Poll: The Escapist Debates; The Computer of Theseus

[Wrex Brogan]

Philosophy only matters when it's asking questions of substance.

Hmmm...that's a subject of debate in of itself. Even putting aside arguing over what counts as substance.

I'll be honest, if the philosophical query can be summarized with a blunt 'Yes', somebody has fucked up somewhere. Philosophy is a really cool and neat toolbox of stuff to figure out all the complexities of the human condition and shit like existentialism, but... man, is it not a universal application. Much better at handling the metaphorical and hypothetical than the physical.

Like, utilize a pitchfork as a metaphor for a philosophical conundrum, but the physical pitchfork is... just a pitchfork. Questioning 'why' is just a good way to get a lot of puzzled looks and responses like 'because it is?' and 'It pitches, it's shaped like a fork'.

Remember, Philosophize Responsibly.

 

[Recusant]

In a sense yes, in a sense no I suppose. Humans have a similar thing since our body continually replaces parts of itself, but with a computer one could argue a bit more.

When the Romans and Byzantines split from each other (people will tell you that the Byzantines were Roman, but if you buy that, I've got a bridge to sell you)?

It would be a bit hard for something that never existed to split from something that did(byzantines is term invented in the 1500s).

Insofar as the city was founded in the seventh century BC and was continuously inhabited by Byzantines, no, it wasn't invented in the 1500's. Sure, the people called themselves Roman, I don't dispute that- but they could've called themselves Martian and that wouldn't've made it true. There was a time when they were part of the Roman empire and could justifiably call themselves Roman; that time lasted quite a while. But by the time the Roman empire collapsed, the Byzantines had become something else- they weren't culturally Roman, they weren't religiously Roman, and the bulk of the people didn't even speak Latin any more. To claim that the Byzantine Empire never existed, that they weren't a successor state but a continuation, is nothing more than spouting propaganda- the equivalent of saying that, because of a common culture that hadn't fully diverged at the time, Shakespeare was American. The Byzantine empire was Greek, through and through.

 

[Souplex]

Philosophy only matters when it's asking questions of substance.

Hmmm...that's a subject of debate in of itself. Even putting aside arguing over what counts as substance.

A great philosopher once said "All philosophers should be forced to work as brick-layers to avoid disappearing up their own asses" -Paraphrased translated from deutsch.

 

[bauke67]

To be fair I didn't simply say "Who cares?" I had a line of reasoning that went as follows:
Does it matter? -> No. -> Then who cares?
Philosophy only matters when it's asking questions of substance.

Of course no one really cares much wether it's the same computer, and only a few history/mythology fans might care wether it's the same boat, but wouldn't you say that the broader issue these examples are dealing with does matter? The subject of identity is on a personal level of the highest importance to many people. Many people wonder wether some extreme life event could change who they are. Or take the legal sphere: is someone who took drugs(perhaps involuntarily) and while under it's influence committed some crime, still the same person after the effects wear off? Identity and responsibility are often closely connected here.

We talk about ships and computers because they are less morally and emotionally charged, but we're still dealing with the same question: are they the same, and if so, what makes them the same?

Nice to see someone else familiar with Heraclitus, almost didn't use his quote earlier because I got sick of having to explain how rivers change.
The essence of an object is not the same as its components. The river always changes, but its still that river. The pattern of it lives on and yet pattern can change as well. I guess the heart of the matter is: what is essence? Something being something is assigned. The isness of it just is. What it is called and the borderlines between thing and not thing are human conceptions. The set of behaviors defines how we conceive of the essence of a set of phenomenae yet a phenomenon can exist to contradict that, thus redefining our conception.

The object still exists. Our viewing it as an object is a human conception.

I'm afraid I don't entirely get what you're saying. You're asking what essence is? When talking of general things, I'd say a definition of the thing could provide that essence, but in the case of a specific river, the only answer that is at all definite seems to be an exhaustive list of it's properties. You say the river remains "that" river, after it has flown for a bit, but when you point and say "that river" at first, and then point again later, you point at rivers with different and contradictory properties.
If we don't define a specific object in terms of it's properties, all we can give is some vague intuitions that stem from our psychological make up, but I see no concrete way to say anything about that.
In light of this, why would you say a specific object is not the same as it's component properties?

 

[Recusant]

In a sense yes, in a sense no I suppose. Humans have a similar thing since our body continually replaces parts of itself, but with a computer one could argue a bit more.

When the Romans and Byzantines split from each other (people will tell you that the Byzantines were Roman, but if you buy that, I've got a bridge to sell you)?

It would be a bit hard for something that never existed to split from something that did(byzantines is term invented in the 1500s).

Insofar as the city was founded in the seventh century BC and was continuously inhabited by Byzantines, no, it wasn't invented in the 1500's. Sure, the people called themselves Roman, I don't dispute that- but they could've called themselves Martian and that wouldn't've made it true. There was a time when they were part of the Roman empire and could justifiably call themselves Roman; that time lasted quite a while. But by the time the Roman empire collapsed, the Byzantines had become something else- they weren't culturally Roman, they weren't religiously Roman, and the bulk of the people didn't even speak Latin any more. To claim that the Byzantine Empire never existed, that they weren't a successor state but a continuation, is nothing more than spouting propaganda- the equivalent of saying that, because of a common culture that hadn't fully diverged at the time, Shakespeare was American. The Byzantine empire was Greek, through and through.

I claim it doesn't exist because it never did. It never seized to be roman throughout its entire history. As with all cultures it merely changed and its weights simply shifted upon losing huge chunks of its territory. By the time the roman empire had reached its height, it was no different than USA and China in that it was no longer a small single culture stuck in a city. By that point it had become a superculture encompassing many subcultures beneath it, one of which were the graeco-romans and they were every bit as roman as their counterparts in the rest of the empire. The thracian greeks had long since been subsumed and absorbed by the romans at that point and yes the term "byzantine empire" was invented after the fact. That it was based on an old city that had once been where one of the emperors decided to found Nova Roma isn't particularly relevant. That'd be like me calling France "Soissons" after the Roman domain that used to be there until Clovis invaded and conquered it.

Oh and greek was the Lingua Franca of the empire and had been for a very long time. It was already a major dominant language of the empire long before it deteriorated. So yes they were very much still roman and like all cultures in history they'd changed and evolved based on events that happened to and around them.

Though I can tell I won't sway you given your reply, but I wouldn't let it stand unchallenged either so I'll stop derailing the topic since this will go nowhere.

Nice try, but if you're going to claim derailment, you need to go off the rails- and a discussion of when two examples of a thing reach the point where they can longer claim to be the same thing is exactly what the thread is about. like all cultures in history they'd changed and evolved based on events that happened to and around them

Now then, you're correct in that the word "Byzantine" wasn't widely applied to the empire as a whole until after it had collapsed. Iguanadons were never referred to as "dinosaurs" until they'd been extinct for a hundred million years; it's still an accurate term. But this is not a question of names, it's a question of natures. We do not refer to the Byzantine's predecessor state as the Central Italian empire, do we? No, we call it Roman, after the city where it began and which served as its center- both administratively and culturally. Once the empire had split, and the- let's call it the Western Part- had collapsed, the Eastern Part could no longer claim Roman administration. Can we agree on this? That once Rome was out of the picture, Rome was no longer in the picture? Constantinople would stand for more than a thousand years longer, however, so if you're going to claim sufficient continuance to keep the name, the link has to be cultural.

But this is where the problem starts- you yourself admit "like all cultures in history they'd changed and evolved based on events that happened to and around them". As I said, a culture is not a computer. But if you have abandoned the old way of doing things to the extent of casting aside language, faith, and all but trace elements of social philosophy, what link can you still claim to have? Titles and general governmental style?

Understand that I'm not belittling the Byzantines in this; I'm simply noting that by the point of the Western Part collapsing, the two cultures had diverged to the point where they can't really be called the same. Cultures develop organically; Greek didn't replace Latin because the Italians were suddenly gone, it replaced it as a natural result of Greek influence continually rising while Roman influence waned. Nor was the end product entirely divorced from its Roman origins; there's a reason it's the Byzantine empire and not the Greek empire.

You can claim that the point where you'd say that the two cultures were different is further along the line of division than where I say it is; that's entirely reasonable. But if you claim the two never diverged simply because of overculture elements, then they're not Roman and never were; they're just a relatively recent subgroup of Idaltu culture. If you claim the two never diverged because of an unbroken line of political succession, they're again not Roman and never were; they're just the latest batch of really really mutated amoebas.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Most of my body will be replaced over the course of the next 8 months. It's still mine... and unlike computer parts if you try to salvage my ex-body cells, platelets, fluids and excrement I'm calling the police.

 

[bauke67]

Personal bias. Every breath, I change my molecular constituency. I slough and regrow and experience all sorts of biological functions that alter and maintain me moment by moment. I am constantly changing. I still feel I'm me. The broom/pitchfork/computer changes, it is different in composition but somehow we can say its still A broom/ /pitchfork/computer. The debate is whether it is still THE computer/broom/pitchfork. I think it has changed but its still that object because of how we view that object. Like you said, its psychological.

I wonder if the Sorites paradox is pertinent.
You have a huge pile of sand. You remove 1 grain. Is it stilla pile of sand? Yes? Remove another grain. Still a pile? Keep removing. Eventually its no longer a pile. Can you say which grain separated pileness from nonpileness?

Our view of objects is similar instead of removing the grains we replace them. I think I asked more questions than I answered. Sorry.

Haha, if we start viewing questions as a bad thing we might as well stop doing philosophy I think we pretty much agree on this subject though. But suppose we do have this pile of sand, composed of a few million yellow grains, and we start replacing grains. Each new grain will be blue instead of yellow. Then at first we have a yellow pile, but after the first change it will be a yellow and blue pile. I'm not really sure where I was going with this, probably something about it not being the same pile anymore after the first change.

 

[Glongpre]

It is still the same computer, if you still have the same programs and stuff it had before. If you didn't change where everything is stored (the brain), then it is still the same computer.

If you get all your skin burnt off, and lose all your limbs, but get it all replaced (with prosthetics or cybernetics, w/e), would you be the same person??
Yes, because the person is identified by what it thinks, and you never lost your brain, so same deal with a computer.

 

[DoPo]

It is still the same computer, if you still have the same programs and stuff it had before. If you didn't change where everything is stored (the brain), then it is still the same computer.

So, the follow up question there is, what constitutes a large enough change for it to become a "different computer". What if I install or uninstall a program - it now has a different subset - is it new? What if I move all software to a new location, e.g., to a new partition? And yeah, what if I change the partitions - go for 2 to 6 and spread the data among them? Would reinstalling the OS alter the computer? Would installing different OS change the computer, e.g., going from Windows 7 to Windows 10 or vice versa? Or installing Linux? If yes, then what about dual booting?

Then we can get more existential yet - would virtualising that setup lead to it being the same computer again?

And here is a more complex scenario built on top of the previous ones - say, we assume that adding or removing software doesn't constitute it being a "new" computer unless it's drastic (wipe all to factory settings and install completely different software, for example). And say, we also assume that virtualising the computer still keeps it the same. What happens if we virtualise the computer, destroy the original[footnote]effectively, that is - perhaps it's now a "different" machine because it's been wiped and repurposed[/footnote] then spin up two instances of this machine. Afterwards, we start changing them separately - uninstall one thing, install another, delete small amounts of data from one, add some to the other and so on and so forth. Over time, they start diverging until they look nothing alike - data is completely different, software is completely different. For the sake of the example, let's say they only keep the OS the same, but everything else has been changed and both instances now serve two completely different purposes, neither of which is like the original. Would both still be the same PC? Neither? Perhaps one?

 

[Paragon Fury]

Jeez, this got a bit derailed....

 

[Souplex]

Jeez, this got a bit derailed....

The moral of the story is that philosophizing is detrimental to society at large.

 

[Glongpre]

It is still the same computer, if you still have the same programs and stuff it had before. If you didn't change where everything is stored (the brain), then it is still the same computer.

So, the follow up question there is, what constitutes a large enough change for it to become a "different computer". What if I install or uninstall a program - it now has a different subset - is it new? What if I move all software to a new location, e.g., to a new partition? And yeah, what if I change the partitions - go for 2 to 6 and spread the data among them? Would reinstalling the OS alter the computer? Would installing different OS change the computer, e.g., going from Windows 7 to Windows 10 or vice versa? Or installing Linux? If yes, then what about dual booting?

Then we can get more existential yet - would virtualising that setup lead to it being the same computer again?

And here is a more complex scenario built on top of the previous ones - say, we assume that adding or removing software doesn't constitute it being a "new" computer unless it's drastic (wipe all to factory settings and install completely different software, for example). And say, we also assume that virtualising the computer still keeps it the same. What happens if we virtualise the computer, destroy the original[footnote]effectively, that is - perhaps it's now a "different" machine because it's been wiped and repurposed[/footnote] then spin up two instances of this machine. Afterwards, we start changing them separately - uninstall one thing, install another, delete small amounts of data from one, add some to the other and so on and so forth. Over time, they start diverging until they look nothing alike - data is completely different, software is completely different. For the sake of the example, let's say they only keep the OS the same, but everything else has been changed and both instances now serve two completely different purposes, neither of which is like the original. Would both still be the same PC? Neither? Perhaps one?

I'll be honest, I have no idea what you just said. I am not that computer savvy.

Computers don't have a conscience or morality or characteristics of a personality, so for the most part any big changes make it a new computer. Changing an OS would make it different than the old. Same with changing a graphics card. That kind of thing. These changes would have a big impact. Mostly things that improve or change hardware.
So changing the case, deleting some programs, or updating a driver isn't gonna make it a new computer.

 

[The Lunatic]

Now that I think about it, I've never completely upgraded a PC in a single purchase.

There's always at least something from the old whenever I upgrade.

At this stage, I believe the oldest part is a HDD from a few builds ago.