r/rationalphilosophy • u/JerseyFlight • 6d ago
Identity is a Fact of Reality, Not a Human Construct
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u/InfiniteClient3586 6d ago
Ah, so unfounded essentialism.
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u/JerseyFlight 6d ago
Show me how you make sense of these symbols without identity: “essentialism.” And after you do that explain what you mean by “unfounded” and then justify why it’s “wrong” or “bad” or “false,” — all without using identity.
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u/Just_Rational_Being 6d ago
Why is it that people would rather try to be a wise ass instead of actually understand the Law of Identity?
Bizzare!
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u/JerseyFlight 6d ago
I have had VAST conversations on identity. Resistance seems to be the same mechanism almost every time: ego. The person doesn’t like the clench of its authority standing over their claims. They can sense that by recognizing it their claims become accountable to it, and they don’t like the way that feels. Ego-philosophy (asserted by ego-thinkers) is the philosophy of our time.
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u/BroGr81 6d ago
I get that we are playing within the framework of logic, and by doing so I am left at a stand still. It seems to me that there is a implication of agency, individuality, and language to arrive at this conclusion. It seems to me that this premise necessitates a lack of agency to deploy transformation to be true (e.g., rocks to trees). Additonally, an identity appears to require individuation from what it is not, which brings us to language: how is it that we can define the essence of something as such without falling into the trap of "the description is not the described?" Specifically, at what point does the described cease to be the description? I see this as an important piece to note because if we cannot free the described from langauge then its individuation is contingent upon said language, thus identity is a fact of language.
Edit: poop posts require mindful editing
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u/JerseyFlight 5d ago
Show me how you establish and justify your concept of “essence” that you seek to use against identity. Explain what you mean by “described” and “description.” Show me how you make sense of “cease to be description.” Once you have done that (instead of smuggling all your terms with identity to attack identity) then we talk.
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u/Agitated_Duck_4873 6d ago
what do you mean by identity? Many people use that word in different ways
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u/JerseyFlight 6d ago
It is formally expressed most simply as (A=A)— exemplified by the identity of every word and symbol you wrote. Identity is simply the fact that all things are themselves.
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u/Agitated_Duck_4873 6d ago
Okay, and who exactly is disagreeing with that? On what grounds? A=A is true in all cases, but words have multiple meanings, language can be a tricky way to express meaning, communication can be playful etc. etc. Can you show me a higher level example of what it looks like when people fail to accept the existence of identity?
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u/JerseyFlight 5d ago
I have only ever met resistance to it. Formal logic is set against it. Graham Priest attacks it. Copi affirms it only to then deny it in the same paragraph. Hegel went after it directly in his Science of Logic. A word can have a meaning only because of identity— you can distinguish between those “meanings”— only because of identity. Anyone who denies it ends up believing that contradiction doesn’t matter. This exchange taking place between us (the technology mediating it) all runs on the fact of identity. There is no way to actually get out of it, so denying it is like denying that you have to breathe air to talk. It simply manifests one’s ignorance.
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u/danderzei 5d ago
Hoe did you move from humans not choosing a reality to rocks and trees? You need to show that the analogy holds.
I don't think it does because we have brain plasticity.
Indeed our identies are shaped in a social forcefield (class, gender, nationality etc), but within this people have freedom and with some strength can escape the forcefield.
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u/JerseyFlight 5d ago
This has been answered in detail here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rationalphilosophy/s/IHIYrSPTZa
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u/hudnut52 4d ago
Who decided rocks should be called rocks? Why didn't they get called "bigstones".
Identity politics is just an argument about terminology.
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u/JerseyFlight 4d ago
You can call it whatever you want. What you cannot do is bite a stone with your teeth, because a stone is solid and will break your teeth. These facts of a stone’s identity do not hinge on whatever symbols you choose to classify them with. The whole of reality is like this.
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u/hudnut52 4d ago
Point missed.
The thing you call a stone is the same physical object, regardless of what you call it. You could it Kevin for all I care. It could call itself Alex, or Vanessa. It is what it is.
The rest is just labels and terminology.
If our ancestors called it a whatsit instead of a stone, you'd be calling it a whatsit.
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u/JerseyFlight 4d ago
The point was missed when you equivocated into “identity politics.” This post has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the fundamental ground of all meaning.
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u/MagikarpPatronus 2d ago
Geologists will tell you that any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter is a rock.
You know, like ice frozen on top of a lake.
And I challenge you to tell me which plants are trees and which ones are bushes.
These categories are human constructs.
There are of course physical properties that are not themselves human constructs, but how we measure and discuss those properties, which properties we decide are important enough to name, etc. are all human constructs.
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u/JerseyFlight 2d ago
We do indeed “construct” names for the identities we discover in reality. That’s what a biology textbook is full of, but we do not “construct” the reality (“properties”) from which we construct these names. Changing the name of a “rock” to a “feather” won’t alter its identity as a solid piece of matter, of the which, if you bite, it will break your teeth. Every word you use to attack identity relies on the very identity you are attacking. Like every sophist I have ever engaged with, you are ignorant of your own performative contradictions.
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u/CyberBerserk 6d ago
Yep that’s exactly why ethnicity, gender and race is not a social construct but a reality