From ff1335e5a2a8a14b1638cb747d4e537c64fcacf69ad968179ce0a9d363c3df39 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Nicholas Johnson Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Subject: Fix word repetition errors --- content/entry/the-self.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'content/entry/the-self.md') diff --git a/content/entry/the-self.md b/content/entry/the-self.md index 8786f47..7e2fe83 100644 --- a/content/entry/the-self.md +++ b/content/entry/the-self.md @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ The problem with any spoken language is that in order to be useful, it has to cr This is something that I have always found intuitive but is an easy mistake to make in philosophy. I would argue that a rather large fraction of academic papers about philosophy aren't actually creating an interesting argument or bringing any substance to the table. Academics are simply bickering about how words should be used without even realizing it. For example, look at the [Ship of Theseus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus). The essential question it poses is this: "Is an object the same object if all its component parts are replaced over time?". I agree with Noam Chomsky that this is a cognitive issue manufactured by humans because we get really bent out of shape if we don't know what to label something. We have to have a label. So what we do we call something if all its parts are replaced? Do we call it something else or do we call it the same thing? Now the problem becomes more clear. It's a question about language. -The right question is "If an object's parts are replaced, should we still call it the same object?". We could make a pros and cons list of calling it the same object versus giving it a different name and decide what makes more sense. One might think I'm being being pedantic about this and philosophers understand the real question is about what we call the object. My own personal experience has shown that this is not true. People often do not understand that they're arguing about what to call something, and it's not any deeper than that. This is called [Mistaking the Map for the Territory](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mistaking_the_map_for_the_territory). +The right question is "If an object's parts are replaced, should we still call it the same object?". We could make a pros and cons list of calling it the same object versus giving it a different name and decide what makes more sense. One might think I'm being pedantic about this and philosophers understand the real question is about what we call the object. My own personal experience has shown that this is not true. People often do not understand that they're arguing about what to call something, and it's not any deeper than that. This is called [Mistaking the Map for the Territory](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Mistaking_the_map_for_the_territory). But we have also created another problem. What is an object? Let's take a car for example. Let's say we haven't replaced any parts. Where does the car stop and the car's environment begin? Is the air inside the car also the car? What if the car is in orbit around the earth and it has no air, is the space inside the car still the car, or is it just empty space? This questioning is ridiculous in one sense because when I say the word "car", every English speaker intuitively knows what the word "car" means. For all practical usages of the word "car" we will never have to worry about bizarre philosophical quandaries about the identity of the car (especially since there's no "Car of Theseus"). We all just sort of know what other people talk about when they talk about a "car". -- cgit v1.2.3