Identical Identity

Identical Identity

Samuel Bird

Caught between the infinite, the finite, and the nothingness, the mind calls out for what is not there. Yet, we feel its call and seek to warp even the most brute of facts to access what we will. Meet me in my mind and follow me in meditation. Follow me as we follow thoughts and facts, breaking down their parts so we get to more atomic components, only to find those components themselves are divisible. Below the sentences, words, and letters is a deep grammar that undergirds being. Follow it until we are not just looking at the paper, but at the particulates that made up the page. Each blot of ink that comprised each letter is now a monolith overhead. Yet, let us continue on at finding what lies below. We see the fibers of the dried pulp that made the paper and the molecules that made up the pulp. The Atoms that make up the molecules. The particles that make up the atom. The quarks that made up the particles. Where are we going? Somehow in zooming into this world, we found it. Here it is. We have been able to shrink our conceptual fingers to fit under the totality of being and lift. What lay on the other side and what are we to see back? We gave on the last thread that made up being as the verb that made up all nouns to make all verbs. Below that, perhaps in error, we find ourselves again. A new world much akin to the one we left, but with one variance that changes the whole nature of that being. If that universe we have entered is outside of ours or overlay in it and we now have accessed it, it does not matter. This is the multiverse. Seeing as the original universal definition was the all of being, we are playing with words here, but still. It is that plane that is either parallel or overlay over ours. This verse, or rather a series of them, is a plane or realm only accessible in thought. This would inevitably lead to the question of in what sense could it be real. Minds other than you and I can deal with that. The notion sprouted from the need to explain how the near-infinite contingency of our world just happened to be so, such that there could be minds to perceive it. Perhaps a new type of mind could erupt there, but we can’t know. When this multiplicity of verses is talked about in popular narratives, it is often used to have markedly similar characters and facts, just with slight variances that push the plot on. This is not the original point of the multiverse as it was rather a universe that had more or less gravitational force or more or less speed for light. However, since thought is toward the affinity of the thinker, let us consider this in terms of a new us. We then find ourselves using this multiverse as another medium to make up the story we wish transpired. What if I got the girl? What if I didn’t give up on my passions? What if I had better self-control? We change variables and then find ourselves surprised at the outcomes. What of all the minute causal relationships that could have changed? If I had fallen in love, I wouldn’t be asking the question. If I had done my passions, perhaps I would hate them. We now see we can’t see how small effects add up over time as they can even negate the intended outcome that sponsored the input. You perhaps know my thoughts on daydreaming, leaving our world for one that gives us what we want, but let’s permit so for me. Let’s destroy every brutal fact and properly basic notion and imagine that dream of dreams. In another world, another life, another time, we were different. We ask because this difference could illicit our desires. What if, in another world...

I will not go on my usual tirade about how this is the only existence we have access to and it is the only one that has the dignity to be present. What I will say, is that if I grant you everything we just assumed: There is another world so markedly similar, but happens to have the value that you wanted, in what material sense would that still be you? There are two ways we can mean this. The first a fact being identical to a fact, and the second being a conscious entity being identical to itself. To the first, no two objects are similar enough to be without variance, and even if they did, they don’t occupy the exact same temporal-spatial vicinity. The human being is comprised of its aspects. While the body is like every fact, identical only to itself, neither can the mind or consciousness be. The singularity of consciousness is minute enough to only be itself aware of its surroundings. If you could be a philosophical zombie, as far as I am concerned, you certainly can’t be the cogito ergo sum I find myself to be. You could not dress like me, talk like me, or think like me sufficient we could say you are me. Even if you were my twin or clone and we managed to have the same exact physical body, we would not share it in exact time or space. Even if we ignore that, awareness is always separate from all, let alone awareness in another. Going back to this “you” in the multiverse that has one variance, it can’t be identical to you. Let’s say that we can banish the temporal-spatial aspects because that universe is happening now and overlaid over ours. Even if we ignored any distinctness that made it a separate universe, it would still not be identical to you. Why? Because in getting the girl, living the dream, or acting differently, that entity would not be you. Fine, what if there was a plane overlay on this with the same time and space and had no variances of attributes? Then, in what real sense would that realm not be this one? As I have said before, the honor to be us is worth the cost of what it transacted from us. This is because there is no way that I am without that thing. So, my identity is contingent on the facthood at hand. There is no world in which you never went through your horrors, because there is no world that being would be materially you, let alone identical. Exclusion and rarity make the luxury. So then too can it make the value of being? You are not even identical to what you were. Your aspects are not identical to each other and are even at odds. Perhaps there are other minds in my body, but I just don’t know they are here, but in what material sense could they then be as far as I am concerned? This is the question of identity. What does it mean for something to be that something? A thing is only exactly equivalent to itself. It can have shared qualities to the point we even can ignore the differentiation, but it is not the same. I have a cup of pens on my desk. Many are different, but there are a few similar combinations. While they have the same color, maker, and thickness, they are effectively the same as my mind doesn’t care to memorize their details and make a distinction, they are not identical for reasons we have already discussed. 

Let us further look at this idea of identity with the words “is” and “am.” I am Samuel Bird. Is this the case? If the person whose pronoun is instantiated is the writer of this, then yes. If you send the sentence therefore self referring as the I, then likely not. What is happening here. “I” and “Samuel Bird” are Identical in the instance they are referring to. This is simply because they are referring to the same thing, which again is solely identical with itself. If I say, “This rock is a stone” you will note that rocks and stones have some definitional variances, but their overlap allowed me to use both to reference the same fact. Baskets as words can have qualities that vary from the things they refer to. “I” is not always Samuel Bird, but it is when I say it. This is because of the universal instantiation of pronouns or the general use of a word used to signify an instance. We are also able to existentially instantiate as a specific something that is named, as well as Existential generalizations which are like archetypes or forms (need careful use), and universal generalizations which I find to be a general Daoist reference to all of being (which at some point is all my philosophy leads to). These four combinations allow us to go from categories to instances to make sense of identity, but it stands distinct and proceeding each. Let us get back to “is.” A is A. This is true because it is the same thing and identically tautological. How about A is B? If A and B refer to the same thing, then it is a different referential name for the same instance and is again tautological. However, what about A is C? If by C I mean a quality or attribute, it is not. For example, water is wet. It is saying that A has the quality of C and not that they are identical. Words like “is” and “am” can explore identity, but they also explore qualities. Now let us look at a new word. That word is “therefore.” Instead of it denoting qualities denotes causation. While the problem of induction makes it hard to assume causation in the world, we can have its structure in the mind. If we have A, then we must have B. A would be the antecedent and B the consequent. To be deductive and precise, we can affirm or state A is the case, or Be is not the case. We can say B is true and C is false, but that does not necessitate the outcome and is therefore not logically necessary and deductive. Does causation denote identity? Can my throwing a stone be the exact same as it being thrown? No, the cause is not the same as the effect. However, there is another type of conditional called a biconditional where if A then B and also if B then A are compiled to be A if and only if B (this transition is called material equivalence). If we have one, we then have another. Could an event be identical to its cause if that cause was caused by its effect? First off, these are extremely rare. Enough I am too lazy to think of an example. However, they still don’t denote identity their causation is a dynamic fact that is at odds with the static fact we are in an instance. We also have the tool of conjunction where A and B are compiled to be a new thing. However, logic and its rules fail to grasp reality here. If we took all your atoms and compiled them together, we would have one nasty soup. However, if we compiled them in the right order and sequence, we would still not have you. Conjunction fails to account for the emergent properties that the compiled things have. Why did we ask all this? To prove that only A is A or A is B, as long as B is another name for A. This is where we get to Leibniz’s law. I always felt he was misunderstood and worth more of a glance than he gets. However, he made a new logical law that allows for the interchange of A and B given that they are equivalent. By this, he means they are materially the same in all ways to what I am calling identical. I will use the tactic of propaganda and convince with repetition. An instance is only identical to itself. 

If something is only what it is, then categories are mere inferences. I see no problem here. We can’t possibly respond to every fact as it is and hence have to infer to facts as they categorically tend to be. This is why I am in favor of allowing my philosophy to be pronounced by my emotions. Some may say this puts these emotions at direct odds with reason, but at some point of reason, it is an inference. Even if we make a deductive formula like “if A then B, not B, therefore not A. It is an inference that A and B track onto specific instances in the world. We only have inferences, we just get to handle some of them with the exactness of deduction. I don’t mind making you feel things, because it is your heart’s wisdom amassing a plethora of data points to affirm the case at hand. I am a fan of intellectual humility and double-edged skepticism because that is all we have, but we need to think. I loathe surety and especially surety which is from categories rather than instances. I will give an example that erks my soul. To some, archetypes are seen as a privileged point of viewing the world. I hate that. Sure, we are similar sorts of entities and have similar experiences of the same world. It is inevitable that we find snakes to correlate with X and cows with Y. Their seemingness meets us largely in similar ways. It would be fine to use them as an inference to make sense of the non-properly basic efforts of the psyche and social interactions. However, it is some severe sort of dumb to privilege them and a further stupid to not question them. The tendency of how things happen to be is destroyed when you see not only is that a tendency, but that the categories we are comparing are also tendencies. “Men tend to think this.” That is fine. I could let that be, and even listen to it. “Therefore this particular instance of a man must think this.” Did the good Lord not bless them with meat between their ears? Sure, it could inferentially denote this instance of a man would think such, but surely not surely. The more levels of inference we have, the messier it gets. Imagine if I said that ninety percent of the time, there is an eighty percent chance that the outcome will be seventy percent similar to this outcome that is sixty percent likely. How did those layers seem to you? I go back and forth on the platonic forms. If they are, we can’t know them and if they are not, they could still be useful. That metaworld of math and deduction makes sense to me. However, even if that platonic world did exist, don’t pretend like you know the categories and their associated demarcated definitions. Sure, God knows it, but we only can know how He relates to us, and not what He knows. The categories we have are coincidences that die off with the changing of their contingency. “But Samuel, the fact that characters have so much in common could denote the causal fact for why.” Yes, but it could be some third variable cause we can never know. These archetypes can be useful, but the brutal and privileged point is the point we are perceiving as and the unique instances we are perceiving. The moment your model is at epistemic odds with your experience, goodbye model. If explicable qualities solely made a phenomenon, perhaps whiskers could make the catfish a cat. 

When I fathom my life for that last privileged point of death, what will my closed eyes open to? Will there never again be anything as far as I am concerned as I am not there for it? I hold to God not as a certainty but as a necessity as a soul was made as half of what it needed. However, does He safekeep for me, a heaven and a life after this? If He does, I have my wishes such as that suffering still reigns and tears still flow. However, my weak faith is strained to think of that thing He will do with me when I am no more. Should he raise me from the dead, in what sense could he do that? To do so, he would need to change something about my ontology that made me identical to who I was when I did, let alone now. In what sense could that be me? My consciousness is that ever-present awareness that seems independent of time and even to cause it. Body or not, mind or not, if I am any moment post that I am not, there is still one sense that I will be. That last point of my being will then go in curious gratitude to that mind that thought it up in the first place. Am I the same man who started this article? I got a drink and used the restroom. My body is different. My mind has new thoughts. However, I am still that singularity that sits on that mountain and makes sure everything is being seen enough to be. I can do so for the mountain, but the biggest mystery I see is the mirror. I can make a tautology for identity, but what is my existential identity? I am that thing that I am, but what is that? We only have access to nouns in terms of their verbs. You can only hear the change I make on paper of airwaves, see the light I reflect, or feel the pressure I press against your skin. You only have my secondary qualities as what I do and what adjectives it displays. We can then only know something based on what it does. However, something is not what it does. It is the antecedent. We can watch how the leaves come from upstream, but never see the tree. Are wet leaves, or are we the tree? Can we ever know the unknowable that only has its causes on display? It is only the lightest of inferences to affirm what you are by the consequence of what you do, but it is all we have. You are what you do, or at least, that is all we can know. However, before those energies, an essence and fact a form, but all we have is what you do. We can then put you in jail, befriend, or pay you for those outcomes, but we don’t know the mystery behind it. Neither do you. We find ourselves surprised by what we choose. If we didn’t expect the outcome, we certainly didn’t know the antecedent. However, let us infer as all we have. If you do valuable sorts of things, we have to conclude with the little access at hand, that you are a valuable entity. We then can infer what you are, based on what you do. However, we will never know that thing you are identical to. No matter what we call you, you are the only thing identical to yourself. In time, you are then tautologically only what you are now. As you can be something more later, use that to your will. However, take some honor to be the only sort of thing that has your identity possibly. Finally, please don’t torture yourself with ideas of your identity in non-identical ways. I love you too much for that. Don’t let these ideas be dry facts. Let them mingle with values to be calls to action. Do not snuff out the candle that is unlike any flame. Do not destroy the canvas whose paint marks are unique. Do not wish against that blessed thing I find you to be, because there is majesty in your divine solitude. Wish to be more in the next moment, but never wish to be more than the only thing you could have been now.