Re: No Identity Boundary

Mark Crosby (crosby_m@rocketmail.com)
Tue, 3 Mar 1998 10:35:33 -0800 (PST)


---Ian Goddard wrote:
> Reilly Jones (Reilly@compuserve.com) wrote:
> >There really is something that gives coherency to
the subjective "I" and that something constructs a
boundary between one quark or bit of substance and
the quark immediately next to it.
> IAN: What is this "something."

I doubt that the "subjective 'I'" is bounded at the
quark level <sneeze - oops, there goes part of
myself!> In any case, this "something" is called
organizational or semantic closure (cf. anything on
autopoiesis).

Also, Barry Smith's "Social Objects" paper
(http://wings.buffalo.edu/philosophy/ontology/socobj.htm),
for example, develops the following basic
bicategorical ontology:

< Continuants take up space and have spatial parts.
Occurrents such as blushes, funeral marches, forest
fires, too, may be spatially extended, but the
spatial extendedness and spatial locatedness of
occurrents in common-sense reality is in every case
parasitic upon the extendedness and locatedness of
the continuants which are their bearers. A
continuant is self-identical from the beginning to
the end of its existence. >

Yes, I know, I am structurally coupled with the rest
of the world - breathing, eating, communicating, etc.
- and could not exist without that which is not-I.
Still, if I cut my skin, I will heal it. However, if
I cut your skin, you will have to heal yourself (even
if you sue me and I end up paying for it ;-)

Mark Crosby
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