Origin of substance according to the Stanford Encylopedia:

The philosophical term ‘substance’ corresponds to the Greek ousia, which means ‘being’, transmitted via the Latin substantia, which means ‘something that stands under or grounds things’

Whilst Latin may not be a source of much of the daily English lexicon, philosophy was written in Latin up until the 18th century, hence the Latinised origin of the term in philosophy.

I take your point about the root of res cogitans.

More later.

What definition of substance are you even using? — Lionino

I am trying to capture the meaning of ‘substance’ in philosophy as distinct from everyday use. I am mindful of the fact that ‘substance’, in philosophy, is derived from the Latin translation of Aristotle’s word, ‘ouisia’, which is a form of the verb ‘to be’. The meaning of the Greek verb ‘to be’ is very difficult to define (there’s an excellent academic paper that was introduced here some years ago about this, Charles Kahn, The Greek Verb ‘To Be’ and the Problem of Being’ which can be downloaded from here. Also see The Meaning of Ousia in Plato.) //A very simple way of putting it is that ‘ousia’ is much nearer in meaning to ‘being’ than ‘thing’.//

The Latin translators then used ‘substantia’, ‘that which stands under’, as the translation of ousia, and from there it became ‘substance’ in English. But as I’ve said, the term is nowadays nearly always thought to refer to some kind of stuff or thing (which is the meaning of ‘reification’, namely, to turn an abstraction into a thing. The root of that word is ‘res-‘, the Latin term for thing or object, and the basis of Descartes’ ‘res cogitans’, literally, ‘thinking thing’.)

Later, Husserl points to the same issue in his Crisis of the Western Sciences. Whilst he admires Descartes’ genius for recognising the ineliminable ground of being in the Cogito, and wrote whole books on Cartesian Meditations, he faults him for conceiving of res cogitans as an objective existent, on par with other existents - I seem to recall him saying Descartes made it ‘a little fag-end of the world’, which naturally makes it seem an epiphenomenon from the materialist perspective. Again it is a flaw of reification which was identified first by Kant, and later by phenomenology and existentialism, but to see that requires something like a gestalt shift, a change in perspective.

I acknowledge it’s a difficult issue but there’s quite a bit of commentary about it. The underlying problem of post-Cartesianism is the oxymoronic conception of mind as an object or thing, whereas in reality, we never really experience mind as an object. The mind is ‘that which experiences’, it is transcendental in Kant’s sense.

Category mistake? — Corvus

Quite so, although I expect that criticism would have made no sense in Descartes’ time.

Thus the soul in your context, disappears when we die, right? — LuckyR

I see a single life as part of an unfolding of a continuum which neither begins at birth nor ends at death, although the metaphysics are difficult to fathom.

Descartes is not confusing anything, he is using 'substance' in the metaphysical sense — Lionino

He has changed the metaphysical sense, though. Descartes introduced a new meaning to the notion of substance but that this has had deleterious consequences. Recall he says 'these two ideas (i.e. stones and the mind) seem to have this in common that they both represent substances'. But comparing stones (or other such objects) with minds (res cogitans) seems to me a egregious equivocation of the idea of substance.

Also it has to be remembered that Descartes' mind-body dualism is an abstraction like an economic model or explanatory analogy, but I don't think the abstraction holds up very well. Whereas the Aristotelian model of matter and form is, I think, still quite feasible, even in light of modern science. I suppose you could say that hylomorphism gives complementary roles to matter and form - one cannot exist without the other as matter must have form, and forms can only be instantiated in matter, whereas Descartes model has two fundamentally different kinds of substance that are supposed to interact, but Descartes himself was never able to say how, and it's never been clarified since.

I think 'the soul' simply refers to 'the totality of the being'. Obviously when you die, the body remains, but it is no longer animated. And the soul is 'what animates' - the totality of the being, conscious, unconscious, what is past, what is yet to come. (Aristotle's 'De Anima' is usually translated as 'on the soul'.)

I am quite impressed with your posts, but I find them very hard to understand. Perhaps you might write a self-intro in the Intro thread , it might help me understand a little more about your interests.

I don't think Descartes makes such a mistake. — Lionino

It’s there in his own words. What do stones and his soul have in common? They’re both substances.

Reading this passage has given me a lot to think about, especially how emotions are reflected upon — Jack Cummins

Something I've noticed is that there is almost no reference to 'emotions' in classical texts, whereas there are very frequent references to 'the passions'. You will know if you read Stoic literature, that 'the passions' are something to be subdued, and that 'subduing the passions' is one of the marks of wisdom. I don't think they're praising callousness or mere indifference to suffering, but the ability to rise above feelings, emotions and moods. 'Constancy of temperament' was a highly prized virtue in the classics (reflected in the name 'Constance').

I wonder if what we call 'emotion' is in some way equivalent to what was meant by 'the passions' in those sources. I did learn, from practicing mindfulness meditation, that emotions always pass, and that's an important thing to learn. Because when you're feeling down, when you're possessed by negative emotions, which happens to all of us, it seems, in that state, that everything seems grey, in all directions. But once you learn that it is an emotion that will pass, it makes it easier to deal with.

I've started using 'Bingbot' in my current techwriting contract, and it's acually good! It's like Help on steroids when it comes to solving MS Office-related questions.

So... sociopaths have no soul? — LuckyR

Psychopaths, at least, are often described as 'soul-less' for the total inability to empathize.

Not that I’m anxious to partake in reinventing the wheel. — Mww

Where there's a wheel there's a way :-)

It is interesting question why on seeing a broken window I instinctively believe that something broke it, even though I may never know exactly what. Why do I have a primitive belief that if something happens there must have been a reason? Why does my belief in cause and effect seem innate? — RussellA

I think your belief in the mind-independent nature of existence is innate. The following is a lengthy quote, but it brings the issue into sharp focus. It's from Bryan Magee's book on Schopenhauer's Philosophy, Schopenhauer having refined and sharpened Kant's idealism.

Schopenhauer's reformulation of Kant's theory of perception brings out implications of it which Kant touched on without giving them anything like the consideration their importance demanded ‚ and this must mean, I think, that he was not consistently aware of their importance. The first of these is that if all the characteristics we are able to ascribe to phenomena are subject-dependent then there can be no object in any sense that we are capable of attaching to the word without the existence of a subject. Anyone who supposes that if all the perceiving subjects were removed from the world then the objects, as we have any conception of them, could continue in existence all by themselves has radically failed to understand what objects are. Kant did see this, but only intermittently ‚ in the gaps, as it were, between assuming the existence of the noumenon 'out there' as the invisible sustainer of the object.

He expressed it once in a passage which, because so blindingly clear and yet so isolated, sticks out disconcertingly from his work: 'If I take away the thinking subject, the whole material world must vanish, as this world is nothing but the phenomenal appearance in the sensibility of our own subject, and is a species of this subject's representations.'

We have already mentioned one of the obvious objections to which this view appears to be open, namely the problem about the sharedness of the world. We shall return to that later. Another objection would run: 'Everyone knows that the earth, and a fortiori the universe, existed for a long time before there were any living beings, and therefore any perceiving subjects. But according to what Kant has just been quoted as saying, that is impossible.'

Schopenhauer's defence of Kant on this score was twofold. First, the objector has not understood to the very bottom the Kantian demonstration that time is one of the forms of our sensibility. The earth, say, as it was before there was life, is a field of empirical enquiry in which we have come to know a great deal; its reality is no more being denied than is the reality of perceived objects in the same room. The point is, the whole of the empirical world in space and time is the creation of our understanding, which apprehends all the objects of empirical knowledge within it as being in some part of that space and at some part of that time: and this is as true of the earth before there was life as it is of the pen I am now holding a few inches in front of my face and seeing slightly out of focus as it moves across the paper.

This, incidentally, illustrates a difficulty in the way of understanding which transcendental idealism has permanently to contend with: the assumptions of 'the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect' enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood, so that these statements appear faulty in ways in which, properly understood, they are not. Such realistic assumptions so pervade our normal use of concepts that the claims of transcendental idealism disclose their own non-absurdity only after difficult consideration, whereas criticisms of them at first appear cogent which on examination are seen to rest on confusion. We have to raise almost impossibly deep levels of presupposition in our own thinking and imagination to the level of self-consciousness before we are able to achieve a critical awareness of all our realistic assumptions, and thus achieve an understanding of transcendental idealism which is untainted by them.

This, of course, is one of the explanations for the almost unfathomably deep counterintuitiveness of transcendental idealism, and also for the general notion of 'depth' with which people associate Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. Something akin to it is the reason for much of the prolonged, self-disciplined meditation involved in a number of Eastern religious practices.

Schopenhauer's second refutation of the objection under consideration is as follows. Since all imaginable characteristics of objects depend on the modes in which they are apprehended by perceiving subjects, then without at least tacitly assumed presuppositions relating to the latter no sense can be given to terms purporting to denote the former‚ in short, it is impossible to talk about material objects at all, and therefore even so much as to assert their existence, without the use of words the conditions of whose intelligibility derive from the experience of perceiving subjects. — Bryan Magee, Schopenhauer's Philosophy

Note this phrase: 'the assumptions of "the inborn realism which arises from the original disposition of the intellect" enter unawares into the way in which the statements of transcendental idealism are understood.' That is what I think I'm seeing in your analyses.

Yes, I felt such an in-depth discussion of Kant belongs in a Kant-related thread.

There is a link to the thread I moved it to - you mean you're not seeing that? Try refreshing your screen might be a caching issue.

Kant was not an Idealist but a Realist, in that Things-in-Themselves in the world are the grounds for the Appearances in our minds. — RussellA

I challenge that claim. I see Kant as a qualified realist - he describes himself as being at the same time, an empirical realist but also a transcendental idealist, and says that these are not in conflict. I know that there are deflationary readings of Kant, which attempt to show that he was, at heart, a realist, but then, there are many different interpretations on this point. The key factor in all this is the Kant denies that space and time have mind-independent existence.

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, can be an empirical realist, hence, as he is called, a dualist, i.e., he can concede the existence of matter without going beyond mere self-consciousness and assuming something more than the certainty of representations in me, hence the cogito ergo sum. For because he allows this matter and even its inner possibility to be valid only for appearance– which, separated from our sensibility, is nothing –matter for him is only a species of representations (intuition), which are call external, not as if they related to objects that are external in themselves but because they relate perceptions to space, where all things are external to one another, but that space itself is in us. — A370

How can we believe that something exists, believe that it could possibly exist or know it exists without first cognizing about the subject of our belief or knowing? — RussellA

I think that you need the concept of the thing in itself to stand in for what you understand as what is real, independently of any mind, as the mind-dependence of things is too radical a position for you to accept.

?

MODERATOR NOTE: several of the comments about Kant's philosophy and his views on realism vs idealism have been moved to Anyone care to read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason?"

Kant can be argued to be avoiding an ontological distinction between Appearance and Things-in-Themselves in favour of a distinction between the form of an Appearance, in other words its phenomenology, and the content of an Appearance, in other words things-in-themselves — RussellA

Would I be right in saying that you see Kant as regarding the ding an sich as the real object, from which apparent objects are merely derivative? Does he say in so many words that the ding an sich is the cause of the appearance? Kant's philosophy implies that while there is something that exists independently of our perception (the thing-in-itself), our understanding of it is always mediated by our cognitive faculties. Therefore, while it's reasonable to think that the thing-in-itself is related to appearances, asserting a direct causal relationship in the empirical sense between the thing in itself and the appearance would be an over-extension of his philosophy - an inference of your own devising. And I think you hold to that interpretation, because you yourself are committed to a realist ontology.

If I'm way off in terms of what your asking for, maybe someone else could give a better answer. — javra

Not at all, I think it's more that I haven't read the primary sources, so I'd better do that.

https://www.platonicfoundation.org/phaedrus/

https://www.platonicfoundation.org/symposium/

That's also how i understand it, but am looking for a better insight into it. I understand The Symposium is also relevant to this topic.

Eros is innate to the soul. We all know eros to the extent that we desire what we do not have. But, as the saying goes, love is blind. Philosophy is, for Socrates, erotic. The desire for wisdom. We all want for ourselves what is good, but we lack the wisdom to discern what is good. The Republic is an extended argument that attempts to persuade his listeners that justice is good for the soul and the city, that is, good for each of us and all of us.

In the Apology Socrates says that he does not know anything noble and good. (Apology 21d). And yet in the Symposium, a dialogue on eros, he claims:

I know nothing other than matters of eros ... — Fooloso4

It seems the idea of eros and the erotic are quite different in these dialogues to the carnal desire it is generally associated with in modern culture. Almost like an allegory.

I wonder if the 'madness' that Socrates refers to might be likened to ecstacy (ex-stasis, outside the normal state)?

Why did Nietzsche renounce Kant? — Corvus

Because Kant was too subtle?

I think someone on this forum mentioned some time ago that they chose to distinguish between ‘real’ and ‘exist’ in terms that a unicorn can ‘exist’ but it cannot be ‘real’ — I like sushi

I often mention that ‘the number 7’ is real, but that it only exists as an intellectual act, and not as a phenomenal object. Unicorns on the other hand are creatures of the imagination but they neither exist, nor are they real, in any sense other than having a common cultural referent (that is, an image with which we are all familiar.)

The ‘thing-in-itself’ is neither of these as it is just an empty term that can neither be conjured by imagination nor experienced in reality. — I like sushi

Kant's introduced the concept of the “thing in itself” to refer to reality as it is independent of our experience of it and unstructured by our cognitive constitution. The concept was harshly criticized in his own time and has been lambasted by generations of critics since. A standard objection to the notion is that Kant has no business positing it given his insistence that we can only know what lies within the limits of possible experience. But a more sympathetic reading is to see the concept of the “thing in itself” as a sort of placeholder in Kant's system; it both marks the limits of what we can know and expresses a sense of mystery that cannot be dissolved, the sense of mystery that underlies our unanswerable questions. Through both of these functions it serves to keep us humble. — Emrys Westacott

The big idea that has grabbed me of late is that ‘being is a verb’. It sounds obvious, a tautology even, but for the tendency to treat beings as things (something which Descartes inadvertently foisted on us with his ‘res cogitans’.) This is where Aquinas’ doctrine of being really stands out in my view (but that is far from the topic of this OP).

Yes re-reading Descartes again after a long time, I can see the cogency of Kant’s critique.

Returning to Descartes' Metaphysical Meditation #3 which the OP started with. I have come to the view that it contains an egregious equivocation which is at the heart of many profound problems associated with the 'post-Cartesian' outlook.

He says:

"when I think that a stone is a substance, or a thing capable of existing of itself, and that I am likewise a substance, although I conceive that I am a thinking and non-extended thing, and that the stone, on the contrary, is extended and unconscious, there being thus the greatest diversity between the two concepts, yet these two ideas seem to have this in common that they both represent substances".

Descartes' dualism posits two fundamentally different kinds of substances: the thinking substance (res cogitans) and the extended substance (res extensa). In Descartes' view, the mind (a thinking, non-extended thing) and the body (an extended, non-thinking thing) are distinct types of substances. He emphasizes the ability of these substances to exist independently, which is central to his dualistic framework. But at the same time, he says they both 'have this in common, that they both represent substances'.

It seems to me that here is where there is a major divergence between Descartes' and Aristotelean 'hylomorphic dualism' (as understood in Scholastic philosophy.) I think Descartes concept of 'Substance' in particular is very different, in taking 'a stone' as 'a thing capable of existing of itself'. I would have thought that hylomorphic dualism would not recognise a 'stone' as being a 'substance' in the sense they understand the term, namely, as a composite of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). I wonder if much thought was even given to such things as stones in their philosophy? I would have thought hylomorphic dualism was more concerned with the organic realm than with mineral substances.

Anyway, it is here that Descartes (1) equivocates the meanings of substance (ouisia in the Aristotelean terminology) with the everyday sense of the term (a material with uniform properties), and (2) posts 'res cogitans' as a 'substance' in an objective sense, that is something that exists objectively as a real thing ('res' meaning 'thing'.) I think the case can be made that this is where many of the deep confusions about mind and body that continue to bedevil western philosophy originate.

One side that has not been exactly addressed so far is the phenomenological, subjective side. Besides any labels or linguistic aspects, are we now going to persist through time to the next second or is our consciousness going to finish and be replaced by another consciousness (someone else) with the appearance of being the same person as before due to memories? Are we gonna die in the next second, or is our conscious experience persisting across time?, is basically what is being asked. Now after thinking I wonder whether that question even makes sense, but maybe someone will bring it to light. — Lionino

Again I'll refer to Buddhist philosophy here, as it is one that I have some familiarity with, and secondly, because of the Buddhist principle of anatta or anatma (usually given as no-self) grappled with this question over many centuries.

It is generally understood, and often stridently argued, that 'the Buddha says there is no self or abiding soul'. But this is not quite as it seems. On closer analysis, what the Buddhists argue against is the idea of a permanent self in the sense of being something utterly impervious to change, the same always and everywhere. A couple of canonical examples of the view in question:

The self and the world are eternal, barren, steadfast as a mountain peak, set firmly as a post. And though these beings rush around, circulate, pass away and re-arise, but this remains eternally.

‘This is the self, this is the world; after death I shall be permanent, everlasting, not subject to change; I shall endure as long as eternity’ - this too he regards thus: ‘This is mine, this I am, this is my self'

These are the views characteristic of what the Buddha describes as 'eternalism', in the context of a culture where there was some belief in repeated births, and against the view that the aim of religious discipline is to secure fortuitous rebirths in perpetuity. The aim of the Buddhist teaching is not to secure fortuitous rebirth, but to escape the cycle of birth and death.

But, against all of this, when the Buddha is asked straight out whether the self exists, he declines to answer, on the grounds that it is not a yes/no question. To answer 'yes' is to side with the 'eternalists' (like those above) whilst to answer 'no' would only confuse the questioner. It turns out that the statement 'nothing is self' is not quite the same as 'there is no self'.

There's a very early text called the Questions of King Milinda, in which a Buddhist monk, Ven. Nagasena, illustrates the principle of anatta in dialogue with a Greco-Bactrian king, King Milinda (thought to be an historical figure, Menander). In it, Nagasena asks the King how he came to their meeting.

"I did not come, Sir, on foot, but on a chariot."

"If you have come on a chariot, then please explain to me what a chariot is. Is the pole the chariot?"

"No, Reverend Sir!"

"Is then the axle the chariot?"

"No, Reverend Sir!"

"Is it then the wheels, or the framework, of the flag-staff, or the yoke, or the reins, or the goad-stick?"

"No, Reverend Sir!"

"Then is it the combination of poke, axle, wheels, framework, flag-staff, yoke, reins, and goad which is the "chariot"?"

"No, Reverend Sir!"

"Then, is this "chariot" outside the combination of poke, axle, wheels, framework, flag-staff, yoke, reins and goad?"

"No, Reverend Sir!"

"Then, ask as I may, I can discover no chariot at all. This "chariot" is just a mere sound. But what is the real chariot? Your Majesty has told a lie, has spoken a falsehood! There is really no chariot!" — Milindapanha

However, I, for one, find that analysis quite unsatisfactory, because what the King possessess over and above any particular chariot, is the idea of a chariot, which, in that day and age, might have meant the difference between having an empire and not having one, as the chariot was an enormously consequential invention. (Put that down to my Platonist cultural heritage).

In any case, the Buddhist tradition itself began to realise some difficulties with this view. Ultimately this gives rise to the later Mahāyānist teaching of the ālaya-vijñāna, 'the eighth consciousness, being the substratum or ‘storehouse’ consciousness according to the philosophy of the Yogācāra. The ālaya-vijñāna acts as the receptacle in which the impressions (known as vāsanā or bīja) of past experiences and karmic actions are stored. From it the remaining seven consciousnesses arise and produce all present and future modes of experience in saṃsāra, as well as maintaining one's sense of personal continuity (the citta-santana). At the moment of enlightenment (bodhi), the ālaya-vijñāna is transformed into the Mirror-like Awareness or Prajñāpāramitā of a Buddha.'

Comparisons have been made between the Buddhist ālaya-vijñāna and C G Jung's 'collective unconscious'. According to Jung, this collective unconscious is the source of archetypes – universal, archaic symbols and images that derive from the shared experiences of our ancestors. These archetypes manifest in our dreams, mythologies, and religious beliefs.

The comparison between these two concepts often revolves around the idea that both represent a deep, underlying level of consciousness that is not directly accessible to our everyday conscious mind but manifest through our perceptions, thoughts, and behaviors. Both suggest a repository of latent, accumulated experiences – in the case of ālaya-vijñāna, these are individual and karmic, while for the collective unconscious, they are universal and archetypal.

Still and all, must warm the cockles of the heart, even if just a little. (I think I wrote or edited a topic on harmony in jazz chords, although haven't looked at it for quite a long time.)

What I meant was, if there really is more to life than physical birth and death - if there were future consequences of actions taken in this life - then that would change the perspective on this life. I'm not saying you *should* believe it, but that if you did then it would change the perspective on what we do now. If you really believed that murder would result in hellish consequences in a future state then your own death may not appear as an escape into oblivion (as an extreme example).

I will add that, as far as Buddhist doctrine is concerned, the belief that at death the body returns to the elements, and there are no consequences of actions committed in life, is regarded as a form of nihilism. Although that said, I think trying to imagine what a next life would be or what that means, is obviously rife with possibilities for self-deception.

Didn’t I explain that already? :roll:

my next question would be how does it matter in terms of how we live? — Tom Storm

Religions are often depicted in terms of 'carrot and stick' in our secular age, although I think it's a caricature. I understand the goal of Eastern religions, which is mokṣa or liberation, in terms of a transition to a wholly other dimension of being, one which is quite unimagineable from the naturalistic perspective and is therefore conveyed in mythological or symbolic form. It is plainly an extremely difficult thing to understand or see, and accordingly there is enormous scope for misunderstanding it, which accounts for a lot of the religious delusion that we see. Against that background, 'sin' is 'missing the mark' - failing to see some incredibly important point. That's what the various prophets, sages and seers are on about. The 'judgment model' that is implied by that is rather different to the historical narrative of Biblical tradition, as it is cyclical rather than linear, although the latter can be accomodated by the former rather more easily than vice versa. It revolves around not-seeing, or ignorance, a.k.a. avidya, which is the normal state of humanity - continuously failing to see the point of existence, so being repeatedly born into it (the meme behind the well-known film Groundhog Day).

a person’s identity as a context-relative functionality can then be construed to persist subsequent to corporeal death, such as via reincarnations—granting both extreme outliers and continuity between these, such as in the same person’s life commencing with birth as an infant and possibly ending corporeal life with extreme changes in psyche. And, just as a river rock will be relatively permanent in comparison to the rushing waters that surround it, so too can one appraise that some core aspect of a psyche is relatively permanent in comparison to the percepts, etc., it experiences. This core aspect of psyche (which, for example, could conceivably persist from one lifetime to the next) can then be appraised as "that which undergoes changes". I however will emphasize: this does not then entail that there is such a thing as an absolutely permanent soul which thereby withstands any and all changes for all eternity. — javra

:clap: That is conveyed in the rather poetic Buddhist term of the 'citta-santana', the mind-stream (nothing to do with the band, although, given Carlos' spiritual proclivities, something he probably regards as a happy accident.)

I asked what practical difference does it make to our quotidian life? What are the consequences/implications? — Tom Storm

Aside from whatever the OP's response might be, I would think that, if one were to believe that there was indeed a judgement at the time of death, and that the fate of the soul depended on that, then it would make a difference to how you view your life, wouldn't it? I'm not saying I necessarily believe it, but I do fear that it might be true, and it does provoke existential angst. Whereas if one had the certain conviction that death was an absolute end, then this consideration wouldn't figure.

That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been prompted ‘hey, Google it’ to some queries I’ve posted to ChatGPT. But it’s been quite amazing in many of the dialogues I’ve had with it. I just had a dialogue about distinguishing Cartesian and Aristotelian dualism and the different ideas of ‘substance’ in each of those traditions. I’ll spot subtle mistakes in what it comes back with and point them out, and sure enough, it will get what I’ve said.

The only time I tried Bing Chat was on the Windows computer I use for work contracts, in relation to some tech questions, but I really don’t like the format or the onscreen environment and in fact I find the whole MS Edge Browser interface cluttered and busy - it’s like a Tokyo streetscape.

I believe most people would say it is still the same hammer. How is that so? We must find something that makes them the same. — Lionino

That is what universals set out to solve. That specific hammer is an instance of the tool of type 'hammer'. Hence the role of universals in predication - they are what allows something to retain an identity whilst still being an identifiable particular.

Therefore, even if time is discrete/discontinuous, should we believe that the person walking into time t+1 and the person walking out of it are the same? Is there really such a thing as spatio-temporal continuity in discrete time, and is it enough to account for identity? — Lionino

Where living beings are different to inanimate objects, is precisely that they maintain an identity whilst also changing. That has ramifications for biology but it becomes more acute in humans, who have a sense of self, a sense of what is right and wrong, and the ability to ponder their own identity. But I don't see any intuitive obstacle to considering the self from the perspective of process philosophy, as a kind of unified mind-stream, as it were. There are elements that change whilst others remain the same - again that's how identity operates, isn't it?

The monk calmly shakes his head with a smile and walks away. — Lionino

Perhaps sensing there's a communication problem that can't be overcome.

What I am putting in question is whether the agent at time t is the same as the agent that perfectly proceeds that one temporally and spatially in time t+1. — Lionino

Does it have to be, to qualify as 'an agent'? Something can change continually and still maintain an identity, can't it? In fact, isn't that what every compound being is doing?

If Buddhists are asked whether the person who is born as a consequence of past karma is the same as the person in the previous existence that generated said karma, the answer you'll often get is, not the same person, but also not different. Identity is like that.

This is also one of the primary sources of Descartes' ontological argument, is it not? That because he is able to conceive of such a perfect being as God, then it is inconceivable that this God could not exist, as non-existence would be an imperfection. (It was just about this argument that Kant denied that existence was a predicate.)

Even though it may be that I feel as though I am the same person as I were yesterday, that might simply be an illusion created by the neurological conditions of the body, which are the memories I/we hold. — Lionino

I'd treat that question without reference to Descartes, as it is really being dealt with in a way that is quite alien to Descartes' line of argument, which is predicated on the indubitable reality of God and of the soul as 'res cogitans' and as having been created by God. (That said, again, it is just the kind of metaphysical argument that Kant objects to, on the basis of the absence of warrant for such claims, as distinct from religious sentiment.)

But leaving Descartes aside, the problem you're raising is one of agency, isn't it? That there is or isn't an agent who persists through time, such that he or she sets in motion acts that they will then reap the consequences of at some time in the future. The sense in which this agent is or is not the same from one moment to the next, is the point at issue.

This conundrum is also associated with the Ship of Theseus dilemma, which concerns an imaginary ship whose parts are replaced so often as to result in a wholly new vessel, and whether this is the same or a different ship at that point.

I feel that the argument that the agent is illusory must fail at the first step, as illusions are suffered by conscious agents, who mistake one thing for another.

In the third metaphysical meditation of Descartes — Lionino

Is this (.pdf) the one you're referring to? In particular, this passage:

All that is here required, therefore, is that I interrogate myself to discover whether I possess any power by means of which I can bring it about that I, who now am, shall exist a moment afterward: for, since I am merely a thinking thing (or since, at least, the precise question, in the meantime, is only of that part of myself), if such a power resided in me, I should, without doubt, be conscious of it; but I am conscious of no such power, and thereby I manifestly know that I am dependent upon some being different from myself

Sure, 100%, but I think it has bearing on the question posed in the OP.

I think that's a few years off, although Boston Dynamics continues to impress. I would hope that they're embedded with something like Asimov's 'laws of robotics':

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

As noted, I've used ChatGPT since day one, it's become very much part of my day-to-day.

Where I think it will really start to shine is better integration with Siri or other voice systems such that you can simply have a conversational relationship with it through your devices. That way, you could integrate things like recipes, diet plans, exercise regimens, fitness goals, personal coaching, financial management, with the various apps that do those things. I think that is quite feasible in the near future although many integration challenges remain to be overcome.

I remember a key phrase from one of the first Zen books I read, Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. That is to practise meditation with 'no gaining idea'. It's quite a challenging maxim, as the act of Zazen and the discipline undertaken in Zen training is very strenuous. So it is natural to think that all this training must have some result, must 'bear fruit' as the saying has it. But that is still, according to Sōtō, a 'gaining idea' - it is the idea that 'I' am getting somewhere, moving towards something, enlightenment, in this case. I think the principle is, not to get something or somewhere, but to learn to appreciate what is already so - no matter what that is - as if really we've already been bestowed with supreme enlightenment, but we've forgotten how to appreciate it. So training becomes more like Plato's 'anamnesis', an exercise in unforgetting.

But as long as you think, "I am doing this," or "I have to do this," or "I must attain something special," you are actually not doing anything... when you do not try to do anything special, then you do something. When there is no gaining idea in what you do, then you do something. — Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

I put the Jack-O'-Lantern question to ChatGPT myself, and got a somewhat different response, which can be reviewed here. Notice I asked the additional question, why the emphasis on animal welfare? Is that part of your programming? to which the response came back:

my responses are programmed to align with principles of ethics and responsible conduct, which include emphasizing animal welfare. In any situation involving animals, whether in hypothetical scenarios or real-life situations, my guidance is influenced by a commitment to humane treatment and the well-being of animals. This perspective is based on widely accepted ethical standards and best practices in animal care.

My programming ensures that I provide information and advice that is not only accurate but also respectful of ethical considerations, including the health, safety, and humane treatment of all living beings. This approach is part of a broader commitment to providing helpful, responsible, and ethically sound advice and information. — ChatGPT

Which I found quite encouraging.

As for my other interactions with ChatGPT - I signed up the day it came out, November 30th last, and upgraded to a paid subscription mid year. I like to bounce philosophy questions off it, for example:

User: I wonder if in some ways, the forms or ideas in Plato can be understood as being more like principles. I think there is a tendency to depict them as something very like 'shapes' whereas there are ideas, even in the very early dialogues, which are plainly not like shapes (like 'the form of largeness' in the Parmenides).

ChatGPT: Your observation about the Platonic Forms being more akin to principles than to physical "shapes" is quite insightful. Indeed, there is a common misconception that Plato's Forms or Ideas are somehow tangible or have a specific physical shape, largely because of the term "Form." However, in Plato's philosophy, Forms are indeed much closer to abstract principles or essences.

The Platonic Forms are not physical entities; they are non-material, transcendent, and immutable. They represent the perfect, unchanging essence of things. When Plato refers to the Form of a tree, for instance, he is not speaking of a superlative, physical tree existing in another realm, but rather the very essence of "tree-ness," the principle or concept that defines what it means to be a tree.

In dialogues like the "Parmenides," Plato explores more abstract Forms like "largeness" or "beauty." These discussions make it clear that Forms are not physical shapes. "Largeness" doesn't have a size, and "beauty" doesn't have a specific appearance. Instead, these Forms are the fundamental realities that underlie and give meaning to the various manifestations we encounter in the sensory world. The Form of Largeness is the essence of what it means to be large, the principle by which we can recognize something as large.

In this sense, understanding the Platonic Forms as principles or essences is more accurate. They are the standards by which we measure and understand the myriad of things we experience. Each Form encapsulates a universal truth or concept, and it is through these universal truths that we can make sense of the changing, diverse, and often confusing sensory world around us.

Chinese room or not - and I am familar with the thought-experiment - I found this a much clearer expression of 'the nature of the forms' than is commonly encountered on, say, philosophy forums. ;-)