Pat C, Matthew, Phil M, and Jon A, Basic issue: How do we determine whether two things that we experience on different occasions (or that we describe in different ways) are "the same"?
For example, suppose we describe something as a vase, and somebody else describes it as a lump of clay. Are they referring to the "same thing"? Or suppose we meet John Doe on one occasion and his "identical" twin Jimmy Doe at a later date. Even if Jimmy tells us that he's not "the same" as John, we can't observe the earlier stages. His words are our basis for talking, reasoning, or acting about the difference. Even if we get more records or testimony from independent sources, they are just words or photos. We can't observe the continuity. And Pat raises an even more complex example: PC
one can refer to a “quantity of a substance” as a “PhysicalObject” (mass, location, composition). In the (very common) case where one has a quantity of some mixture of substances (a 14-K gold ring, e.g.) there is a quantity of “gold” and a quantity of “copper”. There is no reason I can think of not to be able to refer to the gold in that ring as an object separate from the copper – that is logically coherent. As long as the ring exists, those two quantities of substance will have the same spatio-temporal location.
You can only answer this question with a question: Why do you ask? As a somewhat simpler case, suppose you go to IKEA and buy a box of parts for a table. Those parts were spatially very close from the moment they were packed in Sweden, shipped to the store, brought to your garage, and taken out of the box. For a while, they were separated by a short distance, mixed with yourself and some tools, and finally assembled as a table. What are the identity conditions for that "thing"? MW
if you find two objects with the same spatio-temporal extent, then they are the same thing. Essentially that means that if (and only if) they occupy the same space over the whole of their life, they are the same thing.
But what do you mean by "the whole of their life"? Are the parts in the box a different "thing" or are they part of the life of the table? PM
the 4-D model for objects seems at odds with how humans actually experience and understand the things, beings, and processes around them, regardless of changes in state and changes in characteristics over the course of their existence.
Yes. Although I have a strong sympathy for the 4D view, it isn't sufficient by itself. Intentions are critical to explain our ways of talking, thinking, and acting. You might say that the table wasn't "born" as a table until the parts were assembled in your garage. But then you might discover that getting the table from the garage to your basement, up a flight of stairs to the kitchen, and then to the dining room was a challenge. At that point, you wouldn't disassemble the whole table. You could just remove the four legs, ask a friend to help, carry the table top to the dining room, go back for the legs, and attach them where you want the table. While the legs were in the garage and the top was being moved, the parts were separated by a greater distance than they had been since they were packed in the box in Sweden. How can we describe the various stages of the table (or the vase or the gold ring) in a systematic way that is faithful to the way we talk and the way we translate our talk to some version of logic? PC
Does the notion of “identity” as implying “identical spatio-temporal location” require that we do the impossible, of tracing an object back to the origin of the universe? How does one preserve that notion of identity and deal with the problem of co-location, within some meaningful and accessible time interval?
The 4D definition requires a "God's eye" view of the universe. You could say, along with Heraclitus and my namesake John the Evangelist, "In the beginning was the Logos, all things (panta) that came to be (gignomai) came to be through (dia) or according to (kata) that Logos." St. John added "the Logos is God". Spinoza was more faithful to Heraclitus by identifying God and Nature (i.e., pantheism). But that answer got him in trouble at the local synagogue. But whether you prefer theism, pantheism, or atheism, you can talk about a system of laws (Logos) as explanations of how all things (including people) behave and interact. The laws are a compact statements. They include the precisely formulated laws of science and engineering and the more complex intentions of people and other living things. Most laws of science are simpler when stated in a 4D coordinate system. But ordinary language is usually simpler with a system of 3D plus time. But any observations (data) stated in one language or notation can be translated to and from any other. Richard Coyne, as cited by Jon Awbrey
Architecture is a practical and pragmatic discipline, and a study of Peirce emphasises architecture as a practice, and a practice grounded in the materiality of the world. Unlike other thinkers headlined in the Routledge book series Thinkers for Architecture (my book is number 15 in the series), there is no “Peircean architecture” as such, and no particular movement, style or body of work that demonstrates allegiance to him. But in so far as any practitioner, educator or critic claims to be pragmatic, they owe a debt, however indirectly, to Peirce’s thinking... Peirce speaks to mathematicians, logicians, those systems theorists who seek orderly methods for solving the world’s problems, and those of the Design Methods Movement who seek orderly, mathematical and logical procedures for designing buildings. Peirce’s influence extends to digital practitioners and programmers in architecture, and more recently those interested in big data, and responsive architecture that copies biological processes and forms (biomimesis).
That is Coyne's own summary of his book. For more, see https://richardcoyne.com/2019/03/30/architectures-pragmatic-turn/ For a brief (12 page) intro to Peirce's theory of signs and its application to ontology, see http://jfsowa.com/pubs/signs.pdf My answer to the original question: Any statement in any language or logic is always intended for some purpose in some context. That is just as true for the most abstract theories of philosophy and science as it is for ordinary life. The only way to answer a question about the Ship of Theseus or Pat's golden ring is to respond with another question: Why do you ask? The way the US army answered the question about rifles is the only general principle that can end the chain: Assert some officially specified identity conditions: Two rifles are "the same" if and only if they have the same serial number on their stock. This is one of many reasons why I keep saying that Part I of the proposed ISO standard is worthless as a guideline for specifying or evaluating ontologies. Any ontology that is not designed for some purpose or intention has no purpose. John
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