The One & the Many??

[amishrockstar]

If the "whole" is the sum of its parts,
then if some of the parts are removed,
at what point is the "whole" no longer
the "whole"??

In other words, if I have an orange
and I remove part of the peel, we
would still say that I'm holding an
orange, right?
But at what point is it no longer an
orange; when is it orange juice or
some mold infested rot?
What makes an orange an orange?

I suppose this is a question of "essence."

Other examples can be given, but
I think you get what I'm asking about.

Thanks,
Matthew

 

[Brian Withnell]

If the "whole" is the sum of its parts,
then if some of the parts are removed,
at what point is the "whole" no longer
the "whole"??

In other words, if I have an orange
and I remove part of the peel, we
would still say that I'm holding an
orange, right?
But at what point is it no longer an
orange; when is it orange juice or
some mold infested rot?
What makes an orange an orange?

I suppose this is a question of "essence."

Other examples can be given, but
I think you get what I'm asking about.

Thanks,
Matthew

If you remove a little of the peel from an orange, it is no longer the same orange, but a different one. The part you removed (the portion of the peel) is either an orange or not an orange, depending on the definition of an orange.

 

[rbcbob]

If the "whole" is the sum of its parts,
then if some of the parts are removed,
at what point is the "whole" no longer
the "whole"??

In other words, if I have an orange
and I remove part of the peel, we
would still say that I'm holding an
orange, right?
But at what point is it no longer an
orange; when is it orange juice or
some mold infested rot?
What makes an orange an orange?

I suppose this is a question of "essence."

Other examples can be given, but
I think you get what I'm asking about.

Thanks,
Matthew

If you remove a little of the peel from an orange, it is no longer the same orange, but a different one. The part you removed (the portion of the peel) is either an orange or not an orange, depending on the definition of an orange.

So Dad walks in and says "Peter, where is the orange I laid on the counter this morning." Peter, having taken a bite out of it says "there it is on the table."

It is the same orange. Peter could have added qualifiers such as it is smaller now, or it is decomposing due to my saliva, etc. It is still the subject, whatever is being predicated of it.

 

[Confessor]

So Dad walks in and says "Peter, where is the orange I laid on the counter this morning." Peter, having taken a bite out of it says "there it is on the table."

It is the same orange. Peter could have added qualifiers such as it is smaller now, or it is decomposing due to my saliva, etc. It is still the subject, whatever is being predicated of it.

The question then is whether, when we refer to a bitten orange as the same thing as the non-bitten orange, we are speaking colloquially or philosophically.

 

[Philip]

The bitten orange is a continuation of the non-bitten orange. To call it the same thing would be inaccurate, but at the same time there is a connection.

We'll call the orange O and the bitten orange O(a). O and O(a) are different, yet they both belong in the category of O-ness. They both answer to the form of O.

 

[LawrenceU]

O.

 

[rbcbob]

The bitten orange is a continuation of the non-bitten orange. To call it the same thing would be inaccurate, but at the same time there is a connection.

We'll call the orange O and the bitten orange O(a). O and O(a) are different, yet they both belong in the category of O-ness. They both answer to the form of O.

Curious. If you have lost 8,000 brain cells since the time of posting this and now, are you still you, or no longer still you?

 

[Confessor]

The bitten orange is a continuation of the non-bitten orange. To call it the same thing would be inaccurate, but at the same time there is a connection.

We'll call the orange O and the bitten orange O(a). O and O(a) are different, yet they both belong in the category of O-ness. They both answer to the form of O.

Curious. If you have lost 8,000 brain cells since the time of posting this and now, are you still you, or no longer still you?

Jonathan Edwards would say that he is the same person only by God's arbitrary decree.

 

[amishrockstar]

Bob,
That's the question that I'm asking.
If I lose an arm or a leg or some brain cells,
then I'd still be "Matthew," but what I'm asking
is what makes something what it is?

God Himself is both one and many.
God is one, yet Jesus is not the Father
the Spirit is not the Son, etc.

Some Bible teachers have claimed that
the biblical understanding of the Trinity
gives the only correct answer for understanding
the "one and the many" issue that Greek
philosophers had, but I'm curious if someone
can please flesh this out for me.

We are made up of many cells, joints, muscles, etc.
yet we are "one" person.

So what I'm asking is at what point does a thing
cease to be what it is?
Can we definitively know the answer to this?

Or at what point does something become what it is?
(a girl becomes a woman; caterpillar becomes a
butterfly, etc.)

When does a Bible translation cease to be the
Word of God (non-literal or paraphrased)?

If you're familiar with the philosophical question,
then I think you know what I'm asking.

Maybe it's simply that we (as humans) are not
the primary interpreters of "things" and only to
the degree that our interpretation of a "thing"
lines up with what God says that a "thing" is,
then we are correct in saying that such-and-such
is an apple or orange or a ship.

Thanks

 

[Confessor]

Some Bible teachers have claimed that the biblical understanding of the Trinity gives the only correct answer for understanding the "one and the many" issue that Greek philosophers had, but I'm curious if someone can please flesh this out for me.

I remember being helped with this topic by a few pages in R.J. Rushdoony's The One and the Many, though I don't have it on me.

Basically, we can see many temporal ones-and-manies, e.g. a state containing citizens, a church containing believers, a universal concept of "cow" containing many particular cows, etc. The fact that these two can exist in a perfect balance suggests that there is a balanced eternal one-and-many, the Trinity. As Rushdoony shows in the aforementioned book, views of reality based on an overarching unity lead to overemphasis of the "one" (e.g. fascist totalitarianism), while views of reality based on an overarching particularity lead to overemphasis of the "many" (e.g. anarchy). Only by the eternal one-and-many dictating exactly where the balance is in His Word can we understand the extent of the one and extent of the many.

The illustration I like to use in understanding how we are to properly limit the extent of oneness and "manyness" (?) is of a baby in a playpen. You don't want to leave him too free in his options by giving him knives and guns to play with, but you don't want to strap him into a chair and keep him from moving. There is a perfect balance between the one and the many, and only the Creator of the world, the eternal one-and-many, can properly tell us what this balance is. For instance, when we follow His law perfectly, we are living most freely -- otherwise, we would either have access to the guns and knives or be tying ourselves in a chair. Only when we follow His law perfectly do we have that perfect balance.

At any rate, I don't suggest using the argument that the Trinity "solves the problem of the one and the many" as a means of presuppositional argumentation. I doubt it will go too well.

Otherwise, I think the questions you are asking (when a girl becomes a woman, etc.) have more to do with the concept of what comprises something's nature, and how changes in that thing affect its nature, if at all. I have basically nothing to say regarding that, but this is about all I can say regarding the one and the many.

 

[rbcbob]

Bob,
That's the question that I'm asking.
If I lose an arm or a leg or some brain cells,
then I'd still be "Matthew," but what I'm asking
is what makes something what it is?

God Himself is both one and many.
God is one, yet Jesus is not the Father
the Spirit is not the Son, etc.

Some Bible teachers have claimed that
the biblical understanding of the Trinity
gives the only correct answer for understanding
the "one and the many" issue that Greek
philosophers had, but I'm curious if someone
can please flesh this out for me.

We are made up of many cells, joints, muscles, etc.
yet we are "one" person.

So what I'm asking is at what point does a thing
cease to be what it is?
Can we definitively know the answer to this?

Or at what point does something become what it is?
(a girl becomes a woman; caterpillar becomes a
butterfly, etc.)

When does a Bible translation cease to be the
Word of God (non-literal or paraphrased)?

If you're familiar with the philosophical question,
then I think you know what I'm asking.

Maybe it's simply that we (as humans) are not
the primary interpreters of "things" and only to
the degree that our interpretation of a "thing"
lines up with what God says that a "thing" is,
then we are correct in saying that such-and-such
is an apple or orange or a ship.

Thanks

Bob,
That's the question that I'm asking.
If I lose an arm or a leg or some brain cells,
then I'd still be "Matthew," but what I'm asking
is what makes something what it is?

God Himself is both one and many.
God is one, yet Jesus is not the Father
the Spirit is not the Son, etc.

Some Bible teachers have claimed that
the biblical understanding of the Trinity
gives the only correct answer for understanding
the "one and the many" issue that Greek
philosophers had, but I'm curious if someone
can please flesh this out for me.

God is unique. He is the only non-created being in the Universe. All else that is, is created reality. It has its being and identity from God. It is what it is because God wills it to be so, just so. Its continuation, in its God given identity, maintains just so long as He pleases.

We are made up of many cells, joints, muscles, etc.
yet we are "one" person.

Our “person-ness” i.e. our identity is the imago Dei. We are His image. As body/soul entities we are the image of God. Amputations and death notwithstanding our identity is immutable, and that eternally.

So what I'm asking is at what point does a thing
cease to be what it is?

Men and Angels never cease to be what they are because they never cease to be. That is, they maintain their Divinely ordained identity forever, whether fallen or unfallen, redeemed or not.

Can we definitively know the answer to this?

Yes

Or at what point does something become what it is?
(a girl becomes a woman; caterpillar becomes a
butterfly, etc.)

The girl’s identity as the imago Dei known before the foundation of the world and knit together in her mother’s womb never changes. She is distinguished at various points in her existence by age, appearance, etc. but her essential identity remains unchanged.

When does a Bible translation cease to be the
Word of God (non-literal or paraphrased)?

The Word of God is eternal. God inspired men to pen it. It has been copied, translated, preserved, etc. Even the original autographs were but marks on animal skins and their primary usefulness was to preserve the Word(s) of God to the first and all subsequent generations.

If you're familiar with the philosophical question,
then I think you know what I'm asking.

Maybe it's simply that we (as humans) are not
the primary interpreters of "things" and only to
the degree that our interpretation of a "thing"
lines up with what God says that a "thing" is,
then we are correct in saying that such-and-such
is an apple or orange or a ship.

 

[Brian Bosse]

Hello Gentlemen,

What makes an orange an orange?

For someone to know what an orange is they would need to know two things: (1) what unifies an orange with other things, and (2) what distinguishes it from other things. For example, you have the unifying concept of an orange being a fruit, but you also have plurality in that an orange and an apple are distinct fruits. In other words, the world seems to be such that unity and plurality are related yet distinct. Expressions of unity manifest in relations of commonality, and expressions of plurality manifest in relations of distinctions. The problem of the one and the many is simply to ask, "Which aspect is ultimate - unity or plurality?"

If plurality is ultimate, then the foundation of all reality is utter dissimilarity. However, if ultimate reality is composed of utterly dissimilar things, then they cannot be known. There is no unifying thing to bring them together. If there was some unifying principle, then ultimate reality is not utterly dissimilar. On the other hand, if unity is ultimate, then the foundation of all reality is monistic. But you fall into a similar problem. If everything is monistic, then nothing can be known. There is no distinguishing principle to make differentiations. If there was a distinguishing principle, then unity is not ultimate.

One might argue that the unifying concept 'orange' must already be understood in order to explicate those distinguishing properties that can be properly said to make up an orange. Yet, how can we understand the unifying concept 'orange' if we do not already understand those distinguishing properties that make up an orange? Yet, how does one know which distinguishing properties should be brought together to properly capture the unifying concept of 'orange' if we don't already know what an 'orange' is? And around and around we go. That is the problem of the one and the many.

Brian

 

[CharlieJ]

If you remove a little of the peel from an orange, it is no longer the same orange, but a different one. The part you removed (the portion of the peel) is either an orange or not an orange, depending on the definition of an orange.

I'm trying to think in what system of logic you are operating. Only a mathematical definition of identity would lead to the conclusion that if a quality (size, shape, location, color, etc.) changes then the object is no longer the same object. I think almost all philosophers since Aristotle have worked with some concept of substance and accidence, in which the change of an accident (perceivable quality) does not affect the underlying substance. Ask them to explain what substance is, and watch the veins pulse.

I think a better answer to the question would be in the realm of analytic philosophy, in which we realize that all definitions are fuzzy. Since words can only be defined by other words, nothing can ever be defined with 100% referential accuracy. For example, can one really distinguish exactly between a string, a cord, and a rope; or between big, huge, and enormous?

 

[Dieter Schneider]

Semantic fog? What do you get if you ask someone to pass you the milk? The jug - presumably, which contains the milk!

 

[jandrusk]

I'm going to see if I can oversimplify this; I think to truly understand what something is, we have to understand it exhaustively. Even with are super powered microscopes, how confident are we that we cannot reduce an atom into a smaller unit of measure? But for the sake of argument lets say we can, whenever the object of reference changes state(no matter how small the change is) it ceases to be what it originally was defined as before.

This reminds me of irreducible complexity. If you take any part of the bacterial flagellum out it ceases to perform the function it is required to do as has been observed. So you have the many(the parts) and the one(the entity as to what it does). You cannot have the one without the other.

Of course in all of this, you need to assume your premises are correct in relation to what your referencing which is no guarantee that it is correct or not fragmented. My .02.

 

[Philip]

The bitten orange is a continuation of the non-bitten orange. To call it the same thing would be inaccurate, but at the same time there is a connection.

We'll call the orange O and the bitten orange O(a). O and O(a) are different, yet they both belong in the category of O-ness. They both answer to the form of O.

Curious. If you have lost 8,000 brain cells since the time of posting this and now, are you still you, or no longer still you?

Yes.

My ultimate answer to the question of the one and the many is "yes". The resolution for the question is ultimately found in the trinity--three distinct persons forming one godhead.

 

[jwithnell]

I'm trying to think in what system of logic you are operating. Only a mathematical definition of identity would lead to the conclusion that if a quality (size, shape, location, color, etc.) changes then the object is no longer the same object.

You have that right -- a mathematician in a family that leans toward engineering. Likely what is in play here is that A cannot be non-A. Any change in A (often expressed in terms of quantity) makes it non-A, and A cannot be non-A.

Thinking along more classical philosophical terms, I'm not sure you can create a whole category out of one object, even if that one object can be broken into its component parts. I think that is why the philosophical systems outside of Christianity have a hard time dealing with the presence of both universals and particulars at the same time.

In other words, you can make a statement to define oranges -- say all oranges have a rough, bumpy orange-colored peel. And from that you can add another premise, say object A has the requisite peel, and therefore conclude it is an orange. Or you could say, this object is smooth and has no peel, therefore it is not an orange. But you could not say that a piece of a peel is an orange in and of itself. The main point that comes to mind here, is the informal fallacy that says you cannot take a part to prove the whole.

 

[Brian Bosse]

Hello Jwithnell,

Any change in A (often expressed in terms of quantity) makes it non-A, and A cannot be non-A.

I know this may be a little off topic, but this seems to be incorrect. My core body temperature changes all of the time. My nails are constantly growing. My blood is constantly moving, and new blood cells are constanly being made - not to mention numerous other things that make changes to me. It seems extreme to say that as these things change I am no longer me. Perhaps, a better way to think of this is in terms of essential attributes. If X is an essential attribute for something P to be an A, then given something P that is an A, if X in P changes in an essential way so that X is no longer an X, then P is no longer an A, i.e., P now belongs to the class of ¬A.

Sincerely,

Brian

 

[jwithnell]

I'll defer to the mathematicians here -- I'm more apt to deal in more classical logic.

 

[Brian Bosse]

Hello Gents,

In classical logic, the Law of Non-Contradiction says that you cannot have both A and not-A at the same time and in the same relationship. Symbolically, this can be represented as follows...

LNC: ¬(A ∧ ¬A)

Notice, the LNC does not speak to what it is that makes an A an A or a ¬A a ¬A for that matter. The LNC simply notes that you cannot have both an A and a ¬A. As such, one would need more information to apply the LNC; namely, what it is that makes an A an A in the first place. Only then can you distigush between an A and a ¬A. Of course, this leads you right down the path of the problem of the one and the many. Yet, in every day discourse, we rarely dig deep enough to run into trouble. We intuitively have a surface level understanding as to what is an orange and what is not an orange. Only philosophers make us go deeper, and that is when the trouble starts.

Brian

 

[Skyler]

Perhaps there is no "one" essence that all oranges have in common, but rather a "type" that all oranges resemble. They may not match perfectly but they are close enough that they are recognizable as an orange.

 

[Prufrock]

Jonathan, you solution works on one level, but even with your solution you will shortly encounter the same problem. At heart, you have just moved the problem back one step, by not considering the essence as inhering in the thing, but considering the form in which it participates, to speak crudely. In the end, you are still left with defining your form or "type" of the "Platonic orange" floating off somewhere in the invisible world of forms, which your particular oranges are "resembling" (or in which they are participating). You can't know if something resembles "it," if you don't know what "it" is.

 

[Philip]

What we have with this idea of categories is the essential debate between Platonists and Aristotelians. Platonism holds that all oranges are shadows of a perfect "idea-orange" whereas Aristotle taught that we see similarities between various objects and decide that they are similar enough to categorize as "oranges" (and even this category can be subcategorized by varieties of orange).

My answer to the dilemma is, as I said, "yes."

 

[jwithnell]

LNC: ¬(A ∧ ¬A)

My logic class was a longggg time ago. In fact, I think Aristotle was still on the faculty of the next college over .....

 

[Brian Bosse]

My logic class was a longggg time ago. In fact, I think Aristotle was still on the faculty of the next college over .....

 

[Peairtach]

Van Til would have said that it is because God knows what an orange is, that we can know what an orange is.

Maybe someone can unpack that (orange) for me.

 

[Philip]

I would say that it is self-evident that we can know what an orange is for one good reason: we do, in fact, know what an orange is. We may not be able to explain it propositionally, to a Clarkian's satisfaction, but we are not required to be able do so in order to know what an orange is.

An "orange" is a fruit distinct from apples, peaches, berries, and all other kinds of fruit.

 

[Confessor]

Yeah, the Clarkian demand that all terms must be defined in some way is an impossible standard, for we can only define terms with other words, which can only be defined with other words, etc., ad infinitum. There has to be some point at which we have a basic, tacit understanding of terms; otherwise we couldn't speak intelligibly on any subject at all.

 

[steven-nemes]

If a thing suddenly becomes a different thing just by a change in its make-up, then you have a good anti-materialist argument: our bodies are changing all the time, including our brain, and yet we remain the same, so we are not our bodies.

 

[Brian Withnell]

The bitten orange is a continuation of the non-bitten orange. To call it the same thing would be inaccurate, but at the same time there is a connection.

We'll call the orange O and the bitten orange O(a). O and O(a) are different, yet they both belong in the category of O-ness. They both answer to the form of O.

Curious. If you have lost 8,000 brain cells since the time of posting this and now, are you still you, or no longer still you?

At the time of my regeneration, I became a new creature in Christ, and that without the change of any of the cells of my body. Am I the same man I was 30 years ago? Heaven forfend!