I just found an excellent article on the subject of identity:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity/
It is heavy reading. But it does give an excellent overview of the
subject.
I can't say that I managed in a couple of hours to fully digest all
the information
in there.
Henry
On 22 May 2005, at 02:51, Robert Sayre wrote:
On 5/21/05, Henry Story <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 22 May 2005, at 02:27, Robert Sayre wrote:
On 5/21/05, Bob Wyman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Robert Sayre wrote:
Temporal order of what? They are all the same entry, so what is it
you are temporally ordering?
We are discussing the temporal ordering of multiple non-
identical
*instances* of a single Atom entry. It is common in the realm of
software
engineering to deal with this concept of "instances."
Things are often
considered to be simultaneously "different" and "the same". (I am
who I am
today -- as I was when I was a child, nonetheless, I am very
different today
than I was when I was a child. The instance of me today differs
from the
instance of me that you might have come across many years ago.)
But, perhaps
this concept is too abstract for some readers...
I'm unconvinced. Have a giant -1.
How can you be unconvinced about something so fundamentally basic
to human thought? People change over time. When you clip your nails
your body is not the same as it was before, yet as far as the law is
concerned, you are the same person who went to whatever school you
went to.
Change over time exists. For something to be able to change there
has to
be something that is the thing that changes.
Really you can't get more basic than this. If you are left to
argument
over this, I would suggest moving your discussion over to a
philosophy
forum.
Gee, Henry, maybe you should draw us a UML diagram to explain all
this.
Robert Sayre
