the brain in the vat is still necessary. It is almost trivially true that it is a specific set of gametes with boundaries in space that separate it out in some way that define a person as separate and unique from another.
Maybe because with the emergence of organisms, there is an exponential increase in possibilities. And that in order to exist as an organism, the very first thing that appears is the boundary between self-and-not-self. After all, death is merely dissolution, isn't it? That the elements comprising a specific individual organism dissolve back into the periodic table. It is the ability of organisms not to simply succumb to chemical entropy that is the hallmark of organic life, isn't it?
What Do Organisms Mean?, Steve Talbott.
I think you're saying that the particular sperm/ovum combination that produced you is essential to being you. That combination is your historical origin, but isn't your subsequent history also essential to being you? This history would distinguish you from your identical twin, if you had one.
Is all your history essential to being you? If not, then how do you non-arbitrarily draw the line?
Seems to be.
This is another topic, but this kind of parallels our debate for why it matters whether one has achieved some "unity" of this monism (aka Nirvana), or nothingness. What if there were no lifeforms, as was the case prior to 4.5 billion years ago, give or take? Energy and matter on their own don't seem to need liberation from anything. It seems at the least, the problem is biological as much as it is existential, as existential matters not without the biological. And thus, this is contra to the always existing mind of idealism.
Again, it's necessary, not sufficient because of its role in its unique combination. It's also causal and spatially variant, thus accounting for the difference between twins and clones. Surely, experience plays a role in identity. Even two rocks from the same molten volcano are roughly similar but are separated by a boundary when they cool. One rock may end up being smooth and one crushed up and jagged. Surely, part of the identity of that rock is the substance that the rock is composed of and arrangement of chemical compounds. When identifying if certain objects came from certain areas in archeology, you can use their unique patina "fingerprints" see if they came from the same location originally.
The Schopenhauer1 of 1999 lacked all the experiences of the Schopenhauer1 of 2023. This is why I previously asked: "Are you the same person (same identity) today, than "you" were yesterday (or 20 years ago)?"
Strict identity does not persist over time, where strict identity fits the principle of identity of indiscernibles. So individual identities have to be defined differently than strict identity. In terms of properties, it would mean identifying which properties are essential (necessary and sufficient) to that identity.
Consider a particular rock. It has a very specific shape and molecular structure. What changes could you make and still consider it the same rock? I don't think there's an objective answer to this. One could define some subset of properties that we identify as existing over some period of time, but there's arbitrariness to any selection of the properties we might choose as "necessary and sufficient".
Are people different? We've noted that monozygotic twins start out with the same genetic makeup, so that set of DNA can't be sufficient. Is it even necessary? No, because our DNA mutates over time, so the DNA you have today is not identical to the DNA "you" had as a zygote or at birth. So you can't even say a specific set of DNA is a necessary condition.
I'd agree that one's entire history is essential to being exactly as you are at any time. If determinism
is true this could not have been otherwise. If indeterminism is true then you could have been different due to having encountered different circumstances throughout your life, but you still would have been you, a different you, just as the you next week will be a different you,
In that case, then "Janus, at this exact day and time", would not exist if indeterminism is true and a different history had occurred.
I suggest that you are assuming the rock has an enduring identity, as a premise, and then identify some of the things that would have to be entailed. But the fact is, it is not possible to identify some subset of its properties and history that give that rock a unique identity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
What exactly are you saying is necessary? Your DNA mutates throughout your life, so if your specific DNA sequence is necessary, you are not the same person your mother gave birth to.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This reflects a subset of your history.
My position is that 100% of your history is essential to being "you" at a point of time. There is a causal relation between the "yous" of each point of time - and "you" are that cross-temporal causal sequence; you have temporal parts. This is perdurance theory of identity.
The combination of the DNA code from the set of gametes. The fact that this has slight changes over time or whatnot does not invalidate this.
Quoting Relativist
The causal-temporal sequence still works off of certain genetic information. It isn't just any genetic information. There is a start to the sequence. For example, one gamete is not a necessary or sufficient. You need both sets. But it can't be any set of gametes, it has to be that set and not another. Whatever else comes of the causal-temporal sequence of another set, even if that had a roughly similar life as you, that is not you.
Yes, that certainly seems to follow, an alternative version of me would have existed instead. We have no way of knowing whether nature is determinsitic or indeterministic. It will always appear indeterminstic due to our inability to predict the future.
That's a big "if". I would have thought that the criteria most important to most people are social - and even when they are physical, they often also have social connotations.
Quoting Janus
Changes in actual DNA are mutations and part of what's going on, but not, I would have thought a major part. At least, I had in mind the point that the way that DNA is expressed often depends on environmental factors. I have seen it is claimed that there is as much reason to say that we are products of our environment as products of our DNA. The idea that everything is down to DNA is an over-simplification that panders to our essential inclinations that DNA is the essence of what we are.
Quoting Janus
I won't argue with you. But isn't that an empirical claim, which it is difficult to impossible to refute. Isn't the real truth that the probability of an two leaves being identical is very, very small. But still, it can't be ruled out completely. When you get down to brass tacks, the same is true of DNA.
Quoting I like sushi
The Heraclitean/Bhuddist idea that everything changes is the obverse/reverse of the claim that everything stays the same. As your next sentence shows, the truth is much more complicated than either. The mistake is to fasten on one view as The Truth and not to pay attention to what is really going on, which is a mixture.
Quoting Apustimelogist
I think my favourite complexity is the one about the non-coding bases, which are 98% of the molecule. What is all that stuff doing there? I don't believe it is doing nothing. The question is, what is it doing? Talk about terra incognita
Agreed, but then it's just an historical fact about you.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure, but can't we say the same about all the facts in your personal history?
If you went back in time and encountered your younger self, you would consider that youngster a person distinct from yourself. If youngster stubbed his toe, only he would feel immediate pain. I account for the distinction in terms of histories: your history differs from youngster's, even though there's overlap.
Well, not really terra incognita, because stuff is being learned about non-coding DNA. One such detail (and actually kind of old news) is that broken down genes for the production of egg yolk components occupy some of that DNA.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267819/
Another stretch of DNA is a broken down version of what once was a gene for producing Vitamin C.
Other details involve stretchs of DNA which can promote or inhibit the transcription of coding DNA.
I'm far from having any expertise on the subject, but my impression is that it would be a rather daunting task for most to come up to speed on what is understood about noncoding DNA these days.
Sure we can split every nanosecond into its own time slice and call that a different person. Same with any object. Yes, time adds duration and development to that object, but the element of change, doesn't mean each unit of change is a different object. Why is it that you are not a rock or a grain of sand or a computer or another person, a bat, a wolf, an insect, or a molecule floating in the air? It's not because of some temporal aspect of things, except in the point in time it matters, when the two gametes combined. Whatever else happened, that is what started the person to be, which is why I put it as a contender as necessary for someone to be someone, even if not sufficient for full identity.
I will add of course, that those hypothetical questions should not be taken as you could be anything else. That was my original point, there could never be a counterfactual case where you could have been something else (prior to conception)... and hence the case that indeed it is when the gametes meet that is the start of how "you" are you. Development of course can add and does add to this identity.
Curious did you have an answer for this?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/862434
The post of mine you were responding to was tangential to the topic so I didn't pursue it. It was written from the perspective of Vedanta where 'the self' is understood as 'the self of all beings'. This intuition harks back to Alan Watts' book The Supreme Identity - hence the connection with 'identity'. (That book was an early influence of mine.)
As to the 'always-existing mind of idealism'. Your question is phrased from the naturalistic perspective, which understands the mind as an emergent or evolved capacity, or at any rate, something that only comes into existence as a result or consequence of evolution, as a product of material or natural causes. Philosophical spirituality (if we can call it that) looks at the matter differently, although it's somewhat difficult to articulate in today's terms. To put it in Watts' terms, in referring to "The Supreme Identity," he is talking about the idea that at the deepest level of reality, there is no fundamental separation between the individual self and the universe. It is the recognition that the distinction between "I" and "the world" is ultimately an illusion. Instead, there is a unitary being, the 'supreme identity' that underlies and encompasses all of existence. In this context, the individual ego or self is seen as a construct, a temporary and illusory identity that we create (very deeply!) in our minds. To discover the supreme identity is to recognize that our true nature is not limited to our individual ego but is interconnected with everything in existence. It's a profound shift in perception and consciousness, which transcends the boundaries between self and other, subject and object. It is emphatically not non-being or non-existence although it seems it must be that to the egoic consciousness. (Although his book is primarily based on Eastern philosophy Watts does also discuss the idea of divine union in Thomas Aquinas. You do find parallels, at least, in some schools of Christianity, especially Christian mysticism, but these kinds of ideas have a rather uneasy relationship with mainstream Christianity, hence the constant tendency of the Christian mystics to run afoul of ecclesiastical authority.)
But again, quite tangential to the OP.
Indeed, but I asked for clarification, so thanks for that. I question your assertion that the individual is illusory other than that it is a grandiose way of saying it is constructed from experience. But that is a common psychological view. However, I think you are going a step beyond this and saying that there is a greater existence beyond this one we think we experience, that is beyond the constructs of the mind, and some nirvana-like state is the real, non-illusory or whatnot, and this individuation we feel is illusory.
Just curious, what do you see as a counterfactual to this view, and why wouldn't it be right? Why couldn't there be simply individuation without the unity that you posit? In a trivial way, we can say by way of empirical studies that the world is fundamentally unified in that it matter and energy particles that came from a singularity right before the big bang. But of course, that is not what you mean either.
That's the thrust of Watts' book, yes.
But the next part?
Quoting schopenhauer1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/862509
Two polar opposite positions highlight this:
1) haeccity (the notion of a "bare identity", entailing any particular identity could have been instantiated in practically anything. Your identity could have been instantiated in the body of your parent or child, or in a goat - and possibly in a rock.
2) hyperessentialism - the notion that 100% of our properties are essential to being who we are.
Both seem defensible concepts, but most aren't willing to accept one of the extreme.
And hence why I also say that it is necessary, just not sufficient...
Well yes, but our selves are also experiences. And then consider that experiebces are going on in our heads as part of the goings on of a physical system which one might consider to be their self. So its interesting to see where the dividing lines are. Thinking about this, it seems that my experience of self is just a model of my body interacting, exercising its agency with its environment. Even though, given a thought experiment of removing my brain from my body, I wouldn't necessarily identify myself with my body.
Quoting Janus
Yes, no doubt.
Quoting Janus
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here.
Quoting Janus
There's lots of counterexamples to this kind of thing I think, such as the thought experiment of a brain transplant or something. At the same time, your body is itself full of living systems with their own boundaries. It is ofcourse natural to think that way, but I am skeptical that it is like an objective fact of the matter. *We might also characterize ourselves as parts of broader social and ecosystems, parts of a China brain perhaps even. There is also people who even propose extended mind theses about how our environment is an important part of cognition.
Quoting Janus
Yes, it seems complicated. There are a few different ways I could distinguish the concept of self here.
Edited: Minor addition * ... *
So you also bring up an idea that is along the same lines as Graham Harman who had a notion that objects are often "overmined" or "undermined". That is to say, often it is bypassed by being reduced to its parts or overmined for any relation whatsoever in the universe or at least, tangentially related to it. From Wiki:
Quoting Wiki Article
You seemed to hold the the opposite, negating its "perdurance" and essence over time.
Either way, there has to be "something" whereby it is differentiated form another thing. That is to say, whereby we can talk about that entity being an individual that is its own thing, and not simply a part of something else. Another set of gametes is not transposable. Hence, a second before or after would have been another person.
Perdurance entails an object having "temporal parts". So there's a unique Schopenhauer1 at each point in time of your existence. The individual parts are linked through a causal chain. In gross terms: Schopenhauer1@Monday causes Schopenhauer1@Tuesday which causes Schopenhauer1@Wednesday...
The temporal parts aren't strictly identical to each other because the history builds over time (thus accounting for your changes over time), but collectively- the entire temporal, causal chain precisely defines the "something".
Identity of indiscernibles applies to each object at time t: all the properties the object has at time t are essential to being that object at time t. It also applies to the entire chain: only one individual can possibly correspond to the set of all those temporal parts.
The alternative to perdurance is endurance, and this is what I've criticized, because it leaves vague as to what constitutes personal identity and what is actually persisting over time.
So even if I was to agree with this (which I don't think I do), the whole course of the causal-temporal chain starts somewhere. It doesn't start at the Big Bang. It doesn't start at your grandfather's birth. It started at the point when there was the set of possibilities that is the YOU now reflecting back, was put into play. Without that set of gametes, whatever object 1, 2, 3.. is would not be YOU, but another set.
And it is this that does touch on the point of overmining. As to overreach beyond the physical components to simply all causal relations, is to miss an essential component to the sweep of this set of causal-temporal events, the one thing that makes this set of causal-temporal events differentiated from others.
I/m sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by "buttering" in this message. On the other hand, perhaps it isn't important.
This is consistent with perdurantism.
It doesn't dictate a mereology (identifying parts), or force one to overmine, overreach, or undervalue the parts. Those analyses can still be applied.
Quoting wonderer1
Yup.
I think my beliefs about DNA still pretty much rule out necessity between the particular sequence and identity, though I recognize that there are possibly significant differences too. But my intuition is that reality is not so rigid.
In some sense my name rigidly picks me out, and it would be true that the particular me could not, under any circumstances, be made out of ice from the Thames. But that's the name, and not the unique and particular description of my genetic code at the time of my conception. And for that it seems that DNA doesn't behave in a necessary relationship to the name that picks me out: rigid designators aren't ruled by causal patterns, but rather are just how we use names.
So in a way I could say that the genotype is a necessary but not sufficient condition for any identity to form. If you tried to gestate a whale zygote in a human the process would likely not end in life (though there are mules, too...) -- there's something necessary about having DNA at all, but I'm not so sure that the specific sequence that a person possess has a necessary relationship to the rigid designator which picks out who a person is.
I know youre trying to get some sort of rigid designation to work out here with your conception, but what object is the rigid designator rigidly designated with? You might be tempted to say that it can be anything or its functional, but there are certain physical substances that differentiate one object from all the other objects, there is a point at which an object could no longer be that object. There is a point when water is not water for example (its not H20). With natural kinds, for example, it is not simply that an object is dubbed in a causal chain, but also that it is made of that particular substance.
I'd pick up the existential or phenomenological angle for identity. Somehow what's significant to us, what we care about, isn't the same as the list of facts of our past, though perhaps the facts one would consult in making a case for an existential identity is a subset of the entire set of every fact of our past. Existential identity comes from caring -- and insofar that the imagined scenario still results in a person caring in pretty much the same way then we can say they are the same even if some details differ.
Water is a bit different from identity because we can speak of a chemical's identity, but I don't think that's an existential identity like I allude to above. But I think I'd say that if water in Bizarro-world was primarily comprised of H3O and still was the stuff we drink when thirsty and more or less did all the same things which water does then I'd say it's the same stuff, even though in Bizarro-world the description differs -- but this wouldn't be on the basis of it caring. I think at a certain level "water" is such a clearly human interest that it's strange to think that this interest must have a corresponding descriptive correlate to it. Rather I think we're really interested in water because it's connected to our being alive, and so we investigate water and see what it is we can see about it. Here our name is much more in a functional space -- it's what it does for us rather than what we've come to describe it as which we're picking out.
Here is an interesting passage from Wiki on rigid designators:
Quoting Wiki Article
So, I think I am in alignment with this, but with some additions. YOU is rigidly designated with the specific set of gametes for you to be you and not something else. This is true in all possible worlds. There is no world in which a different set of gametes would be you. That is all my claim is saying. If I was making a claim that those set of gametes are necessary and sufficient, then you can say that I am missing some things. Indeed, personhood can be quite existential in terms of how we identify things. However, we cannot lose sight of the necessary components that have to be in place for you to have been you and not something else.
This leads then to the idea of overmining and undermining. I can conceive of an argument whereby the interlocutor then states, "Well, why stop at the gametes? Why not your parents, the temperature in the room when you were conceived, the millisecond decision before or after? Those relations are also part of you!" And here is where Harman's notion of overmining becomes useful. We overlook a specific object to see all relations that could be connected to it. However, what makes that object, the object, needs to be understood. Now, Harman might also agree with you, that the necessary components can never be fully known, as they are "hidden" behind their causal influences. I can agree with even this, yet still insist that a well-known necessary aspect of what makes a person THIS person (and not something else) is the causal-temporal point at which the two gamete components combined.
The upshot in Identity and Necessity seems to be that while this person could not have had a different genetics, schopenhauer1 might have.
So this always bothered me.. Why would a kind be different than an individual in terms of substance that it is identified with? I will try to answer this in my own way that makes sense to me...
Where a kind is JUST identified with a substance, an individual is a combination of substance (this set of X matter/form/properties), AND a causal-temporally instantiated point in origin. At THIS point, this individual came into being with that X matter/form/properties. So it is actually combining the substance and causality approach to necessity.
Really what I meant was that the criteria for establishing identity, in the sense of being able to recognize any entity, are physical. I agree with you that identity is mostly understood in social terms, but I think that is a different issue.
Quoting Ludwig V
I agree that the current understanding in genetics is that DNA can be expressed in different ways depending on environmental factors. It is thought that the way DNA is expressed determines, along with environmental conditions, all the forms of all the basic structures of our bodies, so it is not currently thought that everything is down to DNA in any absolutely rigid sense.
So, I would not say that DNA is the essence of what we are at all.
Quoting Ludwig V
Well, no two leaves can be absolutely identical just because they inhabit different places if nothing else. I know a couple pairs of identical twins, and I can tell the difference between them just by examining their faces. Also I believe that the current understanding is that even identical twins do not have absolutely identical genotypes, Whether we could ever find any two natural objects of the senses, whether biological or not, which were physically indistinguishable, is an empirical question I agree.
I've always thought that some modifications were necessary. For example, there are two different kinds of water - heavy and light. Wikipedia tells me that "Ice exhibits at least eighteen phases (packing geometries), depending on temperature and pressure". (See Wkikipedia - Ice. These differences are associated with different behaviours of the material. We call both kinds water and all eighteen kinds ice - (though maybe those differences are not relevant - who would decide?). "Water is H20" and "Ice is H20" could politely be called an over-simplification. It's true that for some purposes, the differences don't matter, but for other purposes, they might. How does Kripke's argument cope with this?
Quoting Wiki Article
Well, even if we are right, in all the centuries before H2O was known, we didn't know what water is. How on earth did we manage to identify it? Luck?
Quoting Banno
I think you are on the right track. But you are missing out the complexity of people. The unique identifier is surely "I", which does inescapably refer to the speaker (if used correctly). Admittedly, understanding "I" requires an understanding of "you" and the third person as well. Our names are useful as well, once we have learned them and learned how to respond to them. (You will understand that this is only a gesture for the much longer account that would be necessary to even approach accuracy.)
Quoting Janus
And I would agree with you.
Quoting Janus
Yes. But you inadvertently run into the oddity about the Identity of Indiscernibles. If you know you have two objects in front of you, you know they are not identical in all respects. The only way this problem could arise would be if you knew about two different appearances of the same object, which may not be both in front of you at the same time. We know how to cope with that in practice, but I'm not sure that logic does.
I wasn't going to get involved in this thread, because of the many ways modality is misconstrued.
The difference between a kind and an individual is logical, or if you prefer grammatical, and not to do with substance.
One of the logicians will probably correct this, and doubtless it is formally wrong, but speaking roughly an individual is referred to by an individual constant, {a,b,c...}. A type is a grouping of individuals. The difference between types and sets is that types are hierarchic in such a way that a type cannot be a member of itself, avoiding Russell's paradox.
So the stuff in this glass - note the demonstrative, picking out an individual - is water - a type. So that individual belongs to the type "water".
An individual is not defined by being "a combination of substances".
Basically there are better ways to think about this issue. It's notable that there has been precious little use of modal logic in an thread about modality.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Why can a substance not be this "individual constant"? If not that, "what" is the individual constant? Just any old thing that is designated so at a point in time? There are no characteristic essences of the thing being designated (demonstrably, let's say by denoting that), that would pick it out versus another thing?
Stop there and you are pretty much right.
Being rid of essence is somewhat to the point. That's what rigid designation does, avoids the "picking out".
You seem to be working with some form of counterpart theory, which has it's own set of problems.
I meant to point out that, apart from the complexity of self-awareness and the capacity for self-reference, there is an additional complexity that a person is (normally) a human being (a living, sentient creature) and is/has a body. So there are criteria of identity in play at each level. But objects can also be identified under different (levels of) description. I know that's not supposed to affect names, but it can certainly affect objects. I mean, Kripke's lectern is (also) a piece of wood and an item of furniture and a philosophical example.
Quoting Banno
Now you have thoroughly confused me. In Naming and Necessity, it's basically about just that. You name an individual thing (a proper name/ demonstrative that), that becomes rigidly designated through causal act of dubbing. That causal dubbing IS the "essence".
And so yeah...
Quoting Banno
My point is that, similar to the notion of natural types, even individuals have an essential "property" (substance I said) about them. Both need to be there. It's not that the "causality alone" (Kripke) is wrong, it's just that it seems that it is incomplete. That, there is also the matter of "what" is being dubbed. I don't see it as, "Causality thusly negates substance theories of essence". Why should that be so? Because the question is thorny, and thus anything that shortcuts the thorny issue is where we should stop our inquiry into what makes an object an object?
That's pretty loose. No, it's not an essence. The causal theory was more a throw-away alternative explanation, never fully worked out by Kripke.
Quoting schopenhauer1
No, they don't. That's rather the point. Pick any property you like, you can designate a possible world in which that very individual does not have that property.
The causal dubbing by way of causality is "throw-away" and not a part of his theory? Interesting. I thought that was one of his main theories that came out of it. It seems to be the one that people offer when discussing how the whole "rigid designation" of a proper name works.
Quoting Banno
But that's my point about the gametes. That is the point where that very individual cannot be that very individual anymore. Then it is back to being open to simply "a possibility of some individual".
I think that @Banno managed to split the difference here between us:
Quoting Banno
Here is the individual, this individual has the name Moliere, and this individual with the name Moliere at the time of conception had this set of base pairs, and this set of base pairs was necessary for this individual as stipulated by the use of rigid designation. This person necessarily had such-and-such a base sequence at a particular time -- I can grant that, and don't think our imagined scenarios define what actually happened in the past.
But I'm wondering if it's side-stepping some real point of contention :D -- like causality and genes and personality, and how those combine, or some such. Perhaps we just have different notions of what's plausible here, for instance?
Well in the the gamete example, it is about a world where that person was not born as opposed to a world where some property of the person has been changed.
No, his main target was the descriptive theory of proper names and reference generally. The causal theory of reference was only mentioned briefly towards the end of the book as an alternative, pretty much just to show that there were other possibilities besides descriptions. There are others who have tried to make the idea work. For my part I don't see why there should be only one explanation for how reference works.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't know how to follow that. We can say that schopenhauer might have had different genetics to that which he actually has, and that is a truth about schopenhauer. We might not so clearly say that this person might have had different genetics, depending on considerations of de dicto and de re interpretations. Notice that it is specified here that in some possible world, schopenhauer, that very individual, has different genetics. There is no chance here of schopenhauer being someone else.
I think I get what you're sayingwe could not have two identical objects in front of us because they would have to be occupying the same space which would seem to be impossible. My example of two leaves was more modestif we had two leaves that looked absolutely identical to each other and no amount of measuring or examination including microscopic visual examination, spectroscopic analysis or whatever could reveal any differences, then there would be two possibilities: either our measurements and examinations are not fine-grained enough or the two leaves are identical in all respects except in regard to occupying the same space.
I would be prepared to wager that there never have been any cases of two such identical leaves or any other kind of objectalthough of course I could be mistaken. In any case, the two possibilities outlined above entail that absolute identicality could never, even in principle, be established, because finer measurement and examination which at any given time were beyond our capabilities could always reveal discrepancies between the two once they become workable.
Also, it is uncontroversial that no object would remain unchanged across timebut we do speak of "the same object" and at the same time acknowledge that any object changes to greater or lesser degrees over time, changes which may or may not be discernible to the "naked senses".
Yes.
Quoting Banno
Okay, makes sense. And goes along with my impulse to expand it...
Quoting Banno
You seem to be agreeing? Yes, there is no world in which schopenhauer, the object/person could have been someone else at the point of the combination of gametes.
There is a point of differentiation of the object as separated from other objects, that is the point of differentiation.
I think it's simply the notion of accepting that the gametes are necessary at a certain causal-historical point in time for that person to be that person, but not sufficient. Prior to that event, if you referred to "George", George could be any set of possibilities. After that event, George was that set of gametes and no other.
I couldn't be sure - It's not clear to me.
Yes. I don't think that's refuting my point. It is getting at where it is that is necessary for that object to have been the person now reflecting back on his life. Prior to that, there wouldn't even be a person reflecting back to even talk about. Hence Ryle uses the term as "indeterminate", as opposed to in hindsight after the event has taken place. When you bring two compounds together that can combine and form a new compound, it is not until the compound is actually combined that we can now start talking about the new compound as an actualized thing and not just a possibility.
In fact, we don't even know that there needs to be the possibility for the possibility to exist. If Jane and Joe have sex 2 minutes earlier, they end up with George 1, if they had sex 2 minutes later, they end up with George 2. Prior to this, George may have never existed at all. George 1 and George 2 are not transposable. One would not be the other. Hence when reflecting back one his life, George 1 can fathom what it would be like to be George 2, but in no way would George 1 ever actually be George 2, let alone under ANY other circumstance that would have changed that particular set of gametes.
What about a possible world where the only thing that was different was that George 1 came from gamete 2 instead of gamete 1, which just happen to be "twin" gametes. Everything else in that world is identical.
Well, I don't see why we need to rule that out as impossible. It may be very unlikely, but unlikely things do happen. And we'll never check enough leaves to establish an empirical possibility.
Quoting Janus
I wouldn't bet against you. But that's not the point.
Quoting Moliere It would be one thing to establish this identity at some specific moment in the life of an individual. In one way, I don't mind what you pick, although I think you'll have difficulty identifying a plausible threshold in the long process of growing up and maturing; birth is not a bad alternative.
But let me point out again that the expected individual does not exist at the moment of conception; all that exists is a fertilized egg, which is an individual egg, if you like, but is not yet an individual person. (Unless you are following the unusual idea that is sometimes propounded in the context of the abortion argument. I don't think it has any currency or point outside that argument.)
Quoting Banno
It is a relief to hear that the causal theory was an afterthought. That first sentence suggests that it hasn't worked, which fits with my prejudice. Now you mention it, I don't see any reason to object to the idea that there may be different kinds (categories) of reference.
I agree with you. I don't believe that conception is a good time-point to choose for personhood.
I'd draw a distinction between personhood, personal identity, and the identity of an object. But I imagine at this point that all we're really talking about is the identity of an object rather than the other two things -- insofar that we're just describing the body at a certain point in time I can grant a posteriori necessity: this body at this or that point has some true sentences which can be said of it, and the negation of those sentences is also false, and what makes it so is the particular body under discussion.
But in contradistinction to this notion I like to use my internet handle because it demonstrates how much the name has little to do with the body -- Moliere didn't exist until I made an account on The Philosophy Forum, which was far after all of these events. There's even a distinct time-point we can point to that's still in the record but surely the name and who I am isn't exactly the same. The only thing that happened to give me this name is dubbing myself as Moliere on The Philosophy Forum rather than the physical facts of my body.
Then the casual-spatial aspect still remains, just like the regular twin scenario.
Think of it this way:
For "natural kinds", the necessary component can just be the substance.
For individuals, the necessary component is the substance AND the causal-historical-spatial aspect of that individual.
As to the first sentence, I notice that it was possible that you might not have made the account, though I get the point that it is no longer possible.
As to the second, for me, what is important is not so much the dubbing ceremony as the consequences, which are that other people use the name and you respond to it. That's at least part of what your identity qua person consists in. That obviously isn't true of names for objects.
True.
Quoting Ludwig V
That makes sense to me. Without the conventions of the internet then the dubbing wouldn't matter -- it's the communal enactment of personhood which makes at least a pretty clear difference between how we treat persons and how we treat objects, just as the pronouncement of Man and Wife isn't really a cause as much as the cap to a ceremony which is enacted by a community.
Modally, that very individual is still that very individual.
But physically and presumably psychologically they might be different.
And here the conjecture falls off the rails, because of course modally we can specify a possible world in which your genetics is different, and yet you are physically and psychologically the same.
To be clear as to the issue here, one would need to very carefully differential between modal identity and personal identity, between a=a and what makes schopenhauer1 who he is.
And that last is arbitrary.
I haven't ruled out its being possible, nor do I rule out its being impossible: we just don't know, which is what I've being trying to get across.
Quoting Banno
There are individual or particular kinds just as there are individual entities of particular kinds; so, I'm assuming you're referring to the obvious logical difference between type and token or general and particular, and the fact that individual entities may be objects of perception, whereas individual kinds are objects of judgement.
I would want to say that what makes schopenhauer1 who he is is partly determined by who he thinks he is and even who he chooses to be - I'm not saying it's entirely up to him, just that he is a participant.
A question that bothers me. I don't know whether it matters, but what is the difference, if any, between "what he is" and "who he is". The what question is asked of inanimate objects as well as people. The who question can only be asked of people. But how significant is that? Do we need two sets of criteria for people - one for their identity as physical object and living creature and the other for their identity as people? But that sounds like a kind of dualism, which makes me hesitate.
Quoting Janus
Well, what matters most to me is that, so far as I can see, there's nothing to rule out the possibility and no positive evidence to establish impossibility. There is a common belief, dear to all of us, that each individual person is unique and irreplaceable - and the discovery of DNA seemed to give a physical basis for that belief. But that it seems to me to be an article of faith, though there is the identity of indiscernibles to fall back on.
I could respond that, so far as I can see, there is nothing to rule out the impossibility and no positive evidence to establish possibility. I would add, as far as I am aware, there are no documented examples of any two objects being indistinguishably identical (even leaving aside the issue of occupation of different spaces).I think it is articles of faith all the way down, so you'll get no disagreement from me on that point. Perhaps we should augment the principle of the identity of indiscernibles with another principle: the indiscernibility of identities.
...as well as who we think he is and choose him to be. Direction of fit helps here, again, in that we choose what counts as schopenhauer1. It appears problematic mainly because folk are looking for something in the world that is schopenhauer1, whereas to a large extent the direction of fit is the revers of this - we get to choose.
Yes, the word "personal" really screwed up the discussion because I am really discussing modal identity.
My theory of substance and causal-historical-spatial instance is one of a modal identity which is to say what makes that object and not another object in ANY possible world.
Quoting Banno
In this we must be careful what we mean by "genetics", because as the Ship of Theseus problem is indeed something to consider (what if all genetics were slowly replaced over time), the instance of that person still needs to have started somewhere, that person started with the casual-temporal-spatial instance of the combination of gametes of an individual.
If we just said it was the causal aspect, we are not designating the substance that it is the instance of.. It's not a piece of wood, or speck of dust but this person. This person would not be anything one way or the other without the initial meeting of their particular gametes, even in the possible world scenario where their genetics were switched out.
Edit: But I also realize people will come up with some possible world where people exist without gametes, or something where people were created differently than now. Then we can discuss at what point is that person then even a person and not something else (artificial person, robot, engineered person, whatever). It would be a new "kind" and possibly not fall into the logic of the possible worlds in the same way. What if water was H30 for example, is not a move one can make in many modal logic hypotheticals.
Edit 2: And thus, personal identity can be contingent on any number of existential and physical factors, where the gamete/causal aspect is modally invariant for that person to be that person and not someone else.
But you ought be.
This is a good point because this started as a discussion of hindsight and counterfactuals - what life would be like if you were born in different circumstances. My point in that discussion was that at some point there could be no changes in circumstances without not existing at all. I discerned that point to be the point of conception. Up until that point, if anything changed, there would be no YOU reflecting back in the first place. After that point, one can make an argument that various things could change and you might end up more-or-less the same. So perhaps it is the point of conception where identity is necessitated with physical components, after which experience and development can shape it and it can be thus defined this way or that, whether if the wind blew northeast versus southwest but everything else was the same that Tuesday morning, whether you would have been a different YOU, let alone major differences in upbringing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Counterpart theory?
Quoting schopenhauer1 It remains you who has the different circumstances.
BEFORE conception? Like a transposable soul or something? :brow:. After perhaps yeah.
Your question. What do you think is the answer?
Only after conception yes. Before no.
My quest here is to find an objective thing that differentiates a person from being all possibilities that that person can hold. Clearly the stopping point for that person to be all counterparts of that person would be at conception. How could it be otherwise?
In another possible world. you have pink shows on. Even less to do with conception.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I donl't get this. The possibilities are of the person - It's you who might have had pink shows on. I don't see a question clear enough to have an answer.
I'll leave it at that.
Fully agree with everything said here.
I think this post from a related thread is very relevant.
Consider tetragametic chimeras.
In such a case there were two separate conceptions resulting in one person.
What differentiates one individual from the other? The discernible is the persons combination of gametes at an instance. All counterfactual after that can be whatever. Before that, we are not talking about that person as now that person doesnt exist to even speak of.
Thats cool but even more to my point as its so unique. That doesnt counter my gametes theory, it just elaborates on an interesting variation of it.
Right.
I'll second that.
Quoting Banno
I'm afraid I can't resist elaborating on this. Where inanimate objects are involved we get to choose - or perhaps more accurately we get to choose the criteria. Common sense would say that once the criteria are in place, the objects fit or don't - not up to us. But then, there's Wittgenstein on rules, so in that sense, we do get to choose even then.
Animate beings that aren't people are a half-way house.
People, however, are not passive. They can have opinions and make claims on us. So I would prefer to say there's a negotiation. It's not hard to think of examples.
Quoting Janus
I agree that it is very, very hard to deal with all the complexities of any interesting question. The trouble is that the devil is almost always in the detail, so I'm reluctant to ignore complexities, even if it isn't possible to sort them all out. A grand simplification always gets me going, I'm afraid. Perhaps it is better to think in terms of focus rather than simplification and then it is easier to at least acknowledge complexities.
Quoting Banno
I have to confess that I don't really understand what modal identity is. A brief explanation or a reference would help me a lot.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't look at it quite that way. It seems to me that the idea of a causal chain is always an over-simplication. The spark may cause the explosion, but not without the explosive - and how did the two get together? The idea of a causal web is usually a better way to look at things - as many, many accident reports illustrate. When looking for a causal chain for a specific event, it is more helpful to identify a causal web and then select the most helpful causal chain.
The idea that the formation of a new DNA is the starting-point of the individual plays in to common sense. But it can be seriously misleading, as in the interminable and insoluble nature/nurture debates. I think you will find that the more balanced view that the two are inseparable and that we will do best by accepting that we are a combination of both is at last gaining ground.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting Banno
This is indeed where the debate between me and schopenhauer1 started - in the context of what the limits are of imagination. I might have been an accountant or a rock star. (In my opinion, the first is plausible, the second not.) The question is, if I had been an accountant or a rock star, would I have become a different person? For me, it depends what you mean by a different person. A stronger example might be the question whether could I imagine being a bat, which means with a bat's perceptions and desires. I don't think so. A weaker case is the one about wearing pink shoes. I agree, not only that I might have worn pink shoes this morning, but that I can imagine myself wearing pink shoes. This question may well be too unclear to be answerable. But then, that too, would be a result.
I want to add to the disquisition above.
1) Thinking about the possibility/impossibility of becoming a different person from the one I am, I came up with three (real-life) possibilities. People do sometimes change their name and/or adopt a different identity, often for reasons of convenience, but sometimes not. Where this is does for religious reasons, and, perhaps, some other cases, I believe that it is done precisely in order to signify a major change in life, amounting to becoming a different person. The other is the (contested) phenomenon of multiple personality. And, perhaps, this is part of what is called gender change. However, I don't think these cases could remain uncontested and very much doubt whether any court would accept them as a reason for escaping criminal or civil responsibility. For me, (and this is where I think schopenhauer1 had a point) continuity of the body would be fundamental. Amnesia might, perhaps be an exception.
2) Having said that and considering when I would say that a new person had been created, I am struck by the long development period from conception to birth and adolescence to full maturity. I don't think there is a clear marker here - it is essentially a development process and (apart from conventional markers like age or perhaps some features of physical development) - there is no clear line when we can say that we have a new person.
Sure, it is a shorthand, admittedly when I use "causal-historical chain". Perhaps a "causal web" is better. Indeed, I brought up earlier, Harman's idea of not overmining an object to all causal factors involved with the object. We don't even need to know all the combination of factors that allow the gametes to start forming the embryonic development, we can point to a "web" of causal factors that are involved without picking out all of them. In other words, not knowing each factor, doesn't negate the case. The microscope doesn't need to be that granular when we reference the event.
Quoting Ludwig V
I mean to be fair, isn't that the general nature of most philosophical debates? Being unanswerable is almost a requirement of a philosophical issue :). But I guess you can mean it, that there is no way in hell that any philosopher would come up with a theory of identity that would ever have any validity or soundness. I mean, why pick this issue out as being interminably impossible to answer versus any other philosophical question? It's all debatable and hence philosophy continues....
So, I think the question you ask is slightly different than where this question of identity has shifted. Indeed, to a point made earlier, personal identity can start looking very personal and "existential" (we define our identity, not given it). My question in this line of thought is more the following:
"At what point would that person no longer have the set of all possibilities that that person could have? In other words, whether that person wore pink shoes or is an accountant or what not, is necessarily/rigidly designated to something. At what point would that something be something else that one is ascribing a personal identity to.
Surely, we can agree that certain physical-spatial-causal events are not transposable. At some point that chair became a chair, and not just pieces of wood, plastic, whatever. At the point at which it is a chair, it becomes a new "possibilities" of what can happen to that chair. We can talk reasonably about that chair qua chair versus other chairs, or other objects.
When hydrogen and oxygen combine in a process to make water, when water forms, it is now that substance and not its antecedents we are discussing. We can pick it out (H20), and it has an instance in causal-space-history (hence why I say it is not just a natural kind, but an instance of a natural kind.. that instance of water.
But the event is the creation of a fertilized egg, which is beginning of a process which will result - years later - in a new person. That process of development involves a web of other factors. Why do you pick that event out? Think of it this way. Some eggs hatch into caterpillars; the caterpillars grow and eventually become pupae; the pupae hatch out and a butterfly emerges. The caterpillar eggs are not caterpillars, pupae or butterflies. The butterflies are not pupae, caterpillars or caterpillar eggs. Why do you say that a human egg (fertilized, like my caterpillar eggs) is a person?
Responding to the rest of your post will have to wait, I'm afraid.
So the question at hand is what counts as being that object versus no longer being that object- either it is a proto-object where it is the components but not the object itself, or it is not that object at all. So, in the case of the caterpillar, indeed even with that case, it was its conception where all possibilities for that individual had its terminus.
It doesn't seem that there are the same complexities (although determinacy is another matter) when we think about the identity of everyday objects as there are when we attempt to address human identity. So, it seemed to me a good plan to start with the simple cases and then work towards understanding the complexities of human identity built upon the relative simplicities of object identity.
Do each of these examples have to have the same criteria?
The first seems to be asking after the psychological, the second a kind of everyday understanding of medium-sized dry goods, and the third relies upon a notion of science and how that relates to our understanding of objects. At least that's how I'd put it, and so think that the criteria would differ since those three topics would be answered differently if we were to put it in question form.
I think for the chair, there can be distinctions made that are different than the case of people or natural kinds (like water). I was just making a point that the debate is about when an object thus becomes an object. A man-made object like a chair seems more about social notions like "use" and "intention", and indeed seems more subjective. It would need a human determiner for this to be true. And indeed, even for personal identity (which I messed up by naming this thread that but I'll keep it for now for historical purposes of the debate), we can say that there needs to be a human determiner to understand "what" a person is at a given time. However, where there might be overlap is how the man-made and the natural kind can come to be in a causal-historical instance in time. You can say, perhaps, there was a point in time that that chair became the chair. And thus there was a terminus which the history of that chair can then go back to where all things referring to that chair has the range of possibilities that can happen "for that chair", and not just, say, the wood components that comprise that chair. It's a bit harder to define though because a chair is very subjective and because of its social nature, harder to determine its "rigidity" as a thing.
However, the natural kind/human analogy is more equivalent. That is because there is an element of substance to the identity, and in the case of an "instance" of a natural kind (that instance of water, that instance of a human), we have the causal aspect of a place and time when there is a terminus when it goes back to a time when it was that instance of the object, and whereby we talk about "possibilities for that object", we are talking about the range of possibilities for that object and not something else or something prior.
I should say I messed up too -- communication is always two-way, so no worries.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I agree that water and humans are closer to one another than either are to chairs.
I think I get lost in the talk of causation and natural kinds. I tried to write out a few paragraphs after this and ended up just deleting them because they got too tangential every time.
Yeah, it's tricky determining these kind of things and it harkens back to questions that Aristotle grappled with and the like. Identity, existence, essence, etc.
Even a chair can be tricksy, though, here's a Picasso sculpture of a chair:
I'm curious what you think about natural kinds and causation @Ludwig V -- it seems that since continuity of a person is the real underlying topic, though through the lens of the identity of objects (however we wish to construe that), I'm wondering if you believe natural kinds and causation have anything to do with the continuity of a person?
The suggestiong to my mind is if one could establish that human beings are a natural kind, and natural kinds of the sort that human beings are can be said to be different under such-and-such circumstances, then we could say when a person is, which in turn should at least hint whether genetics are necessary for the identity of a person as an object (given such and such beliefs, of course) -- but I'm wondering if this is just too far astray from the case you'd make for the continuity of a person? The example of a religion changing a person's name seems to indicate something more along the lines of how I think of personhood, but that also doesn't necessarily eliminate it from being included as a natural kind (considering that we're naturally social creatures, a case might be made...)
Yep, I actually think a combination of use and intention would be a good way to describe most man-made items if we were to explore its "essence" in any way. In the case of Picasso, more intention than use!
One way is insofar as all the possibilities of the continuities of that person are had from the terminus of the conception of that person and no further back. Clearly, the gametes at conception are of a "natural kind". They are cells made of compounds, made of atoms, etc.
However, if you mean in terms of the fact that the genes are generally stable, that's harder to answer. I would be inclined to say yes, but with variation. Personalities it has been reported, are very much tied to genetics, even though it is also shaped in large part by environment, for example. It is probable that various capacities and abilities are more likely tied to genes than people might admit, etc.
Quoting Moliere
If humans are part of "nature", then even sociality in general is "natural". But usually this becomes word games because we often split things at the physical and socio-cultural level so that it represents some artificial divide. I think it is harder to define someone's "personal identity" because that does seem socially-determined by others or oneself based on a number of contingent social factors (personality, likes, social roles, beliefs, ethnic-identity, family ties, friend groups, hobbies, or anything really). What can be determined perhaps, modally, is that when you look back on your life and ask yourself, "Could I have lived differently", the point at which you could no longer have had the range of possibilities that YOU had, including the one at the present, would have been at conception. Prior to that, it could not be the same person looking back at a counterfactual life as you would be doing in this moment, as that person. Even if it was a different sperm that conceived that night a second earlier, that is not you, so the set of possibilities that encompasses the YOU looking back in hindsight is no longer even a fact.
It should be clear that this is not clear to me, at least :D -- it's the "etc." part that looks like it would make a difference.
One of the things that's snagging me that I'm thinking is contributing to our differences in expression is the relationship between the technical words within a scientific discipline and how we are meant to understand those expressions within a philosophical context.
"Natural kinds" is clearly a philosophical notion, whereas "H2O" and "Genetics" and "DNA" aren't really. At the very least you won't find "natural kinds" in a physics or biology textbook in the way that the SEP describes "natural kinds", and philosophically I tend to group science with its activities -- if it's not even being taught to people who signed up for science classes (and certainly not being used by scientists) then can we properly say that these are scientific notions at all?
But stating it like that I hope you can see why I began to worry about going off on a tangent with respect to the original notion that started the questions. My questioning became more about science and its relationship to reality and our notions of the real in either a philosophical or everyday sense and less about the continuity of a person, even though perhaps the general question would settle the more particular question.
I'm not seeing a need for establishing humans as a natural kind, in order to recognize genetics as playing a necessary causal role in maintaining human identity.
It is enormously scientifically supported, that our genes play an ongoing role in maintaining us in existence as living human beings. What would the notion of a natural kind add?
What is the relationship between "genetics" and "necessary causal role"? The first is at least a classification of a technical body of knowledge, and the latter is a philosophical notion. That's where I get lost.
The salient bit is a subtle argument from Kripke, summarised in the SEP.
K1 is invalid. Kripke justifies its occasional use as by a priori philosophical analysis... a somewhat ambiguous phrasing. The example from (1971) is that this wooden lectern could not have been made of ice, because then it would not have been this lectern... it would have been a different lectern. The example here is that schopenhauer1 could not have had a different genome, because then he would not be schopenhauer1. So K1 would be
Notice that this is not an empirical issue; it is an "a priori" commission - "this genome counts as schopenhauer1".
I suspect @schopenhauer1, , too, think they are making an observation, but it doesn't look that way to me. More generally, if folk do not accept that we bring things about using words - that there are commissive utterance - they will have a hard time understanding what is going on here.
I don't really know what you are imagining here. Of course there are commisive utterances. I don't see what that has to do with this thread.
Yep.
By way of trying, what status, what sort of sentence, do you think the one labeled K1 has? Do you think it an observation? Something that is empirically verifiable?
So all of these ideas seem to be circling around a similar hesitation I had regarding the idea of "conceptual schema" in another thread. What is this, "conceptual schema" other than fiat concept made up by a philosopher. It didn't seem to have its root in empirical sciences. However, as we discussed, it could be some grounds for a scientist to possibly incorporate a version of this idea in various studies. This was done let's say with John Searle's notion of intention and "social facts" and Tomasello's experiments on "joint intention" in animals and toddlers, comparing the two and seeing if other animals say, have the ability to call attention to things such that the other person needs to cooperate, and for something that is not an immediate reward. This was to be a possible evolutionary reasoning for an origin of the function of language in humans.
Anyways, this is indeed extra-scientific as it is dealing with causality, possibility, and identity. These things are not going to be seen in a microscope or shouted at you from the universe in some way through an equation. Rather, it has metaphysical implications as to how possibilities are carried out over physical things, like objects.
And thus, I take a "natural kind", Moliere, to be something that one can break down into some substance. A chair by itself is a concept that depends on one's notion of what a chair does or how the maker intended it to work. That isn't a natural kind. However, a piece of wood from the chair would be of a natural kind as you can analyze its substance to some physical property. But of course, since ideas, and neurons, and concepts ultimately come from some "physical substrate", it can be argued this too is natural. However, now we are going far afield as it turns into the mind/body problem and how the neurochemical configures are the same as "chair", and we have lost the point of this thread.. Because that argument would not matter to the point I am making.. Once "chair" the concept is found to be a "natural kind" in the neurochemistry, let's say, it too would be subject to this theory as well.
Thus, natural kinds, like humans, and the gametes, are of a substance and a causal instance. At that point where the substance is present, that causal-historical point in time, that becomes the point at which that object can be said to carry with it the possibilities of that object. And thus, you the human looking back to see if you could have lived a counterfactual life, can only go back so far before the very possibility that brought about this person of this substance was no longer even a possibility to begin with. I identified this at the point of conception.
Or is it rather that you have specified that any posited schopenhauer1 with a different genome is not a schopenhauer1?
It is a sentence you came up with. It is a simplistic assertion. No, it is not an observation. As it stands it is too vague to be empirically verifiable.
Anyway, I've never taken much of an interest in the details of language that you are interested in, and undoubtedly I'm not going to be very good at playing guess what Banno is thinking on subjects such as this.
Do you consider being scientifically informed an aspect of being well educated? I seem to get mixed messages on that subject from you.
Yes, that's what I'm asking you.
Too far off point. If you won't play neither will I. It's not an observation; so in what way could it be considered empirical?
Because I'm suggesting it is not empirical, but a choice about how you would use the name "schopenhauer1".
Okay, well I'll rephrase the question: on what grounds, other than sharing the same genome, would any entity in an imagined universe count as being schopenhauer1?
The second one, but you have simplified it too much as I also explained the causal-historical aspect of it (which accounts for twins, etc.). It also depends on how we are using "genome", but for the sake of argument, I'll say the second.
I don't quite agree, but it's now a fairly trivial point. If someone were to ask "What if schopenhauer1 had had a different genetics", your answer is that the question cannot be asked, that a schopenhauer1 with a different genetics is a different being, not a schopenhauer1, but something else which still might have the name "schopenhauer1".
I'd say that the question can be sensibly asked, and that if it is, it is a question about schopenhauer1.
Thus.
It alludes to reasonable expectations we could have based on a wide range of empirical observations which have been made regardless of not in itself stating an empirical observation.
Quoting Banno
Well it certainly isn't a choice about how I personally would use the name "schopenhauer1". I use the name " schopenhauer1" to refer to some dude on the internet I have a fairly fuzzy concept of, though I am quite confident that he has a fairly unique genome.
:up:
Quoting Banno
Yes correct. I just want to add that the genetics is part of the equation but the causal-historical aspect of that instance also is part of the equation. I can see by way of saying something like "instance" that this might confuse the situation. But all that means is that I acknowledge that it is possible for there to be duplicate combinations of a set of genomes (like twins or clones). This is why I say that there is another aspect to it. But I can see the possible confusion with something like, "This instance of schopenhauer1 is schopenhauer1 in this world as that is to that world, etc." and that is not what I mean.
:up: cool.
Hand waving. Are you saying it is an induction, like "all swans are black"? If not, what?
As I said, it is a sentence of your creation. It seems to allude to inductions that are frequently made these days, but I don't see any need to pigeonhole your sentence as you seem interested in.
Pointing out nuances has been one of my purposes in this thread as well, for example my pointing out tetragametic chimeras earlier.
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/case-lydia-fairchild-and-her-chimerism-2002
Since you offer no significant alternative, I'll repeat that it is a commissive, a choice about the use of "schopenhauer1" specifying that "any posited schopenhauer1 with a different genome is not a schopenhauer1". That
and so is of the form Kripke discuses.
It is an example of how it can be simplistic to talk in terms of necessity regarding genetics.
For me here I think it gets hazy because since in my example everything is completely identical except for this gamete part, it seems to me I could plausibly say they are the same person.
At the same time, I do see the causal intuition. But then again, in this context, I am inclined to ask what makes the causal-historico thing impart this you-ness in a way which is not just kind of arbitrary labelling. And I don't think that I can give myself a good response of what it is that is being imparted by the historico-causal connection.
As I mentioned in another poster, the closest I can find is some kind of intuitive notion that in this world, the lights of my consciousness are switched on, while in that world they are switched off. But I don't think that is well founded at all or gives some good criteria in terms of identity either.
Speaking of identity, I can with a high degree of confidence say that you are the same person as "Srap Tasmaner". Care to verify or falsify my intuition? :nerd:
Taking "imaginary" to mean "possible"...
Simply by specifying the identity. That's how counterfactuals are usually understood: "Janus might have been wearing green shoes" is about Janus, in a possible world in which Janus is wearing green shoes.
No mention of genome.
But this has been explained to you previously.
"Janus might have been wearing red shoes"how many Januses are there in the world, and how do we know which Janus is being referred to, or even whether Janus is a real, or merely fictional, character?
I gather this doesn't help... Counterfactuals?
I don't see a way to proceed until you express whatever it is you are supposing.
The problem I have is that we cannot know if the possibilities we can imagine are actual possibilities or merely logical possibilities. It doesn't seem that hard to determine what can be coherently imagined; that is we can coherently imagine whatever is not self-contradictory.
When I have some more time, I'll read the article you linked; then I guess I'll find out if it helps me to see that counterfactuals have relevance beyond just what we are able to coherently imagine, or if it cements the intuition I already hold.
Ok.
Oh, this is an actual question about another poster?
No I am not him. Why did you think that? Never heard of that name until I looked it up just now.
That's very interesting. So many questions. I used to accept it before I read Naming and Necessity but that article persuaded me that it's meaning, if any, is extremely obscure. One day, perhaps, I will be able to cross-question you.
Quoting Banno
Yes. I was entranced, reading that passage, by the rhetorical gestures that Kripke felt he had to resort to in explaining his meaning; one could almost hear him thumping it. It isn't quite clear to me why that was necessary. Surely "this particular lectern" would have done the job. Schopenhauer's use of "YOU" as opposed to "you" or even "Ludwig V" is similarly fascinating.
Quoting Banno
Yes. Am I right to suppose that what makes a rigid designator rigid is our decision to keep it rigid, which means following the rule for its use rigidly. It makes a kind of sense, though I can't help wondering what Wittgenstein would have made of it.
I suppose one could think of a genome in that way, but it seems just obvious to me that the link between DNA and the individual who grows from it is empirical; that a fertilized egg is not sentient, not conscious and hence not a person; and consequently that neither schopenhauer1 not anyone else has ever been a fertilized egg (though we have all been a baby). Perhaps there is an argument somewhere in Roman Catholic doctrine about this, but I doubt that I would be inclined to accept it.
I would have thought that causation (broadly understood) would have a great deal to do with the continuity of anything that exists in space and time.
I don't understand what natural kinds are supposed to be. The oft-cited example of water does not help me. In the first place, water is one of three forms of that particular molecular structure - (steam (gas), water (liquid), ice (solid)). Second, there are two forms of water (light and heavy) and no less than eight forms of ice. Third, Putnam's twin worlds seem to demonstrate that it is an empirical fact that water could have more than one molecular analysis, though his hypothesis that we might be unable to tell the difference seems wildly implausible to me. In addition to that a quick look at, for example, the Wikipedia article on this topic indicates that there is a wide range of views about what they are, which means that simply to accept that there are natural kinds is to accept a pig in a poke.
I was under the impression that the continuity of a person is the topic in hand. No doubt the continuity of physical objects is part of that story. But I don't think it is the whole story. See my response to schopenhauer1 below.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I take it that you would object to any suggestion that either hydrogen or oxygen is water in any sense. It is only the combination that is water. Equally, each of us is the result of our genes and environment in combination. Your claim that my DNA is me is the same misunderstanding as the suggestion that hydrogen is water. It is the combination of genes and environment that results in the person. To put the point another way, personalities are very much tied to genetics and also to the environment. Both connections have been widely reported and extensively analysed. Bluntly, I am just as much the result of my environment as I am of my genes. After decades of debate about which has priority, there are now some sensible voices that declare that the influence of the two cannot be disentangled.
I see four issues here.
First, your view that, once the egg is formed, everything is set. I'm not clear whether you intend this is in as a deterministic (causal) thesis or a fatalistic (in Ryle's sense) thesis. Your use of "necessity" suggests the latter, but it isn't really clear which you have in mind. Either way, which fertilized egg results from the process is just as determine/ necessary as what happens after the fertilization takes place. The causal chain does not begin with the event of fertilization any more than it ends when I am fully grown. So I don't see why you want to give any special emphasis to that moment.
Second, in inviting me to look back on my own conception, you have posited my existence as a given. So obviously any egg different from the one that began my process is not me. Just as any clone made from my body is clearly not me. But if I were to posit myself as an outside observer, not involved in the proceedings or, better, as a prospective parent, things look very different. I do not think of the many, many possibilities that there are and which I do not know about. I might care a great deal about various features the baby might or might not have, but I cannot say, when the baby is born, that the wrong one has been born. This harks back to Ryle's point about the difference between the future tense and the present or past tenses.
Third, there is an important difference between people and (inanimate) objects. People participate in their own identity. When they learn the use of "I" and "You" and "S/he/it" (and learning that "I" said by me is the same person as "you" said by you, is a really complicated and critical skill). But this does not depend on any history or social role or personal relationship. It works by responses, not by properties. You could call it the Cartesian self, for the sake of a name. When I learn to respond to my own name and how to use the names of other people, I begin to join society, but that is still not a question of the kind of identity you seem to be interested in; it is a question of my responses to others and the responses of others to me. My identity in this sense is settled by how we respond to each other.
FInallly, the question we started out with is not a question of identity in the usual philosophical sense, but in this Cartesian sense. It is about the "I" that imagines things and what the limits of such an imagination might be. Or at least is related more to that than to my "public" identity. There doesn't seem to be much waiting to be said about it. That explains our diversion to the standard philosophical debate. But the difficulty of imagining myself as a different person clearly plays in to the debate we are actually having.
I supposed it is a matter of surprising coincidences. The last time I saw a post from @Srap Tasmaner was a short while before the first post I saw from you and what you were saying seemed like it could well have been a continuation of a line of thinking he had been engaged in.
There is also similarity in posting style.
That, and sock puppet spotting has become a weird hobby of mine, and I've developed a significant degree of trust in my sock puppet spotting intuitions. On the other hand, experience as an engineer has taught me the value of test to failure, and not least in the case of my own intuitions.
Thus my question.
So I think you missed some conversations. I am not really talking about personal identity, though I left it in the title. Rather, I am talking about what it would take for all possibilities of specifically, you (the person reflecting back in hindsight) to obtain, INCLUDING the one in the very present, right now, without it no longer being specifically YOU but someone else. That point is conception of those particular sets of gametes, in that causal-historical space.
We are assuming that there is no such thing in these possible worlds, where exactly the same experiences and genetics are a possibility, though certainly conceivable. Even if that was the case, the fact that that not only clone, but literal, double of every aspect of you down to the millisecond, would still be taking up some causal-historical space that differs, so I think even that is immune, though I don't think it necessary to even worry about that.
The water example doesn't work for me either. I'm going to try and explain some difficulties here.
From a chemical perspective "water" is an aggregate of H2O's, and it's the aggregate properties which "emerge" when having molar quantities of H2O at temperature-pressure ranges we find on Earth that results in the physical properties that we colloquially refer to as water. And in terms of a theoretical description of a molecule the thing that's missing from the locution "H2O" is the structural relationship between the hydrogens and the oxygen that accounts for its various observed properties. In terms of reference, though, we don't ever really refer to any individual molecule -- we refer to the aggregate of molecules, and so the use of "this" doesn't exactly work very well to my eyes, or at least not as well as it does with the lectern example for me. The individual molecule does not have a name or the identity "water", and so while the molar quantities of H2O form water, if we want to be technical, water is not just H2O but H2O in molar quantities at a certain temperature-pressure point. A single H2O molecule floating across space is not wet, though water is.
I'd say that it's these complexities which don't bear an obvious relationship to the identity of "water". Further I'd say that the case of water is easier than the case of a human being, so figuring out how we're supposed to talk about the identity of water might shed some light on how we might talk about genomes and humans, so I thought I'd go down the route of explaining some of my thoughts in thinking through the difficulty of referencing a technical body of knowledge for the solution of a philosophical problem.
Actually, this gives more understanding of the matter than if it was straightforward 1:1. That is to say, it is necessary for it to be water, but not sufficient. Certainly, without H20, it would not be water, even if various other mechanisms were in place that are involved in molecular bonds, structural relationships that are contingent to the molecular properties, and so on.
This is to my eye the best way to understand rigidity - as a rule of grammar. It sets out a way of talking about counterfactuals that inherits the coherence of Kripke's formal treatment, while avoidingthe ontological complications of Lewis' account.
My suspicion is that Wittgenstein would agree that whether @schopenhauer1 is essentially his genetics is an issue of how we choose to talk about schopenhauer1, and not an issue of empirical observation, as some seem to think.
Cool. So we at least agree that this is an extra-scientific, or maybe scientific-adjacent, sort of question.
With respect to water there are a number of details that make me question the notion that water actually is H2O, though I can agree to some kind of a posteriori necessity when it comes to individuals.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm not so certain that the account of a posteriori necessity works very well for water, though. Even the water in my cup right now. This is because I tend to agree with Hume on causation -- that it is a habit of ours as creatures who look for patterns, and that tomorrow water could turn out to be something aside from what we thought it was by exploring those patterns. This is a feature of most scientific knowledge: the knowledge is always provisional, and built around technical problems of a particular group of knowledge-producers. If water is H2O, then water is necessarily H2O -- of course! But is it actually H2O?
Do we, by adding all these properties from the various textbooks about water thereby obtain the "essence" of water? Well, not exactly, because now it's just a collection of properties we happen to bundle together into a name, and doesn't have an essential property that makes it what it is. We're interested in it mostly because we're thirsty, and identify it by how it looks and that it is wet, but H2O doesn't look like or feel like anything at all; rather it's a technical classification of what we see and feel.
Well said on these various posts.
Totally agree about this water thing. I more or less have the same idea but I extend it to individuals too.
Ha, have any of your suspicions been verified? I had a suspicion of that kind of nature once about another poster who hasnt posted in this thread, there was just another poster with a very similar writing style who started posting in the same thread as them.
Well, that resolves one of my difficulties about Kripke. It would be interesting to know whether Kripke thinks that this fits with what he has to say about rules.
Quoting Moliere
Well, it might be easier - but that doesn't seem to make it easy. One thing that makes it much more difficult is that if you are talking about the person, not just the human being, you are talking about a being that is not passive, but participates in the identity game and has views of his/her own. Many people would think that it is outrageous to reduce (and they mean that word literally) a person to their gametes. Heredity is not identity.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The gametes issue doesn't take into account the fact that I am a participant in this game; that is, I have views about what possibilities I have and what possibilities would make me a different person and what possibilities would reveal the person that I actually (in my view) am. I'm not saying that I can dictate, but I can certainly demand that my views are taken into account.
Why do you feel the need to write "YOU" instead of "you", and why do you not consider the identity of a third person - not me, not you, but him/her over there? It seems you think it makes a difference.
Oh yeah. I'd estimate my record at something like 15 and 3. (With one of my failures being dismissing my intuition that I was observing sock puppetry.)
However, a large percentage of my successful recognitions of sock puppetry involved individuals with some degree of personality disorder, which makes for relatively stereotypical behavior patterns. My ratio when there aren't personality disorders involved is definitely lower.
True. I agree that heredity is not identity.
I think we've both brought up those difficulties with @schopenhauer1, but the response has been more along the lines of when an object is an object. In those terms "water" is easier for me to think through than "human". When or how should a technical body of knowledge be used philosophically?
In terms of using scientific knowledge in a philosophical context I thought "water" might prove easier for us all.
I think it's the notion of "genetics" in a philosophical context that caught me. And that intersection between science and philosophy has always drawn me in.
Quoting Ludwig V
So why I say YOU, is I am discussing the person that has actualized all the events leading to the very present. THIS person (the present you, not a counterfactual you that could have actualized differently), could not have been THIS person without certain factors. As far as the main factor that differentiates the range of possibilities that led to THIS present you from a range of possibilities that would NEVER include the YOU that is present right now, that would be the set of gametes that developed into the current YOU. That is to say, it's as far back as we can go whereby if the circumstances were different (there was a different set of gametes), there was no possible world that the current actualized YOU would have existed as YOU are right now looking back on your life.
And as far as H20 and rigid designators, I think this is more-or-less where the idea stands:
Quoting Rigid Designator
One might agree that "If the terms 'water' and 'H2O' pick out the same object in every possible world, there is no possible world in which 'water' picks out something different from 'H2O'," but wonder how one could prove the antecedent, which is, in old-fashioned terms, empirical, and justify "Since the terms 'water' and 'H2O' pick out the same object in every possible world, ....." Putnam's example of Twin Earth seems to prove that you can't. See also my reply to Moliere below.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes. Kripke does the same thing with his "this very lectern". I don't see the difference, philosophically between THIS person and this person.
We both agree that this person is the result of various factors. But you pick out one of them - admittedly an important one - and sweep away the rest as trivial.
Quoting Moliere
There's only one way that I can think of that makes sense of this. Essentially, it involves attributing to "possible" the logic that we see in "probable". The latter, at least for the purposes of mathematical theory, is essentially future-looking, because it is defined in terms of a future event - the outcome. The probability of my next throw of the die coming up 6 is 1:6. When I throw the die and it comes up 5, the probability of that throw coming up 6 is 0, i.e there is no probability of that throw coming up 6.
We could say that there is a possibility of club X winning the match against club Y. When club X loses the match, there is no longer any possibility of it winning. (Although you can say, counterfactually, that they might have won.) When the possibility of rain this morning is 60% and it rains, there is no possibility of it not raining. I imagine @Banno will have something to say about this.
Quoting Moliere
It is difficult. The answer, in a word, is - cautiously.
One trap is is the adoption of an interpretation of the evidence long before it is certain. So I have seen people, on discovering that there is a deterministic interpretation of quantum theory, announce that we can all now relax, since science has proved that determinism is true.
My other pet hate is people picking up on the latest exciting results announced by a team who are looking for research grants and announcing that science has now discovered ..... It's one thing to look at the wonderful photos of galaxies etc. and quite another to draw conclusions from them. The latter needs good technical knowledge; the former does not.
On the other hand, it seems pretty much common sense that water is H2O and that the COVID virus causes disease. But it is then a mistake to forget that those are discoveries and the world might have been different.
I'm in favour of case-by-case rather than trying to draw up rules.
Yes on future-looking, but I'm uncertain on probability. If water actually is H2O, for instance, the probability of the statement is 1, and if it is not then it is 0.
My thought is that "water" is the common-sense term and "H2O" is the technical term. Now these do blend in common usage so of course we can use the locution "H2O" as we use the locution "water", but upon thinking about the problem from a technical perspective I'd say that these are two different terms if we want to be strict or philosophical with our usage. "Water", in comparison to Lavoisier, is an ancient word. Though this definition pushes against what I've been laying out:
But even here I'd note that a chemist differentiates between aqueous solutions and water, and the normal usage calls the sea "water" even though it's actually a mixture of water, ammonia, salt, etc. So that the common usage does not always pick out the very same thing even in our world, and so the claim to necessity is hampered by that possibility.
But I take your point here:
Quoting Ludwig V
that there may not be a comparison between water and people, or H2O and genomes, after all. Fair point.
I believe this addresses common sense? But tell me if not. (EDIT: here thinking that common sense would be covered by the usage of "water", whereas the case against necessity is using "H2O")
That's right. And my correspondent on mathematics in general and probability in particular tells me that these are regarded as degenerate cases of probability. I think it is more helpful not to call them any kind of probability, since it is the end of the logical cycle of probability, from uncertainty to resolution.
When you say "if water actually is H2O" you are positioning yourself at the end of a process. I distinguish between possibility and probability as distinct stages in a process. A possibility is what goes into a probability table before it is assigned a probability value; then it is assigned a value and becomes a probability (and not a possibility); then the outcome happens and it becomes either a certainty or a falsehood. The words are not sufficiently strictly defined to defend this as what the concepts actually are; it's just a helpful way to think about them. There are complications, such as the concepts of degrees of confidence and likelihood.
Quoting Moliere
I'm afraid common usage is too messy for us. Common usage can distinguish between water, sea water, sewage water, rain water, &c. Pure or distilled water is part of that range, but is really a technical idea, now adopted by common usage. Perhaps we need a natural kind for each of them?
Quoting Moliere
Well, you're being a bit strict there. I don't think comparisons are really true or false. I prefer to think of them as helpful or not, illuminating or not and so on. I certainly think that, in this conversation, the comparison between water/H2O and people/genomes is unhelpful. Water is H20. But people are not their genomes.
Quoting Ludwig V
Its interesting because really, we can get arbitrarily specific about different kinds of water. When H2O molecules react it results in various different ions which are essential for its properties so if you want to be more specific, you could say that water isn't really just H2O - that water is H2O may be a straightforward statement since it emerges from H2O molecules interacting, but then it has to be qualified that this is idealizing the details.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ionization_of_water
We might then see that different concentrations of these ions result in different properties of water and then we might have water with different isotopes of hydrogen which impart different properties too.
Seems to me anyone can get as precise as one wants in distinguishing things and all "natural kinds" require ignoring some kinds of details, differentiation, contextual relevance. Nothing we categorize in the world avoids arbitrary abstractions.
Got it. So we agree on the latter, at least, and to be honest I'm somewhat hesitant about my distinction between water and H2O, though I think that the claim to necessity is what justifies what would normally be an incredibly inane distinction.
Whereas with people/genome it seems to me that the distinction is fairly obvious: even though the genome plays a critical role in our development that doesn't mean humans are their genome.
I thought about using auto-ionization as an example earlier but then thought that it could be seen as the idealization so I decided to drop it. But if we take auto-ionization as true then, yes, not every molecule in water is H2O -- some of them are H3O+ or OH-, though very little in comparison.
Because it was that web of circumstances (conception) that is the point of time when the actualized person that is the you right now could have come to be in the first place, EVEN IF you could have had a range of possibilities of counterfactuals after that which led to another "version" of you. Any further back than this, there COULD NOT EVEN have been the actualized version of you now who is looking back. That is my main point.
It just means that H2O represents more than just "H2O" perhaps. That it also represents the other things you maintain. But the point is that it becomes a posteriori necessary, which is Kripke's controversial theory. The evidence provides the necessity of identity's content, which can be changed with more evidence. So the content can change, but the link of necessity does not, with whatever it is that that content provides.
Quite so. Not wanting to be picky, but what makes these abstractions arbitrary? Isn't it rather that the idea of natural kinds proposes a certain kind of model, but the facts (nature) undermine it. Where's the necessity?
Quoting schopenhauer1
That's right. The web, not just one element in it. Given your extraordinarily rigid version of determinism, we can also say that as the causal web constantly changes and develops, any other point in time is also a point when the actualized person that it the you right now could have come to be. There is no reason to pick out any one moment in my life (or before it, or after it) as more or less important than any other.
Why do you speak of the actualized person that is the you?.... Surely the same applies to everybody else, so you would do better to say the actualized person that is
By speaking of "you", you posit the person you address as a participant in the language game (or whatever other kind of practice we are engaging in). Genomes are incapable of participating in these practices. People do, and their identity as people amongst people is revealed (or perhaps created) in their participation. This is an unusual take on personal identity, but given our starting-point, it seems inevitable.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, if Kripke is right, it becomes a posteriori necessary. But that's a big "if", so I prefer to wait and see. It doesn't seem to matter, one way or the other.
Quoting Moliere
No, patently not. But while we are speaking precisely, we need to bear in mind that we exist at three levels (at least). a) the physical object (the body), the animal (homo sapiens - a misnomer if ever there was one - and the person (which is an essentially social concept).
Quoting Moliere
Yes but they are still necessary for the properties of water like electrical conductivity, even if little in comparison - if they were not present, it would imply there was no water there or at least that the water didn't possess its characteristic properties. Hence why different concentrations lead to different properties. The isotope example is also interesting because its not trivial at all the changes it makes. D2O can kill things because of how different it is to water.
I think the concept of idealization always strengthens this kind of direction you are going in since at the very least it questions or complicates the idea that people are actually referring to what they say they are referring to when they use particular terms or phrases.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I was reading an article suggesting that it isnt really problematic for saying H2O is water since you can say that all that is required (under certain conditions) is that you have many H2O molecules and in their interactions, these ionization phenomena happen... so you still don't need anything more than H2O really. I don't have a problem with saying H2O is water since there is a pragmatism of ignoring these kind of details.
But at same time to me that means acknowledging an aspect of pragmatism or choice into it about where I draw the lines/boundaries. It complicates the notion that we are talking about some essentialistic natural kind here imo.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I see this but it seems that was is posteriori necessary trivially depends on what I happen to decide I should call something so to me it doesn't seem that interesting or have deep consequences. Can you even call that necessary?
Then it comes to the issue of deciding what is water in all possible worlds. Does that trivially mean that water in all possible worlds is identical to water in this world? Or might there be other possible worlds with water that is different in some way but still similar? It seems this is down to my decision in some ways about what I want to deem as water or not depending on what I want to ignore in possible worlds.
Quoting Ludwig V
So ironically, you are arguing along similar "nominalist" grounds that I am arguing regarding identity and land in the Israel/Palestine thread. That is because I wholeheartedly agree with you that personal identity is very much personally and socially constructed. It's more an existential issue than a biological issue. Or I should say, if everything human is a biological issue, it isn't in the same way that let's say the ATP cycle is biological or other cellular processes.
So, as I admitted earlier in this thread, "personal identity" should have been changed in the title, and "identity as this individual rather than another" or some other phrase or word should have been used.
So, even though I think things like identity as an ethnic group, nationality, personal beliefs, friend groups, attitudes, personality are very much dependent on social construction, can there be something "essential" to an individual on a physical basis? I think there can be, and that is the causal-historical and substance of a particular set of gametes. Now, why am I picking that, if we all agree that "personal identity" is social, and arbitrary. Can't we just pick anything as setting one apart as an individual?
And here is where I point to Kripke and the necessity of identity as there being some physical basis for an individual. Why? This is the main question I am trying to answer, and the again the answer is:
"Is there a point in causal history whereby there could be no possibility of the person reflecting back on their origins could have even existed in the first place (whatever other contingent paths they could have taken from that point)?" And my answer was, "Yes, at the point of the "web of circumstances" surrounding conception of a particular set of gametes at a causal-historical place/time (period)". BEFORE that time, the possibility of may have existed, but if anything changed, even by a microsecond, you would not have been able to actualize. Thus, it is at the point of conception that at least the opportunity for the actual you that is now reflecting, would be able to exist.
So an individual is even more complicated than a natural kind. A natural kind can in theory be determined just by a substance (we can even keep Aristotle's notion of 'substance' as matter/form of some kind, and in modern day, probably of a scientific determination). However, an individual on top of a substance identity, needs a causal-historical identity (THIS thing, not just a thing). So as I was answering to another poster, what is it that makes an identity necessary for an individual person?
Well, there is a causal-historical point (or points), whereby a "web of circumstances" took place of conception (we need not even have to go over every scientific concept related to this), whereby THAT individual would not have even come about in the first place, unless that web of circumstances occurred. Any change prior to this, would have changed the circumstances and thus changed the person/individual who came about as a result. THAT person who came about would have been different than the YOU who is reflecting right now.
What is happening here is a bit more than just an observation. No number of observations could show that in every case, what we would call water is what we would call H?O. The problem of induction intervenes. What happens is more akin to an act of fiat, a decision on our part to only call stuff mad of "H?O" water. So we look around and see that every sample of water we check is made of H?O, and so decide that thenceforth if some sample of what we thought was water turns out not to be H?O, we were mistaken, and it's not water.
Logically, as it points out in the article cites, "What is not being claimed is that water is necessarily H2O, but conditionally, if water is H2O then water is necessarily H2O." The antecedent is not proven on empirical grounds so much as taken as a definition of water - it;'s decided by fiat that we will only use the word "water" for stuff that is made of H?O.
This is the point made earlier, that if @schopenhauer1 decides that schopenhauer1 has by fiat some specific genetic code, then in any possible world in which someone has that genetic code, that someone is schopenhauer1; and further, if in some possible world there is a person with all the attributes of schopenhauer1, but with a different genetic code, then that is not schopenhauer1 .
What it is important to note here is that this is a choice about how we use the names "water" and "schopenhauer1"; not solely an issue of empirical observation.
This is basically my argument. My only quibble would be here:
Quoting Banno
Because then someone will just mention twins/clones. This is why the causal-historical aspect has to be considered as well. It would have to be this specific event (web of circumstances surrounding the combination of gametes). Perhaps, with some empirical evidence, I can reduce it to just substance as there can be differences epigenetically between twins, but even that might not quite do it because of the reliance on contingencies. Rather, both came from the same set of gametes, so there has to be a differentiation in some other aspect.
Edit: And that aspect was the causal-historical aspect of the formation of the divided set of gametes. At that, for that set of gametes, is as far back as you can go before there is no possible world with X person in it.
Why folk insist on trying to make use of the anachronistic notion of substance is beyond me.
I best be careful then. If my account means that people cannot refer then it's in trouble since we do successfully refer!
Isotopes are a good example with respect to water: the notion of elements changed with isotopes because it was recognized there were different kinds of the same element when separated by mass. It changed how we chose to categorize.
Quoting schopenhauer1
This just seems to assume too much on the part of causation for me. And while I understand that we're talking about features of a body I think that, as far as the continuity of a person is concerned, we should probably include these other levels mentioned by @Ludwig V as well:
Quoting Ludwig V
It seems to me that the other two levels aside from the body are just as important to the continuity of a person, though importantly I should say I don't think the body is irrelevant, only that it's sometimes relevant rather than always. It's because of this "sometimes" that I'm having a hard time accepting that there's a necessary relationship between genome and person, that there is no possible world in which some part of me was slightly different. I just don't have that level of confidence in causation.
Quoting Banno
I think I'm tracking? We'll see. If the rigid designation takes place by fiat that's much easier to get along with, though I'm not sure that @schopenhauer1 agrees that this is just fiat -- it seems there's a causal connection that makes sense of the position. It's the causal properties or something along those lines which makes the genome so important rather than by fiat.
I think it captures a good shorthand for physically what is relevant to an object- its matter and form. It really hasn't been improved upon much, simply elaborated in detail. Hydrogen and Oxygen can be considered a substance, its relations in their bond can be considered their form, etc.
But, when dealing in metaphysics, you start somewhere, usually objects or processes of some sort. Sometimes people go to idealism so some mental aspect or even mathematical relations themselves. But here, I am working at getting a grounding on the metaphysics of an individual by way of thinking about it causally. At what point causally, would any change to that thing result in there never being a possibility of that person?
As if cause were easier to understand than how to use a proper name.
And I'm pointing out that what counts as an individual is nothing to do with substance, but with how we choose to use names.
You are using a screw driver as a hammer.
Can you define, "What counts"? Surely, prior to humans there are individuals, no? Individual animals, individual items? I think this is ripe for the terms "overmining" and "undermining" objects to see whereby things get misconstrued as their relations or by their nominal names, but I'd have to see where you take your skepticism.
That's ok so far as it goes. But there are complexities in that "we". It isn't a choice that we make by getting together, debating and voting. It's many choices made by individuals in the context of their pragmatic and social context.
This model - of stuffs or substances - what are sometimes called "mass terms" works reasonably well for some cases, which for some reason have become paradigmatic. But the idea that it has general application seems to me to be an instance of philosophical over-generalization.
First, things can often be classified in a number of ways, depending on circumstances and interests. We were discussing the case of a piece of wood that is a door, or the plant that is a crop and food and so on. Do we posit two natural kinds here, or just one?
Second, at first sight, hydrogen and oxygen look like natural kinds just like water. So, if H20 defines water, what defines hydrogen? Again, are there two natural kinds here or just one?
Third, there are some things that do not appear to consist of stuff at all. Rainbows, for example. They are natural, but don't seem amenable to the same questions as water. Or, one might think that water and clouds both consist of H20. But then, what is the difference?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, but a great deal has to happen before I exist. Why isn't the development of the heart or the brain also a point like the moment of conception? Why isn't the moment when my parents meet or marry, just as important? What about the moments when my mother and father were conceived? Aren't they also critical? It's a web.
I'm sorry if this seems outdated by what has appeared since I started writing it.
If water is H?O then water is necessarily H?O
It is possible that water is not H?O
Therefore, water is not H?O
I'd say this is a reductio as long as we accept the second premise. My thought here is that in common usage we don't distinguish between the elements that are within a glass of water. Technically speaking there are minerals dissolved air and other such things which are not captured by our usual usage of "water" -- we usually mean the whole glass and not just the H?O in the glass.
Premise 2, being a statement of identity, can be reversed and I think the distinction between H?O and water is easier to see there:
It is possible that H?O is not water.
The lone H?O molecule floating through space is not wet, and so there are some predicates which apply to water but which do not apply to H?O, and so we can say that these are two different things.
Stochastic causality, for instance, could have a necessary relationship in the sense that there is a definite probability for some event, but as long as it falls in-between 0 or 1 then the event and its negation are possible.
Quoting Moliere
The lone molecule of H2O is equally understood to be a lone molecule of water, so I don't think this argument stands up.
I think this is right as far as it goes, but on the other hand biological organisms can generally be identified by their DNA, and this would seem to be the most reliable method of identification.
If we wanted to posit that an organism could be you or me, but have a different DNA, then what criteria could be used to identify the organism as you or me? As I see it, stipulation won't cut it.
Are there lone molecules of H2O?
I can offer a common sense thought:
Clouds don't instantly appear because H2O molecules have been individualized in the gas phase. You only see clouds because enough H2O molecules have started to aggregate together, but that could only happen if they were individualized in the first place. Humidity is a measure of how much H2O is dissolved in the air relativized to how much can be dissolved in the air without it becoming a liquid.
But if you're questioning the discreetness of atoms or something like that then that won't be enough.
I'm confused here. A lone molecule of water, to my mind, is one floating in space somewhere around a planet that happens to have water, and given the number of molecules that there are it's entirely plausible that one molecule of H2O managed to get into space. That one molecule is not wet. But water is. And when water evaporates it's referred to as vapour or in the gas phase but it eventually disappears, and the usual thought there is that the gas phase is when molecules separate and float about in a manner that approximates the ideal gas law.
There are wet vapours, but not all H2O is wet.
Yes, I think you are right about proposing a certain kind of model and it being undermined in the sense that either the model is outright wrong or the idealization ignores meaningful distinctions.
I was meaning that once you lift the lid on the issue of the model and probe past what was once seen as some essential nature; then, in probing the specifics about how something like H2O may behave in different contexts then there is not really a limit on how specific you want to go or where you want to place the boundaries for classification or on what basis you want to make separations between different things. H2O with different ion concentrations, isotopes. Ice, vapour, etc. We can always cut arbitrary lines or boundaries.
Well I think this is a different topic to what I was saying in my post you replied to but I would say this causo-historico thing presumes a coherent ontology of the individual to which the causo-historical connection has a non-trivial consequence for. When I think about it deeply, I am skeptical about such coherent ontology of the individual where the causo-historico thing has any signicance beyond a kind of bookkeeping role of keeping track of things.
Quoting Moliere
I think there's been some wires crossed as I don't understand whats being implied here.
It seems to be idealizations everywhere though. Even if you want to go past the idealization of water=H2O, then the less idealized descriptions will include idealizations as per the nature of chemistry where various models still involve idealization.
I think even if a model is considered true, there are ways that we can envision it being underspecified in some way. Maybe the example of quantum mechanics interpretations. Two different interpretations may afford the same empirical description of water in terms of quantum theory, physics, theoretical chemistry. Yet they may have radical metaphysical different implications for what water is. So then, is water picking out the same thing everywhere if it cannot distinguish between interpretations of H2O with extra interpretational or underlying structure like this?
I was thinking that:
Quoting Apustimelogist
Meant I should reconsider some things because I think people are actually referring to what they say they are referring to. The difference between "water" and "H2O", in a technical sense, seems to depend on this. If what people really mean by "water" is "H2O" then I have no case at all.
Yes, yes. I think we must have got some wires crossed in this topic. I don't think people necessarily really mean h2O when they say water.
So sure, all that causally does have to be in place, and I am not denying that this causal chain has to be in place. However, the terminus for which this has to take place, where otherwise you would not even be there in the first place to reflect back is the conception. Anything after that, could still be a version of you, perhaps. Anything before would not even be a version of you, but a version of someone else. It would be someone else's range of possibilities (including the actualized one there is now looking back).
Why would you believe that? What about causo-history would be so impotent?
Simply because if one is skeptical about a coherent ontology for identity then there is nothing for it to be potent about. All it would then be about is labelling things and keeping track of those labels.
So are you denying causality? Causality doesn't exist without a label??
All chains are selections from the many interconnections of the web. When we articulate a specific causal chain, we make decisions about where it starts and where it finishes, to suit the needs of the moment. But if we attend to the context and recognize the web, we can see that those are decisions, not facts. I can understand why some people would like to think that the causal chain that you select is important. But other choices are equally valid. There's no magic about the fertilization of egg by sperm. Many people would high-light birth as the magic moment and this makes perfect sense when you remember that we do not know about your magic moment, except by inference. I'm deeply suspicious of these ideas, as you can guess by what I call them. The growth and development of a person is a complicated and lengthy process, not an instantaneous creation.
Quoting Moliere
I would agree that the intention of the speaker is important in recognizing what is being referred to. In some cases, where I have misunderstood what the term refers to (I think that "mule" also refers to "donkey"), I need to be corrected. But this is an awkward case. Kripke, if I have him right, says that when I refer to Hesperus, I am referring to Venus, whether or not I know that Hesperus is Venus. This is all very well, so long as the context of use is shared between both parties. But if I don't know that Hesperus is Venus, my use of the term will be incomprehensible to you.
Similarly, if I don't know that water is H2O, my use of the term will be incomprehensible to you - especially if I'm not familiar with modern science. The issue is compounded by the use of the phrase "what people really mean". "Mean" is vague enough as it is and adding "really" makes it completely obscure. What is the criterion for what someone really means, as opposed to what they mean?
I don't think there is a general rule about this. We resolve issues like that as we go along, on a case-by-case basis. That is, there is no substitute for identifying and clarifying the differences between us. Once that's done, mutual understanding is restored. Kripke seems to think that it is beneath his dignity to recognize issues like this.
Quoting Apustimelogist
Perhaps it would be better to think of what is going on as simplification. We have to decide (and agree) what features of the world are important in a particular context and need to be attended to and which are not.
I am denying objective identity and so I am denying that the developmental trajectory of an organism is deeply intwined with some objective identity. The organism is a collection of components, always changing, always in flux, taking things in from the environment, spitting things back out. There is no essential self there.
John Searle gives the most complete explanation. I think I;ve already pointed you to the thread on Institutional Facts.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, individuation is a social activity. Language is not private. And yes, there are differing, and even inconsistent ways of individuating the things around us.
Quoting Moliere
The advantage of possible world semantics is that it provides a way of talking about counterfactuals that we know to be consistent. It is important to note that possible world semantics is extensional. There will be intensional word uses not captured by an extensional system.
Superman is Clark Kent, and extensionally Superman sometimes wears glasses - when he is dressed as Clark Kent.
A glass of pure H?O just is a glass of pure water, and an impure glass of water just is an impure glass of H?O. The lone water molecule floating through space is not wet. Moliere, you are drawing out intensional differences, and so far as they go that is fine, but extensionally these differences are simply dropped. already made this point. B ut I can see no reason to supose that there are not free individual water molecules.
Quoting Janus
Yep, we may well choose to do that. I\'m just pointing out that doing so is making a choice, not just making an observation. Moliere, ice is also water, but not wet.
Quoting Apustimelogist Here again is the common distinction between sense and reference, between extension and intension. Possible World Semantics is extensional.
Yes, I think this is a core part of science. We carve up nature into systems that are easier to handle, ignoring its interactions with the outside world, averaging over the details to produce simple rules or descriptions. This is exactly what we do in experiments too by controlling the environment so inferences are simpler. Arguably, brains even do this when you consider some common ways of conceptualizing how neurons work like efficient coding.
Well @Moliere can correct me if I am wrong but I think they are using intension to motivate an argument which is about extension.
Quoting Banno
Cool, so I'm misusing "extension" then -- though if it can be shown that "H?O" and "water" have different extensions then you'd accept that they are different individuals?
Quoting Banno
:D -- good point. I retract using "...is wet" as a basis for differentiating H?O from water.
Well, the contention is that if water = H?O then ?water =H?O.
I wouldn't characterise what you said as a misuse. There is a difference in sense between "water" and "H?O". John can believe that liquid water is wet but not that liquid H?O is wet... Or protest against those evil moguls who put dihydrogen monoxide in his drinking water.
With the lectern this makes a lot of sense to me because I can't honestly think of how an individual under discussion could possibly be made of ice from the beginning of time, or other outlandish predicates -- it would be like a zygote turning into a bus through the process of birth, just absolutely not on my radar as a possibility though it is a possible sentence. But with the case of water I get hesitant because it's a kind, and because we're also equating it to the chemical composition. On one hand I know of many classifications of water in the technical sense, but on the other I know we don't identify water by these technical classifications -- it's not like I detect that the liquid has two hydrogens and one oxygen, but rather, I see the clear odorless liquid coming out of the faucet and presume it's H?O
In addition I think that it's still possible, right now, for water to not be H?O, which gets into the silly syllogism I put up yesterday. But this is in a forward-looking sense, and not by fiat -- I'm thinking "Scientific knowledge is always provisional, and so it is possible for water to not be H?O" -- but this may be the technical, scientific side that I'm trying to avoid falling into in thinking about the identity of objects from a philosophical perspective. Does it matter that scientists might change the classification later on? Pluto was recently reclassified, but I don't believe that Pluto changed -- just our categories did. So perhaps the categorization isn't as important because right now we treat H?O as water and water as H?O in an extensionally equivalent manner.
But my thought is that the scientist does not treat H?O in an extensionally equivalent manner. A beaker of 1 M Hydrochloric acid is comprised primarily of H?O molecules, and in keeping track of the acid-base reaction you'd definitely refer to H?O, but you would not call the beaker water. This strikes me as a better case than the others, but let me know what you think.
Quoting Banno
True. Could there not also be a difference in reference?
Although I don't know how I'd demonstrate such a thing. Sort of like @Ludwig V pointing out how what someone really means is entirely obscure.
It is very unlikely to be pure H2O. You could make an argument that because water commonly contains all sorts of solutes and is yet still referred to as "water" that 'water' is therefore not equivalent to H2O. The truth or falsity of such an argument would depend on perspective, though, so perhaps there is no unequivocal fact of the matter there.
But now we find that water is H?O, and we decide to only call things "water" if they have the atomic structure H?O. So we decide that "water = H?O" is true, and add that ?water = H?O. In doing this we remove access to those possible worlds in which water is not H?O, effectively pruning the tree of possible worlds.
But only if.
So I don't see a problem with your syllogism as such; it's just that if we take water = H?O, the second premise is false, and if not, it isn't.
Yes, I agree.
And normally I wouldn't bother to make a distinction.
But then there's the part of me that thinks "Well, I know this is persnickity, but if we're talking about necessity..."
Quoting Janus
:D That is the argument I'm making, basically, with the acid example, although it has a stronger rhetorical force because we have a different name for it. I'm wondering if it's just too silly. With acid we have a name that differentiates it so the percent composition ought not matter even though most of the molecules aren't H3O but H2O, but then that's exactly it -- a reference for "H2O" that is not water..
But then it seems a bit too clever. It's not like I don't understand what people mean by these terms even though these distinctions can be brought up.
Quoting Banno
Actually this is making more sense. It's not a reductio -- it's just that you can flip the truth-values depending upon what you believe. And actually the conclusion makes a good deal of sense if we accept premise 2 -- it's basically just making a distinction between ways of using "water" and "H2O", and as long as we understand these distinctions together we can continue to refer to the same individual.
Quoting Banno
Right, that's basically what I mean.
Relating this back to the topic, If someone is identical to their genetics, then (arguably) they are necessarily identical to their genetics.
If.
The same answer the Spartans gave Athens
Yup.
Miracles really are true, we managed to close a thread of thought.
Quoting Banno
What say you @schopenhauer1?
I'm wondering if the premises from causation could act as a kind of support for the implication.
I haven't been keeping track of the thread for a bit. Basically identity through the meeting of those gametes is the outcome of the causal argument.
The causal argument is thus:
What event was it whereby all the possibilities that could have led to the person who is presently reflecting back on their lives could have obtained?
AND
Whereby if you went back any further, there would be no person who could have obtained as the person who is reflecting back on their lives, as that would not even be a possibility.
That event would be conception. Anything prior to that, could have led to outcomes that would not have been you. In fact, if one thing changed even a milisecond prior to your conception, you would not have been actualized.
However,
AFTER your conception, while it is arguable "you" might have been a "different person" due to epigenetics and experiences, we can at least say, if all events played out as they did, the actual person that is looking back in hindsight would be one of those possibilities, and in fact, is what actually happened.
Anyway, I'm happy. Essences are decided more than discovered.
But I think rather the essence secondary to the necessity of causality. The theory is causal, and this leads to a conclusion of an event (the combination of gametes). Once causality and what counts as possible and not possible based on prior events is part of the picture, this is not just about how language is used, which is why I asked whether you thought causality didn't exist somehow if there are no labels for it. For example, clearly "individuals" don't need to be picked out with words, or so it would seem to me. There are individual animals, etc all prior to humans designating this or that thing "an individual".
What's your take?
Same with other posters.. This is about causality, but causality leading to an event whereby all possibilities are the start for that individual. The event defines the parameters of the "what" which in this case is the combination of the gametes.
So how do institutional facts have to do with the idea of causality? Is causality itself now institutional? But I believe you were talking rather of my idea of the gametes... But again, whilst this is a pseudo-identity of substance (the two gametes), the reason for it is causal. That is to say, none of this need rely on the social activity of making rules for these definitions- they are very much "real" if causality is "real".. real as in, you don't need human social activity for this to be a "thing" in the universe.
I'm going to need time to digest it.
I didn't notice.
Causality is far from unproblematic.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Nothing I've said should be understood as suggesting otherwise.
I'll back up and explain...
It seemed to me you were making an argument that "individuals" is liken to "institutional facts"- what designates this individual or that, is a choice, that may or may not become "institutional" (become part of a language community, or "way of life" or whatever you want to say in this realm of social explanation). Rather, I was countering that "individuals" are beyond simply conceptual constructs, but actual "entities" in the world, with a "real" causal history. The tricky part, is what is meant here by "causal history", but that is the matter that is my theory in question, so I can go into that more, but I just wanted to see what you were trying to assert with ideas of it being about "choosing" or and institutional facts, etc.
But my suspicions rest more on what "causal history" might be. It's this that you think somehow "necessary".
How, I don't understand.
Ok, so I guess I'm going to read up on Anscombe's view on causality..
Yes, it is the causal history that is necessary.
I've explained it, but I am sure it looks a bit like word-salad, so I'm going to try to be more deliberate:
First: This came about from the Ryle lecture on determinism. I said that some parts in there reminded of an earlier thread I created on the notion that people often use the expression, "What if it was the case that I was born under different circumstances". What ensued was unpacking what the implications of this could mean. That is to say, one can imagine being born under a different circumstance, but can that imaginative exercise ever "really" be the case? When I examined the idea in the earlier thread that somewhat paralleled Ryle's questions, I noticed that indeed, you really cannot have even been the very person looking back on their life to ask "What if I was born in different X circumstances", because if anything changed prior to this, you would not have been that "person" looking back at their life.
Next: I discussed this line of thought further with @Ludwig V, as to what this could mean. This started to become a discussion about identity, as we can ask ourselves, "If anything had changed even slightly in our past, would that be a different person than the one currently existing in the present"? During this discussion, it dawned on me that, indeed it seems like there is a "point in time" so-to-speak in which there absolutely had to be a "hard stop" for which a person to have become the individual that they would eventually be looking back in their life- and that was conception. Prior to conception, if the parents even had one change to circumstances, there would be no individual even in the POSSIBILITY of existing as they are in the present. Why? Because that sperm and that egg would not have conceived and thus, even if that couple had another child, that child would be another individual, not this one looking back right now on their life.
Third: Now, anything after that conception can be up to debate. Indeed, I even think it is up for debate as to "personal identity". And here you can bring in ideas of choice and institutional facts and how language is used to define and individual within a language community, etc. However, prior to conception, you would not even have the possibility for the person who now exists to exist in the first place, let alone the range of other possibilities that may or may not still be "this person so identified as such".
The "substance" part of this, is simply that the point of conception isn't just an empty causal a priori thing. It is an actual physical event of some kind, of a substance of chemicals and atoms and whatever thing you want to add there of this combination of gametes. But this is simply a result of the causal event itself.
Concluding thoughts: So again, it at the point of the conception of a specific gametes at a point in time and space whereby this individual can become the range of possibilities for that individual (including the actual person that is looking back at his life), and not any time before or after.
The obvious issue, clear again in what you just wrote, is the difference between counterpart theory and transworld identity - between David Lewis and Kripke. That's no small thing.
Another issue is potential confusion between an individual - the thing picked out by a proper name - and a person - what it is to be schopenhauer1 and not someone else. These are not the same, and it is not a simple matter to set out their interaction.
And there's also the anachronistic notions of essence and substance that will need cleaning.
I became involved when it was clear that there was insufficient distinction being made between individuals and kinds. That at least is handleable.
Each of these is at least an essay, or a thesis, rather than a post.
But to cut to the chase, I don't think it inevitable that genetics determines personhood. Rather that's one approach amongst many.
But there are simply too many threads here.
:up:
Quoting Banno
Yep, and I think this is all related. To clarify, I think my theory has a causal-theme running through it, that happens to involve substance, and not the other way around.. And both of these theories of "identity" are rather more to do with objects and their relations. Even though it started as a sort of transworld-esque discussions of personal identity in various worlds, it became more of a counterpart theory of what about an object (even if its human) across all possible worlds. As we discussed earlier, more Kripke less Lewis (or so the discussion revealed as I was unpacking the ideas).
Quoting Banno
My distinction was causal-historical AND substance for individual and substance only for kinds. And I can explain that more if needed. But as you say...
Quoting Banno
Agreed, but I am not going to discount substances as part of the equation. Even [s]Kripke[/s] Hilary Putnam (I believe?) uses "H2O", as an example. Why can't that substance be used to describe this kind of essentialist notion?
Causal-historical: Point in time and space when all possibilities of a person can occur, including the actual one now. This is only allowable due to its
Substance: Gametes meeting at that point in time.
Quoting Banno
Absolutely, but I don't mind a continual dialectic on it to see where it goes, as it hits on so many relevant philosophical topics at once.
Quoting Banno
Only if it is discounted why it is that these gametes and not others would by necessity have to be involved in someone even existing as they are, right now.
Quoting Banno
I don't mind unpacking each one and seeing how or if they fit.
I tend to think that anywhere a valid distinction can be drawn then it should be drawn, while keeping in mind that in some contexts the distinction probably doesn't matter.
Counterfactuals are recondite. You cant say if this didnt happen then that would have happened because you dont know everything that might have happened.
Pratchett, Terry. Lords And Ladies: (Discworld Novel 14) (Discworld series) (pp. 162-163). Transworld. Kindle Edition.
I think my point in the context of this post here is that if "personal identity" is not objective then the gamete point is trivial because there is no objective fact of the matter that the possibilities belong to a single individual. At the same time there is the strange counterexample of two possible world where everything in someone's life was the same except for the fact that in one world that individual had been conceived with different gamete that had identical genetic information. The difference the gamete brings here then seems about as significant as if one day that person had decided to put on a different pair of socks. You could say that the person is not the same but given that everything else in the world is identical, surely there is claim to say that this is a version of that person in another world. Looking at your Ryle considerations, in general I think often there is no fact of the matter about what makes these counterfactuals the case. We infer that things could have been otherwise purely through our ability to imagine things and there seems no bounds on what could have been the case without having to place an artificial restriction on what seems plausible or not. There's nothing to substantiate these.
A popular matephor, but wrong. Nature does not sit out there (wherever that is), like a joint of meat, waiting to be carved up and served up. Nor are we separate from nature, hovering over it looking for the joins. Nature prods us and we prod it back. Interaction, all the time. Nothing is possible without it.
Quoting Apustimelogist
Its pretty much inevitable that we will articulate our research in terms of that model. And it is sensible to take what we do understand and try to apply it to things we dont understand. Plato was not an idiot to try and apply the mathematical models that he did understand to the empirical reality that he did not understand. We cant even say that he was wrong, since we continue to do the same thing. It was his implementation that was problematic.
It goes back to the question whether we can say that computer calculates or speaks. Unlike Searle (if I understand him right) I think we not only do say that but that it is not a mistake to do so.
Nonetheless, Im sure that in the end, we will have to recognize the limitations of this model/metaphor, if only so that we can get round them.
Quoting Banno
The problem arises because people love to move from if p, then q. to p. Perhaps there ought to be a formal fallacy, which I would dub suppressing the antecedent. Certainly, in Toulmin's terms, we can assert that suppressing the antecedent results in an unwarranted assertion.
Quoting Banno
Im afraid my memory fails me. I know there is such a story, but I cant remember the details. Could you remind me of the details of this story?
Quoting schopenhauer1
The trouble is this: at the point of conception, there is no individual that can become anything. The possibility (even probability) that an individual can become (grow) does indeed arise at that point. But an acorn is not an oak-tree; it is the possibility of an oak-tree. An egg is not a bird; it is the prospect of a bird. After the acorn has sprouted or the egg has hatched, we can look back and say that acorn (now gone) was the origin of this tree (now present) and so on. It goes back to Ryle and the battle of Waterloo.
Perhaps the concept of a life-cycle will be helpful here. A butterflys life-cycle is sufficiently complicated and public to be useful. First there is the egg (but no butterfly and no caterpillar), then the caterpillar (but no butterfly), then the chrysalis (and still no butterfly) and finally the butterfly - and then there is a dead butterfly. Theres a continuity between these stages that makes it helpful to call this process the life-cycle of the butterfly, rather than of the egg, the caterpillar or the chrysalis. In that way, we can recognize the continuity of the process and the changes that occur.
Part of the point of this is that as things grow new possibilities arise. Neither egg, nor caterpillar, nor chrysalis can possibly fly. The possibility only arises at the last stage. Young children cannot reach the top shelf. It is not possible. Ten years later, they can it has become possible. When people go to school, some of them can read and some of them cant. After some time, most people will have learnt and it has become possible for them to read. Why on earth do you think that all the possibilities of my life only arise at the moment of conception?
Quoting Banno
I agree with that, in a way, and that's where possible worlds could be helpful because it could enable us to take into account what else, apart from the stated counterfactual supposition, would have to be different as well. (Though, of course, Putnam and others frequently rule that interesting and helpful possibility out so that their thought experiments can drive us to the conclusion that they hope for.)
But as a generalization, it doesn't make sense. Surely it is perfectly OK for me to say If only I had checked the oil in the engine, we would not have broken down miles from help in the middle of a snowstorm.? To be sure, it might turn out that Ive avoided crossing the bridge at the moment that it falls down, but thats most unlikely, and the problems Im actually facing are quite clear.
It is true that Im making an assumption - that checking the oil before driving through a snow-storm does not require any radical difference between myself as I am and myself as I would need to be in order to check the oil before I leave. For example, the supposition that I would have to be a bit less absent-minded or distracted than I actually was doesn't seem implausible. On the other hand, imagining what it is like to be a bat does require that I be something radically different from what I am and those differences mean that I would experience everything differently, so the project fails.
Nice quote. I'm a big Pratchett / Discworld fan myself.
So this focuses solely on the gametes, and not the causal-historical aspect. That event (not another one, even in another possible world), necessitates that this actual person would at least be actualized. Without that causal-historical event occurring, THIS person would not be THIS person, [s]they would be another person[/s] THIS person wouldn't exist PERHAPS another person would.
Ok good question.
Let me ask another question, if anything changed even a tiny bit prior to conception, would even the possibility of you actually have existed? No, because whatever else you are (personal identity-wise), it is also fused to some extent with a genetic code which is this set of gametes at this causal-historical event. That is all I am saying. After the conception, if everything followed the way it did, you would be the present you right now. Perhaps we can say, in some way, if events in your life went differently, that you would be "another person", but we can only say that after conception. Before conception, there wouldn't even have been this possibility of the "you" looking back now to begin with.
I misremembered - it was Philip of Macedon, apparently, who on conquering southern Greece sent a message to Sparta asking if he should come as friend or foe. The Spartans replied "neither".
To which Philip sent a second message saying that if he conquered them he would cast them off their land. To which they replied , "If".
Yes, I agree this is a much better way of looking at it.
Quoting Ludwig V
What do you mean on this bit?
Yes but my point is that if there is no objective identity then this seems trivial in the sense that it is trivial that we are always constantly changing. Its trivial different events have different consequences. Its not trivial how to objectively construe those consequences as a self-contained identities with continuity over time amidst changes.
Ok well, Im saying what is relevant is the causal-historical event whereby if there was any slight change to that event, there could not in any possibility be you. It would be another person, if another person at all was born from the same parents. This is not transposable. Certain things are conceivable but not possible.
I think we both more or less agree about what is happening in the picture physically and causally in the scenario you are talking about so maybe there is not much more to be said. I just have a kind of "No-Self" kind of view (" " from wikipedia personal identity page) which makes me view those events differently - the causo-historical significance is for the components of the system but nothing about those components or their causal relationships carves out an objective self-boundary. But again, I think we agree on what is happening here physically.
Thanks for that. The Spartans always prided themselves on being laconic. I see the point now. The exchange took place in 346 BCE. Sadly, Philip proceeded to invade Laconia, devastate much of it and eject the Spartans from various parts of it. (See Wikipedia article on him).
Quoting Apustimelogist
WIkipedia - Information processing theory
Simply Psychology - information processing
My remark about recognising the limitations of the model is based on two issues. First, all this simply assumes that we can count a causal process as a cognitive or symbolic activity. But there's an issue about whether this is legitimate. Second, the example is fascinating because it simply ignores the so-called "hard problem".
Quoting schopenhauer1
What you don't seem to recognize is that whether any slight change means that the causal-historical events cannot result in me existing is a decision taken by you. If you check the detail, you will find that differences in the 98% of our DNA that is, as they say politely, non-coding, will make no difference to the outcome. Which other changes make a difference is something we have to assess on a case-by-case basis - brown eyes rather than blue eyes are unlikely to count.
Quoting Apustimelogist
The outline of the process is clear enough, and I think it is true that the spatio-temporal and causal history of the body is an important element in our identity. But there's a disagreement about how that is described. It seems to me unlikely that will be resolved any time soon. But one lives in hope.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't understand you at all. Before conception, there were many possibilities of many conceptions, some of which would have resulted in someone much like me. So what you say here is simply false.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't see a problem in saying that I might have been born with fair hair and blue eyes. If I had been, it would have been because of a variation in my DNA. Other possibilities would be more problematic.
:up: This falls right into another thread I made about how people often (unintentionally) assert mental states in the equation when trying to account for physical states, mix and matching them, without explaining how one is the other. You rightly pointed out that fallacy here, something akin to a homunculus fallacy.
Quoting Ludwig V
It's not a decision "made by me", or so I am theorizing. Rather, causal-history is essential to that identity, because it is necessary. Any other causal-history is someone else. Even twins or clones are someone else, as I am not asserting only gametes as the necessary component. However, it is the physical substantiation of the causal-historical event. It isn't all some empty case of causality. It is a causal-historical event of something (the substance of the set of two gametes in this instance).
Quoting Ludwig V
Then let me clarify. This determination can only happen in hindsight. That is to say, whatever the "present you" that is looking back now, that is the person in question. Prior to conception, any outcome that led to another set of gametes would not have been you. The actualized you right now, had to come from this set of gametes and no other, otherwise, you don't exist, or that isn't you, or whatever the valid way to phrase that is.
Quoting Ludwig V
Now, I think this is just false. Whatever sperm or egg was fertilized, that conception could not have led to the person presently looking back on their life.
Yes, but a particular acorn and the oak tree it becomes (if indeed it does so, of course) are linked, and hence their identities are linked, in a way that neither is linked with other acorns and oak trees. They are linked as phases of a particular process of growth and transformation; a unique history so to speak.
Oh I see, quite right; however, I was not trying to invoke that kind of model of the brain or mind. I wouldn't say efficient coding necessatily entails that kind of idea and my views of the brain and mind don't hinge strongly on symbol or representation.
Fair enough. I notice that many people have no problem speaking of brain-states as symbols of representations. But a symbol is always a symbol of something and a representation is always a representation of something. But in the case of mental states, we have no access to the "something" in either case.
Quoting Janus
Yes, quite so. This is why I started speaking about life-cycles. Then I can reconcile the fact that some states and processes that are not a person (such as DNA) are part of the processes that you are talking about.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, that is often committed. But that fallacy is the product of a complex structure of ideas, which may change. Newton posited gravity as an essential part of his theory, in spite of the fact that such a concept violated the then-orthodox ideas of causality and (whether this was him or not, I don't know) redefined what physical/material means. So what looks to us like illegitimate mix-and-match could be abandoned. I think it needs to be. The short version of this is that the "hard problem" is the result of the way that various concepts are defined. No solution is possible. It follows that the definitions need to change.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I understand that is your proposition. What you don't seem to have noticed is that the status of those proposition is your decision. You treat them as "hinge" for the debate - everything turns round them.
Quoting schopenhauer1
That depends on how you define that person's identity. I agree that, given that I have brown eyes, it is not now possible for me to have blue eyes. But I might have developed blue eyes at some point in the past and if that had happened, it would not now be possible for me to have had brown eyes. You are suppressing the antecedent in Kripke's proof.
Genetics is the formula for the making of the constitution, and it is being played upon by the earth and the cosmos as its instrument, the melody that these elements play constitutes the character of the individual. Free will is an absurd concept.
Then you arent getting me because youre focused on the genetics and not the causal history part which is uniquely an event that is tied to the person. No that other set of gametes wont do. This one only does. Otherwise, no you.
OK. Forget the business about DNA. There are many people in my life who I meet only sporadically. I don't know what happens to them when I'm not there; I may or may not have sporadic second-hand information about what has happened to them. When I meet them, how do I know they are the same person? (You can stipulate, if you like, that I assume that there is, in fact, a continuous causal history covering the time when I was not there. I will stipulate that I don't know what that history is.)
Quoting schopenhauer1
I thought you were saying that I am over-focused on gametes, yet here they are again, front and centre stage.
We clearly have the same approach to this. I just have one question. Surely, one has an identity from the moment one has a constitution, even if one's identity changes and develops over time?
No, at birth one is just that which has the potential to experience, the arrival has no memories which constitute identity. I have personally experienced briefly but often, a total lack of memory, and thus identity. The individual new born has no identity and only gains it through it interactions with its environmental context, context defines, and if one did not choose one's context, one did not choose one's identity. As a species we have a particular pattern, that of human beings, but DNA is a faulty pattern maker, so the life patterns change over time in adapting to the world context. Constitution however does have particular aspects, tastes, and potentials that will or will not be brought forward by a demanding environment context. We draw our identity from the success and failures of our life in
context.
It's not that they are gametes so much, as that they are this set of gametes. There is a difference.
As to the aspect of a continuous identity, that isn't an issue. Rather, as long as you admit that your life has been actualized in some fashion, that actualized history could not have been that actualized history without that set of gametes. It is largely irrelevant how those gametes themselves operate to create your identity. It is simply that that substrate of substance is that substrate and not another.
Now you have lost me completely. What is the substrate of a substance?
Quoting boagie
I find that a rather surprising claim. Don't babies experience things from the moment they are born, if not before?
A baby is experiencing things as soon as it is conscious, so it is acquiring memories from the moment it is conscious. In fact, we could say that being born is the moment when experience - and memory - begin, but I'm not sure that there is a sharp division between conscious and non-conscious.
But we are talking about physical continuity as an element in personal identity - at least, I think we are. I wouldn't deny for a moment that consciousness (including memory) is also necessary. But that doesn't raise the same problems.
That individual substance is bracketed as its own thing and not another instance of similar substance.
OR
That set of gametes is its own thing and not another instance of a set of gametes.
The fact that it is that set of gametes is the crucial aspect of the matter, is what I am saying by "causal historical".
The fetus in the womb is a functional part of the mother, its environment like other aspects of the mother's biology is relative to the whole/ the mother. The fetus is not an independent entity, it's experience is being part of the mother and being nurtured as part of the mother. Do the organs of the mothers body have identity, perhaps, in which case so would the fetus, but what would that identity be, if not in its context, the mother? You stated, an infant experiences as soon as it is born, true, but what is it experiencing, it is experiencing its context, and context defines, experience of context gives identity. The distinction of consciousness and the state of it before birth is just a different context, the mother, and again context defines, what it was before birth, is its mother.
I have myself experienced life without identity/memory for brief but repeated intervals; which only means the absence of the knowledge of context. There is something, however, in just the experience of being alive, one is vitally alive, and one is a naked I, that which experiences, there is a brief sense of relief in not knowing who you are, that you do not realize until the memory thus the context and definition of you comes flooding back into your consciousness. Being without memory simply restarts a process of identity formation if the previous life experience is lost forever, what is the song, " We are the world?", for the world is our greater context.
Yes, I think the causes of sensation are inherently underdetermined, indeterminate. There is no inherent fact of the matter of what they mean or represent in reference to some external context.
""
The problem with taking this as conveying information about the specific physical structures of stimuli beyond the organism's sensory boundary is that the only thing sufficient for this process is the receptor perturbation, regardless of what caused that perturbation. All that is required is the presence of something sufficiently stimulating and eventually this results in action potentials that communicate information to the brain through action potentials: membrane depolarizations with stereotyped amplitudes and time-courses. Effectively, the only information the brain can receive are one-dimensional signals denoting the presence of some stimuli as distinct from the presence of others. By having different neurons whose firings are statistically independent, in the sense that they have been specialized to receive signals from some stimuli independently of others, signals do not get confused. However, given that all of the different types of receptor cells use the same form of membrane potential signaling, neither we nor the brain can in principle identify the cause of membrane activation by just looking at the nature of the membrane activation.
We have real life examples of this underdetermination. In nature, spurious signaling has been known to occur such that thermal fluctuations in the retina can cause perceptions that are indistinguishable from flashes of light in the dark. Rhodopsin which is used for detecting light in human retinal rod cells is in fact used as a means for light-independent thermosensation in fruit flies. Therefore, not only could an unidentified receptor cell's membrane activation be conceivably caused by any type of receptor interaction, the change at a given type of receptor could be caused by alternative possibilities. It's well documented how neuroscientists can even stimulate sensory receptors or downstream neurons to artificially produce sensations. In one radical case:
Paper - Embedding a Panoramic Representation of Infrared Light in the Adult Rat Somatosensory Cortex through a Sensory Neuroprosthesis; 2016.
Rats were fitted with prosthetic infrared sensors that sent signals directly into the whisker parts of the somatosensory cortex, allowing them to distinguish sources of infrared light in their environment. While the rats eventually learned to be able to discriminate between sources of infrared light and touch, they initially seemed to perceive infrared light sources as somatic whisker sensations. It is clear that given the initial confusion, the downstream neuronal architectures are incapable of discriminating the stimuli purely in virtue of the nature of the external causes of stimulation, whether from somatic vibrations or infrared light. Whether communicated through organic somatosensory afferents rooted in vibrations, electrodes from prosthetic infrared sensors or even re-routing of other modalities into the somatosensory cortex, all information is communicated via the same manner of membrane stimulation. What distinguishes the different sources of information is not anything inherent about their physical causes, but the statistical properties of the patterns of the homogeneous one-dimensional signals which are generated by those causes. These are in some sense incidental to those causes; neurons can perform blind-source separation on these signals but in theory those signals can be artificially mimicked like in a brain-in-vat type scenario. Given that the physical causes of signaling are underdetermined and the way that these signals can only convey a one-dimensional signal about the presence of something, we might see the information communicated as having no explicit notion of representational content beyond their binary states ("bits") of activation or silence. In a sense, the possible repertoire of states that can be generated by these "bits" is what actually gives the possible contents of experiences, independent of and irreducible to the extrinsic causes of those states. Insofar as different patterns or combinations of these states can directly cause distinct downstream responses, these contents then become actionable or usable and might be considered to have meaning in the context of other states.
No measurements are inherently capable of identifying what is being measured without the external observer having prior knowledge about what is being measured or how to interpret the outcomes; without something like an external observer role who assigns meaning to the membrane potential signals and then uses them appropriately, reducibility to the physical causes of sensory activation as we know them is not a given. Such semantic ambivalence is even implied in information theory, as stated by its most preeminent founder, Claude Shannon:
"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages. The system must be designed to operate for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design."
""
(Taken very out of context from https://hl99hl99.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-impossibility-of-reduction.html?m=1 which looking back on it I regard as unfinished and in need of lots of editing.)
'Meaning' is a superficial but maybe useful/intuitive idealization that does not fully reflect how cognition and brains work - purely mechanistic enaction or transformation between brain states (not representations). It is about predictive mechanisms in neurons from which sensori-motor loops emerge, about cause and effect. I would say experiences are like a coarse-graining of the structure of brain dynamics.
Nice article:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30714889/
Nice quote:
"Knowing is the process of dynamic assembly across multileveled systems in the service of a task. We do not need to invoke represented constructs such as object or extended in space and time outside the moment of knowing. Knowing, just like action, is the momentary product of a dynamic system, not a dissociable cause of action.... We think to act. Thus, knowing may begin as and always be an inherently sensorimotor act."
(quote from Dynamic Systems Theories - Esther Thelen, Linda Smith - Handbook of Child Psychology, Sixth Edition, Volume One: Theoretical Models of Human Development; 2006)
Important to recognize is that any input-output configuration relating one (set of) neuron(s) can be seen as a sensori-motor configuration in itself. There is a nesting of sensori-motor loops on different scales. We might consider even eco-systems as behaving as if it were a big sensori-motor loop in some ways. Then we have individual humans, brains, neuronal systems inside a brain at different scales. It even gets smaller than a neuron, on the scale of the dendrite where signals propagate and interact along the membrane in terms of excitation/inhibition/modulation.
Efficient coding should be syllopsistic and action-oriented -
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4010728/
https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.09063
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006899321004352#b0340
https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal2020/32/121/98428
That's very interesting. The causal theory of perception is obviously simplistic, just for the reasons you give here. But equally, it's obvious that organisms can learn to differentiate signals by the "sensori-motor loop". At least, I think that's what you are saying.
But here's where I find I'm tempted - the rats who have their whiskers enhanced are getting a new signal and unsurprisingly assume it is something familiar. But then they learn to distinguish the new signals and what they mean from the old signals and what they mean. Fine. But what's that like?
I've heard of people who have grafted new or enhanced sensory capacities into their nervous system. If I've remembered right, the most that they say is that they do get a recognizably new signal, which they describe as tingling or itching. I've not seen a detailed account of how they learn to interpret the signal and experience it directly as - what?
But thank you very much for the post.
What do you mean by "syllopsistic"?
Yes, just that representations and symbols are not fundamental nor necessary to this picture.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yup, thats the big mystery. I just fall on the position that that kind of thing is just outside the realm of explanation, description, anything. I can only assume that my experiences are what it's like to be certain kinds of structure in the world around the vicinity of the brain. Our models don't capture phenomenal experience but they are just that - models, not reality - I don't think they capture intrinsic ontology at all, nor do they carve out objective boundaries for ontologies. As you say, we prod and nature prods back, and all the proding can be done in various different purviews or perspectives.
Quoting Ludwig V
Often the way that it is looked at is that Brains are doing inference so that their models optimally match what it's like in the outside world. But obviously a non-representational view isn't about that nor does the brain ever have access to that to know if it is right or not and it cannot know in principle. I guess I just mean talking about things like efficient coding without needing to explicitly refer to objects outside the head (in the sense that the brain is trying to match some kind of representations to something it doesn't have access to).
Quoting Apustimelogist
Maybe we can say that it works on the reward principle, not on some reality principle. (But reward has to be interpreted generously - I mean that avoidance of pain is a reward, as well as the gaining of pleasure - in a generous sense of pleasure.
Quoting Apustimelogist
One would need to construct a criterion of efficiency that was "internal" to the way that coding works - i.e. with as little wasted effort as possible. No doubt it would have to link to the reward cycle.
Quoting Apustimelogist
That's what many people seem to do. But (and perhaps I should have mentioned this before) that seems to me to be a reason for saying that the question is malformed; it suggests something to us which turns out to be impossible. In other words, it is mystery-mongering - an illusion.
Do you recognize them as being the same person? You might assume a "causal history", even without (obviously) being able to know the detailsbut does that matter? Surely if there has been a causal history, then there has been a causal history and that fact is not dependent on your knowing it, knowing its details, or on you assuming it .
Of course, you could be mistaken, there might have been no causal history, but that would mean they are not the person you thought they were, merely someone who resembles them. That would probably be pretty unlikely, though, if they were able to recount details about your shared past that you had good reason to believe only the person you thought they were could know.
I have not fully kept up with the most recent posts/discussions in here, but I saw the word "supervenience" and thought it might help in this case convey my point better.
That is to say, a particular person's identity is not equivalent to the gametes, but it must by necessity supervene onto the set of gametes. Why?
In causo-historical terms, there was this set of gametes that are the terminus when looking back at how far back one may go before any actualized version of you would have changed if prior circumstances had changed. After this event, if everything happened as it had, YOU would be the person you are. However, if ANYTHING had changed related to the meeting of those gametes, YOU would not even exist, even if there was a person created by a similar set of gametes and had a life that was quite similar.
Wouldn't that be a metaphysical or ontological identity? It's no help when I bump into a long-lost friend. My point is that how I know is also an important question. I have a feeling that I usually assume that there is a causal thread, but very rarely know what it is. Perhaps it's not really relevant to my life.
Quoting schopenhauer1
You are assuming that the individual who grows from the DNA will be the same individual no matter what happens. But, in the first place, it doesn't follow that any individual will grow from that specific DNA, and it certainly doesn't follow that any particular individual will grow from that DNA. If my mother had suffered a deficiency of folic acid while that DNA was growing inside her, the resulting baby would have been born with spina bifida. I cannot imagine that. Therefore that person would not have been me. My family were middle class. If they had been working class, their children would have developed differently. Would they have been the same people? No clear answer.
So that's not necessarily the case. I think the interesting feature of my argument is that all that has to matter is the case that you actually have a causal-history (which we all do), and that actualized causal-history represents your life currently. Your current life supervenes on a pair of gametes, and no other. Any other pair of gametes would not even have lead to the possibility of this actualized existence, therefore, your identity necessitates the supervenience onto this and causal-historical circumstances and set of gametes.
I agree that does matter. But it does not mean that my life began my DNA was formed. I've tried endlessly to make a discussion with you, but you endlessly repeat the same doctrine, as you did in the message you sent to me on the Ryle thread. So I don't know what to say to you. But I do know that this non-discussion is getting boring. I don't have anything more to say about this, so we'll have to agree to disagree.
Very few philosophical discussions achieve agreement, so that shouldn't be surprising. But it is disappointing. Thank you for your time and attention.
I'm making sure to clarify what the position is. As long as we know what we agree to disagree about. And even now this is not my position (not about personal identity despite the title as I stated before):
Quoting Ludwig V
Rather, it's about the causal-history being this set of gametes and no other. This set of gametes is necessary, if not sufficient for you to be you. And that can only start at that point in time with that substantive set of gametes.
I'm sure that's your intention. However, I'm afraid that all you can do is to clarify what your position is.