I'll respond to each one of the 5 phrases:auto wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2019 3:53 pm 1) form, feelings.. are not your self but they represent what you are. Hence if you are 5 kg less weight you are still same person.
2) form, feelings.. are enough for to explain a person, as of what wiki says.
3) 60 year old person has declined over time hence the bad back, sicknesses etc but it is same person who was once 5 year old, you can't skip SOL years.
4) two buckets, one has water and other does not, when you put half water to other one, it does make the buckets same in some sense because now they have same level of water.
5) they are same, poop didn't magically appear.
1) "Represent" is for me the key word here. A representation is not the same thing as the thing represented.
Also, if I represent Brahma with the OM character, that does not mean that what it represented has an underlying reality.
I can represent whatever idea I want, no matter how fictitious that idea might be.
2) In the Dhamma language it is often spoken in a conventional and in a supramundane sense.
A good example of this is the concept of "world" as described in this sutta.
Or maybe you can see how the Buddha redefines some words, such as Kamma, when he defines it not only as action, but as intentional action (and the intention itself).
3) What do you mean by "same"?
I thought you agreed on the logical propositions before mentioned.
For something to be the same as something else, those two things must have the same components arranged in the same way, functioning exactly the same.
None of those criteria are fulfilled when you compare a baby and a 60 year old person; all its components (both physical and mental) are changed.
So, again, what do you mean by saying "it is the same person"?
What stays constant?
4) I disagree.
A thing is not just defined by the information it carries, but by the constituents that made that thing.
Also, if we accept that information is what mades a thing, the arrangement of the water molecules is not the same, so it does not contain the same information as the other bucket.
5) No, the food and the poop are not "the same".
It is undeniable that it's appearence and the arrangement of its molecules have change.
Maybe both the food and the resulting poop share some of its molecules, but if something changes from the food (or as in the mathematical example, if you add or substract something to X), that food is not the same as before (the X+Y or X-Y are not X anymore, but a new Z quantity).
I think you are mixing two different ideas: two things may share a causal and temporal conection to one another, but those two things or states are not the same if its inner parts or inner relations somehow change.
Using a past example: a baby who is born with a certain set of cells arranged in a particular fashion, after some years might have renew all of its cells and/or all of the particles that made those cells. Causally, the baby is one of the factors and conditions which allow the existence of the 60 year old person, but those two persons are not the same anymore, even if one is causally related to the other.
As most people do not understand all of this, we invent the idea of identity, which is incredibly useful socially and legally speaking. Furthermore, the idea of the conservation of the identity seems to be intuitive, especially since we have memories from previous stages of life.
Kind regards!