Heraclitus VS Parmenides 9/17/2013

Who was correct when it comes to whether things change or stay the same? Is Heraclitus right? Is everything like fire? Is everything in a constant state of change? Or is Parmenides & Zeno correct when they say that all of motion and change is an illusion? I say that it is all subjective and can be argued either way.

Heraclitus might say that you never step into the same river twice, but aren’t the water drops identical? Aren’t they carbon copies of one another? In what point do they differ? Couldn’t you also say that if you’ve stepped in one river you’ve stepped in them all? If someone tells me the burger at a certain food chain was bad do I tell them “you never step into the same burger joint twice”? In a way, the river is like the ship of Theseus and the drops of water are like the boards of his ship… but we will get to that in a minute.

I, in some ways, agree with Zeno & Parmenides more, though it seems illogical at first. I might disagree that motion is illusion, but I might agree that change is sort of an illusion. I think that Zeno’s arrow will hit the target, but I think this is because everything stays the same on its path of being what it is. The person shoots the arrow because it is in that human’s nature; the arrow travels through the air because that’s what arrows are capable of; the wind parts to make room for the arrow because that is the physics of it; and the arrow sticks in the wood because the properties of wood (and arrow) make that possible. What change was necessary for everything to function like it is supposed to? When things move the way they are supposed to isn’t that part of their unchanging nature?

Are you familiar with the philosophical problem of Theseus’ ship? Surely you can say that the ship of Theseus has changed, but can’t you also argue that the boards have stayed the same? And if the boards have broken, then you can argue that the chunks of wood have stayed the same? And if the chunks of wood caught on fire, you can say that the atoms that made up the wood are invincible and cannot be changed? And even if you can cut that atom, that little bit of substance you have left… surely that can’t be changed?

What about the gun that killed JFK? What about the cross that Jesus was killed on? These are subjective attributes that only exist in our memories and can be easily tricked. It is the power of suggestion to be in awe at the sight of a famous artifact that wouldn’t be as impressive if you could duplicate it in production (thus removing the sentimental/historical value of it) and put it in the place of the original. We can tell someone that this so-and-so item was in the possession of so-and-so, but if it can’t be proven to be differentiated by similar items by science, then is it really unique? You could simply lie and it would still command as much awe as the truth.

I’m not here to make a social commentary, but let’s look at strip malls in America. What does it mean for an object to be a separate object? Isn’t that distinction subjective

as well? Maybe the individual atoms that make up the materials that make up each strip mall are different, but the formation of not only the atoms, but also of the basic structures of the strip malls, are either replicas of each other, or near replicas, so that there are only superficial changes that aren’t perceptive to humans are noticeable. Strip malls are like locker combinations, every lock has a random combination that usually differs from another lock, but surely a few share those exact numbers (or stores in the case of strip malls). Even the numbers are exactly the same, just in different places, just as the stores are randomly copied in different patterns, but remain the same. Though, you could argue that stores are differed by the people working in them, as all people are different and unique (I’ll touch more on that in a bit). You can also argue that they are different based on their placement, but I think that is a subjective argument, because you could make a copy of something and put it in a different place.

For example, consider a file on your computer. If you write something in Word and duplicate it, is that file the exact same as the other one? If you save over a file on your computer with a copy of that same exact file do you say “Ohh no, I’ve lost the original forever!”? I think not. Yet, you feel you can take that file anywhere don’t you? You can put it on a USB stick, while it also exists on your computer at home! And then you can give a copy of it to your friend. Voila! Something exists in three places at once! Any argument to the opposite is just a matter of semantics. I imagine this problem of existing at two places at once stems from how we consider…

Our consciousness! We can only exist in one place at a time, because ultimately we are our consciousness. We can have our arm cut off and in a different state than us, but we wouldn’t say that we were in two states at once, except when making a morbid joke. Therefore, when it comes to the Ship of Theseus in regards to who we are, there is a hidden, but very strong, foundation for who we are. The problem? Solipsism… or maybe reverse solipsism I should say. Because others can never really know if we are the same person or not, because we can visibly change (yes, I know I’m arguing against change, but the point is that it is subjective) and go through personality changes and be confused for another person. We can even have people look like us, that can be confused for us, but only we know it isn’t us. I know this, because Tyler knows this… hah, just a joke.

I am Jack’s clone. What differs between us? Other people might not be able to tell us apart. If our memories are faked and copied, we may share the same stories. However, how do I know if I’m the real Jack? Well, the name “Jack” in an existentialist view, isn’t part of you. Existence precedes essence. You know you are you, you don’t know that you are Jack, and Jack doesn’t know he is Jack, he just knows he is himself. He exists, and you exist, so how do you differ? You look over at him, who’s eyes are you looking through? If you are the same person, you would share the same care if someone pointed a gun at either of you, because they would be pointing a gun at both of you. But you don’t. You each have a unique consciousness, but share the same shell of a body, and the same shell of memories implanted in your brains. But, you don’t share the same point of view, and thus if a bullet goes through his head, you see his body crumple to the ground, while he sees… not a damn thing, he is dead. You live, he dies, who is Jack?

The winner if he wants to claim that name, but names mean nothing.

When you die, do you want to be remembered for your name? Who else shares that name with you? They might as well remember you by listing your favorite color. Hell, if anything that shows more about you than by portraying your essence as the symbols that represent your parents favorite name for what they want to call their kid. Anyway, back to consciousness for a bit. Can consciousness be copied onto itself? Can I say that my body harbors many different souls, but we all share the same source of consciousness? What would that even mean? Would my sensations be experienced by someone else in my body with me? Maybe they have different thoughts than I do? But that wouldn’t be possible, because those areas of the brain would be activated. Can consciousness be split into two then if not copied onto itself? Could I see out of two bodies at the same time? Even if I could, couldn’t I just claim to still only be me, but that I harbor two bodies? Like a hivemind that is still just one being?

What about when the corpus callosum is split? Is consciousness split also? Does that mean I have two separate people inside of me? Or maybe if the person… the body… is just a shell, maybe existences are separate from the body in a way. Not in a dualistic way, but in a material way. Maybe we should say that we aren’t person, but that we are conscioussness using persons for refuge. Maybe the brain can form many consciousnesses, but that only one has a voice… only one has control of the shell, and the rest must sit inside the brain and only experience what the one in control does.

And I can still link this to my belief that there is no free will. There is only one unchanging path, but your brain can fathom many changing paths… you could even argue that your brain and your body take separate paths. It can replicate a spot in history like a file can be replicated on your computer. While watching a controlled experiment of a boulder bouncing down a hill, how many different ways can you imagine it going? I imagine quite a lot. You might even imagine thoughts so absurd to your meager view of physics that you laugh, like the boulder hitting a bump and flying off into outer space like an asteroid leaving Earth. However, those aren’t taken seriously, but your brain does make minor miscalculations that you might not… might not? I mean you won’t… you won’t notice. You won’t be able to determine the path it will take, but you can keep it from being utterly absurd to you, and therefore you say this path is “possible”. Is it really possible? If we repeat the experiment with the same conditions (and by same conditions, I also mean with the quantum particles moving in the same “unpredictable” patterns that they made the last time the experiment was conducted) it should come out exactly the same, or the laws of nature as we know them are in need of revising… or boulders have evolved free will! One small roll for boulder, one large avalanche for rock-kind!

Okay, so what does this boulder experiment have to do with your mind trying to predict the future? Well, just that. Your brain tries to predict the future. It sees multiple paths, but these paths are hard to calculate (even if your brain did have all the data, which no one does) and so it doesn’t understand the journey that your body will make. However, when your body does make this journey, your mind doesn’t seem to erase these old predictions, and instead stores them as alternate realities and possible regrets. You

begin to regret that the boulder didn’t act contrary to the laws of nature.

Your brain replicates the scenario; unfortunately it is a poor knock-off product in your mind and doesn’t have the authentic attributes of the genuine situation. The real thing is one of a kind, but your mind replicates this situation in a cheap production factory by the hundreds and thousands. It is no more a proof of free will than replaying a videogame where you can make multiple choices and doing them differently. There is an outside interference, because you know what choices you made previously, so games can reproduce that situation in a similar manner to your imagination, though actually more faithfully, since it won’t make the same mistakes that your memory does. Anyway… you imagine yourself acting differently, but not flying! Because if you imagine yourself flying, you laugh, because you know that is an obvious affront to the laws of physics. However, you subtly tweak the physics around in your head, so that you have regrets. You should have made a different decision right? But, there was no alternative. You can make an alternative decision in your mind’s practice battlefield, like a training camp, but when it comes to the real battlefield, there is only one path that manifests and there is no changing this. No change happens. Maybe Parmenides has won this war on the one real and true battlefield.

I apologize if my ramblings dabbled in pseudo-science or pseudo-intellectualism, that isn’t (or wasn’t) my intention. I drifted and blended between change, consciousness, and free will… sometimes without planning to, but just putting down whatever mother nature whispered into my brain. I hope this writing isn’t too incomprehensible.

-Gregory Huffman

(9/29/2013) NOTE: I am reading Watchmen and Philosophy [A Rorschach Test] and I noticed that chapter 8 is saying a lot of the same things I thought up here about computer files being copied and omni-consciousness being shared with multiple beings via Dr. Manhattan.