Philosophy Articles #4-The Ship of Theseus

It is also important to note that many other questions arise out of the concepts of identity and essence. One set of such questions regards how identity factors into relationships between objects. For example, if two objects are identical (therefore are the same thing), will they always be immutably and unchangeably identical? The reasoning behind this question comes from the idea that for two objects to be truly identical, they must have absolutely no differences. This means that if the two objects experience two different sets of experiences, they are different and thus no longer identical. As a matter of fact, even being in a different position in space can change the identity of the objects. From this, we can conclude that an object can only really be identical to itself, as no other object can be the exact same, as no other object can occupy the same time and space constraints, among many others.

But perhaps the most famous question regarding identity and essence is the one posed by the thought experiment called the Ship of Theseus. This thought experiment dates back many centuries, all the way back to the ancient Greeks, where it was discussed by the philosophers Heraclitus (circa 535 BCE-475 BCE) and Plato (circa 428 BCE-347 BCE). The thought experiment revolves around a ship that the Greek mythological hero Theseus sailed. Say that the ship, due to many years of use, begins to rot. Slowly, the planks and various parts of the ship are replaced by new ones. After many years, every single part has been replaced. The question now is: Is the ship in its current state the original ship of Theseus?

One answer is that the ship is not, because each individual instance of the ship is a different ship. This reasoning claims that time is a property that acts upon the ship, and therefore the ship is constantly changing, because time is constantly moving forwards. As time moves forwards, the ship’s property of time changes and so its identity is changing with it. So, there are an infinite amount of instances of the ship, all different because of the different times at which they exist.

Another answer claims that the ship is the same, based off the idea that identity trumps essence. This reasoning starts from the basis that the essence of an object is not as important as the identity of the object in determining what it is because essence is only a part of the identity. This claims that each property has a level of importance, and if a majority of the importance is unchanged, than the object remains unchanged. Therefore, the object’s properties can change without the object actually changing. For example, water molecules can be rigidly packed together into ice or sparsely separated like vapor, but fundamentally all remain the same water, because the atoms of an object are a very important aspect. Thus, for the ship, this answer would suggest that because the ship still serves the purpose of a ship, is ship-shaped, and has all the components of the original ship, it is the same ship, just with some changed properties.

A third argument denies the existence that there is even a ship! In this argument, the ship is just a mass of atoms arranged in a fashion that humans have conceptualized as a ship. The ship after having all its parts replaced is another concept. The reasoning now is that the two concepts can be compared, and thus therefore must be different (because humans cannot compare something to itself).
Later, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) extended this problem. He claimed that the ship would slowly lose its identity as each part was being replaced, until the last part had been replaced and so the ship was totally different. But he then proceeded to consider what would happen if all the replaced old parts of the ship were gathered together and built into a new ship. Would this second ship, constructed out of the old parts, be the same as the old ship?

And finally, we have the approach of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), who claims that many philosophical problems, including this one, are actually problems of language and semantics. Wittgenstein’s ideas revolved around the fallibility of language, and so his approach claims that words mean different things to different people; and thus the problem lies in different interpretations of these words.

Philosophy Articles #3-Identity and Essence

At the end of Section 1.2, the question of is versus made up of was posed. Does what something is made up of define what it is? This question is important not only to the puzzle of what ideas really are that was posed along with the question, but also to the greater scheme of things. First, we need to define these two concepts. In the question, when “made up of” is used, it refers to the composition or the individual parts of something. In contrast, what something “is” refers to what something exists as or its fundamental nature.

So, really what we are dealing with is the question of whether the parts of something define the whole. Consider a table. The physics explanation for what the table is involves describing it as a mass of atoms. It is created from the wood, and the cellulose fibers that the wood is made of, and then the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms that the cellulose respectively is made out of. But we do not call the table a mass of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. We consider it to be a table. 

The table is mostly made up of just four basic elements (carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen). These elements are very abundant and common in the world, existing in many different compounds and situations. These other things, such as plants and humans are made up of many of the same elements, but they are not considered to be tables. Therefore, this seems to suggest that the way that the elements are arranged is a crucial part to defining what the object is. Based on this line of reasoning, everything can be defined in terms of its fundamental elements (the material aspect) put together in a specific pattern or recipe (the more idea-based aspect). From this, it seems reasonable to conclude that the world, though created of material atoms, requires ideas to be properly put together.

These two concepts have been termed by philosophers as the concepts of identity and essence. Identity is what the thing or object is (in more complicated but rigorous terms, how the object relates to itself); essence is the fundamental properties that allow the same thing to be what it is. The identity of the table is that it is a table, but its essence might contain the properties that the table needs to fulfill the task of a table (and a possible property of this might include that it must support whatever is placed upon it) and that it might involve a sheet of some material placed upon legs, made also of some material.  These properties collectively define the essence of the table, but its identity remains that it is a table. Also, what an object is made up of seems to only be part of its essence, (one property of the table is that it is made of wood, for example) but there are other aspects (such as the table can be used for placing objects upon).

So, it becomes the connection between these two ideas that becomes the main area for debate between philosophers. What exactly is the connection between essence and identity? 

In metaphysics, the identity of indiscernibles refers to the concept that two things are identical if every property of the first thing is also shared by the second thing, and vice versa. This principle ties together the concepts of identity and essence previously mentioned in Section 1.3. Identity and Essence. What the principle is basically claiming is that if two things have the same essence, they are the same, and therefore identical. Another part of this principle is that there cannot exist two things that are distinctly separate, yet somehow maintain the same set of properties (or essence). If we accept the identity of indiscernibles to be true, it directly relates essence and identity, stating that identity is determined by essence.

Most often, philosophers related identity and essence to be very closely related, arguing that if the essence of a thing is lost, it loses its identity. However, is it possible that the two concepts are not indeed related? For example, it is possible that nothing really has a true “identity”. Identity could be just a concept that humans have created. We use it to name things to describe them to others, but objects do not inherently have an identity; instead, they have an essence that makes them what they are.

Philosophy Articles #2-Reality

What does it mean to be real?

At first glance, this question seems to be the same one as described the first article, regarding existence, but there is a significant difference. Consider the concept of a unicorn. The immediate image is of a horse with a horn, perhaps with rainbow-colored hair and an angelic white body. Thus far, we do not know that such a creature exists in the world, and yet we are able to have this idea of a unicorn. The unicorn must exist because we can come up with this concept of a unicorn, but it is not necessarily real.

For many, this is the difference between reality and existence. For them, everything exists, because the moment we create an idea of anything, it exists. But reality is different, as only that which is material can be real. From a young age, we are told that our imaginary friends, fantasies, and stories are “not real” because they are all purely imaginary. So it seems that the accepted definition of reality deals with the material world, while existence can cover the immaterial world as well.

What exactly does the immaterial world contain? According to the arguments posed by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (circa 428 BCE-347 BCE), there exists a “realm of ideas” where the perfect versions of everything are. Everything in the material world therefore is the human understanding of one of these ideas. For example, somewhere in the realm of ideas exists the perfect table. All other tables, regardless of color, shape, size, or other properties, are similar enough to this perfect table that they can be classified as tables. However, this argument has been attacked by opponents who claim it does not consider abstract concepts such as the idea of “nothingness” or the idea of “love”. 

From our current understanding of science, everything that is real is made up of atoms and subatomic particles that combine with each other to create the reality we know. But science seems to have a harder time explaining ideas and abstract concepts. Neuroscientists have found that thoughts are ideas originate as electrical impulses. What we aren’t able to explain yet, however, is how these electrical impulses are able to create the complex emotions and consciousness that we feel. 

The formal name for the branch of philosophy dealing with the fundamental nature of reality is called metaphysics, and it seeks to examine how we are able to interact with reality and know about reality. Metaphysics literally means “after-physics,” or everything that normal physics cannot explain. Ontology, which was mentioned in Section 1.1. Existence, is usually defined to be a sub-field of metaphysics, as it only specifically deals with questions of being, whereas metaphysics covers many more topics and is significantly more broad.

However, the philosophers Willard V. O. Quine (1908-2000) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), among many others, claim that the concept of existence and reality are the same; things that are real must exist, and vice versa. Going back to the example of the unicorn, what this means is that the unicorn does not exist, only the idea of the unicorn does. This is a strong counter to the first claim that something can exist, if only in idea. The simplest way to understand the difference between these dramatically contrasting ideas is to consider whether something can exist only in idea, and then also consider how ideas relate to the material world. Science does explain ideas with relatively high certainty to be simply electrical impulses, but then there is a distinction between what something is made up of in contrast to what something is. Perhaps ideas are made up of electrical signals, but does that necessarily make them electrical signals?

Philosophy Articles #1-Existence

What exists? What is existence?

These questions of existence is one of the most fundamental in all of philosophy, because it forms the basis for most, if not all other philosophical thought. Other branches of philosophy often rely on the assumption that there is indeed something that exists in order to have something to philosophize about. The formal name for this branch of philosophy is called ontology, and it deals with the concepts involving how things exist. 

Consider this: in the revolutionary 1999 movie The Matrix, the main character Neo discovers that the existence and reality he “lived in” was nothing more than an illusion; everything he lived in was merely a simulation created by superintelligent computers for their own purposes. 

Thus, in dealing with these questions of existence, a significant problem arises almost immediately--we can’t really know what exists and what doesn’t exist. If everything was just an illusion or a simulation, how would we know that the existence we think we know about is real? In other words, how do we know that we aren’t just living in a Matrix-style illusion? 

So, we aren’t able to know for certain that we do indeed exist and that what appears to be existence is really existence. But it is possible that we either know with enough certainty that we do exist, we can assume that we exist, or a combination of both.

Firstly, things appear to exist to us, and it seems that we can interact with the various things in the world. Therefore, it is reasonable that we can assume that there must be some type of existence associated with all of our experiences. Even if we were being deceived and everything we knew was not the actual reality, it would be good enough for us. We don’t have to worry about the full and total truth about reality the same way those characters from The Matrix have to. Until there’s some type of highly convincing argument that we exist in a simulation, The Matrix remains a possibility--but ONLY a possibility. It is equally, if not more likely, that it is not indeed reality and that our existence is the real existence.

Furthermore, the world and existence as we know it seems to follow certain rules, certain patterns, certain laws. Even if we didn’t actually exist, we can assume that we do exist as thinking, sentient beings. Being the thinking, sentient beings we are as humans, we want to understand. We want to know. So we’ve devised the systems of philosophy and science to assist us in our understanding of existence and the fundamental nature of being. If you think about the very word “being” as it is used to describe us, there is an implied assumption that we do exist nested in it.