The Atman in Hinduism - Part 1

Identities: Conventional vs Actual

The famous ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “You do not step into the same river twice”. What he meant of course is that since the water is at constant flux in the river, the set of water that is in the river at some time is not the same as the set of water that is in the river after that time. Why then would we call such different waters at different times by the same river - what makes the river Ganga at one moment, the same river Ganga at another moment even though the waters that constitute it have completely changed between those moments? There is another related thought called “The ship of Theseus”. Theseus was a mythical king of Athens in Greek culture who saved Athenians from the evil King Minos. To commemorate the escape of Theseus to Athens after saving the Athenians from Minos, every year, it is said that ancient Athenians would mark this by taking his ship on a pilgrimage to Delos. Now, every year, the ship undergoes some maintenance so that some of its damaged parts are replaced. After a hundred years, no part of the ship is the same as that of the parts that were there originally but the Athenians still begin to call it as the ship of Theseus. Are they right or mistaken? This philosophical problem is called the paradox of Theseus and was discussed right from the time of ancient philosophers. There are two answers to this - let me call one side the conventionalist side and the other side as an actualist side.

The conventionalists argue that the ship hundred years later is not the same as the ship of Theseus initially in any way due to the complete change and hence technically, we are not right to think of both as the same ship. This side espouses that the identity that is indeed carried forward by the masses is a mere linguistic convention that thinks of the original ship during the times of Theseus to be the same as the ship hundred years later only due to the continuous and causally related links that connect the initial ship to the final ship. So, according to this conventionalist view, persistence of identity over time even with change is simply a mistaken folk belief. The actualists however argue back, saying that the ship of Theseus is not just the material of the ship but an abstract idea that has a reality of its own immaterially, that is only materially manifested by the actual material of the ship and that the form persists despite the material changes that gradually ensued over the years due to the causal continuity between the ship at one moment to the ship at another moment. But the conventionalist can argue back saying that this abstract idea is what we call as “mere linguistic convention” and is hence only conventionally real as it is thought of only in the mind and does not correspond to reality faithfully.

Whatever side one is on this debate, there is an underlying question that both sides need to answer - whether the identity of the ship of Theseus is only conventional or actual.

What are the criteria to be satisfied so that the ship continues to actually be or conventionally be referred to as the ship of Theseus over time?

Surely not all kinds of changes preserve the identity (whether conventional or actual) of the ship of Theseus. If the ship is destroyed by a fire and then someone recreates the ship perfectly to how it originally was in the minutest detail, we would still not think of the newly rebuilt ship as the ship of Theseus - we would only call it a replica. So, one important criteria required is continuity in change. The ship at any point in time should undergo only minor modifications to have only some of its parts replaced so that it continuously is related to how it was at its previous moment albeit with some modifications  - however when it is destroyed by fire, the new ship that is built thereafter, is not causally linked to the ashes of the old ship which are materially of different chemical nature from the material of the old ship. So, causal continuity in the material realm seems to be a necessary condition for the persistence of identity (whether conventional or actual) to the ship. But is this alone enough?

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century proposed a thought experiment to counter this notion - supposing that a ship custodian slowly gathers up all of the decayed parts of the ship (that were disposed of and replaced by the Athenians) and assembles it , to build a second ship. So that eventually we have two ships after a hundred years - one with all the material parts of the original ship that was built from scratch using all the parts of the old ship and another that was slowly renovated from the original - which of the two ships now can lay a claim on the identity of being the ship of Theseus? Both are causally related to the original ship of Theseus. Quoting his own words below1:

“For if that Ship of Theseus (concerning the Difference whereof, made by continual reparation, in taking out the old Planks, and putting in new, the sophisters of Athens were wont to dispute) were, after all the Planks were changed, the same Numerical Ship it was at the beginning; and if some Man had kept the Old Planks as they were taken out, and by putting them afterward together in the same order, had again made a Ship of them, this, without doubt, had also been the same Numerical Ship with that which was at the beginnings and so there would have been two Ships Numerically the same, which is absurd... But we must consider by what name anything is called when we inquire concerning the Identity of it... so that a Ship, which signifies Matter so figured, will be the same, as long as the Matter remains the same; but if no part of the Matter is the same, then it is Numerically another Ship; and if part of the Matter remains, and part is changed, then the Ship will be partly the same, and partly not the same”.

Hobbes has proposed above two types of identities to solve this problem - identity of form and identity of material. Materially, the original ship of Theseus loses the identity of being as the ship of Theseus after all of its parts are getting replaced. After it loses one part, it is now 99% materially, the ship of Theseus. But that single part when gotten hold by the custodian, becomes 1% identical materially to the ship of Theseus. Materially, the ship that was built by the custodian with parts left over by Athenians, after completion, is materially identical to the ship of Theseus. So, identity by material is not a binary notion but comes in degrees. But only the ship renovated by Athenians is in form, identical to the ship of Theseus at all times as it is continuously related as a ship at all times to the original ship of Theseus (remember that the building of the ship by the custodian is an incremental process - first he starts with some parts and then gradually assembles together). It takes a while till the Athenians have thrown away all the parts of the original ship for the custodian to build his ship and hence during the initial stages, the custodian has only a collection of random disposed off parts from the original ship that does not have the structure of a ship. So, in form, it can never be related continuously to the original ship of Theseus. Identity by form is binary. We can then argue whether identity by form is just conventional or actual - Hobbes has thus just re-phrased the question.

But whichever side of the debate you are on - whether the identity of the ship is conventional or actual or a confusion between two different kinds of underlying identities, the problem of the identity of the ship does not affect you personally. If you take the conventionalist position that the identity of a ship that we commonly think about is actually an illusion or technically incorrect, you would not be shattered as much. But is this the same for all kinds of identities?

References

https://archive.org/details/b30335838/page/n123/mode/2up

Authored by Rama Seshan Chandra Sekaran. Published by Brhat.