From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Thu Oct 31 2002 - 22:56:55 MST
Lee Corbin,
The difficulty of determining differences in personality is not at issue. If
necessary Jack could have spent six months or six years on the project.
> Duh! Sometimes **I** like pizza better than at other times.
> There's nothing new in that!
Absolutely! As I've argued, your personality changes slightly from moment to
moment. Thanks for the example. :)
In this case however we are not considering the changing personality of a
single person through time. We are considering the disparity in
the personalities of two people in the present moment.
I picked the pizza example precisely illustrate the fact that subtle changes
occur constantly. Bob1 himself would probably not be very aware of his
changed attitude about pizza had he not been asked to rate his food
preferences on a sliding scale of 1 to 10. In the same way, all of our
opinions, beliefs and attitudes are in a constant state of flux in response
to our ever-changing experiences, though we are often only barely aware of
these changes until we are asked about them. Small changes accrue and
become large changes, but the distinction between large and small
is completely arbitrary.
The forks in my example -- Bob1 and Bob2 -- are not the same people, Lee. It
matters not iota whether their differences of opinion are trivial or
profound. The same principle holds whether they differ about pizza or about
politics.
> Wrong. Your concept of "identity" is so rigid that it is
> completely useless.
My concept of identity is useless to you, perhaps, because to accept it
would be to acknowledge the logical flaw in your argument.
Two people who think differently about the same subject at the same time
must be two different people. Why is that so hard to accept?
-gts
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:54 MST