The beginning of wisdom here is to take note of Wittgenstein's advice not to confuse the concept of the same with the concept of identity.

The concept of the same is one of the central philosophical concepts with truth, knowledge, and good. What is central is how something can remain the same thing though change (persistence through change). The person is the same person although he is a baby, and adult, and an old person. The beginning of wisdom here is to take note of Wittgenstein's advice not to confuse the concept of the same with the concept of identity. How does something remain self-identical, although, at the same time, it changes?

The concept of the same is one of the central philosophical concepts with truth, knowledge, and good. What is central is how something can remain the same thing though change (persistence through change). The person is the same person although he is a baby, and adult, and an old person. The beginning of wisdom here is to take note of Wittgenstein's advice not to confuse the concept of the same with the concept of identity. How does something remain self-identical, although, at the same time, it changes?

Have you got a reference?

It is in the Investigations. I forget where. I suppose I could find it.

---------- Post added 05-29-2010 at 11:53 PM ----------

The Aristotelian theory of identity is to make the distinction between essential and accidental properties, and hold that X remains the identical X when, and only when the essential properties of X do not change, although the accidental properties can change. Of course, that raises the question of the distinction between essential and accidental properties: indeed two questions. First, is there such a distinction? Second, how is the distinction to be made?

Now this is good stuff. Yes, essence and accident. This is crucial. Let's here your thoughts. I've already written mine in Abstractions.

Thoughts about what? Words by themselves seem to trigger you off. The issue, as I have already said, is how to draw the distinction between accidental and essential properties. And that question supposes that there is a real distinction in the first place.

Hey, man. I've tried to have some friendly conversation with you. I get bored of all this needless friction. Friendly conversation is the way to do philosophy. Not all this "words by themselves, blah blah." So have fun with yourself for awhile.

Back to the original proposition, you say that what is central is how something can remain the same thing though change, but I think you need to clarify what you mean by same, how are we to justify a differentiation of something that remains same with that of something that is no longer the same?

It is in the Investigations. I forget where. I suppose I could find it.

The beginning of wisdom here is to take note of Wittgenstein's advice not to confuse the concept of the same with the concept of identity.

253. "Another person can't have my pains." - Which are my pains? What counts as a criterion of identity here? Consider what makes it possible in the case of physical objects to speak of "two exactly the same", for example, to say "This chair is not the one you saw here yesterday, but is exactly the same as it".
In so far as it makes sense to say that my pain is the same as his, it is also possible for us both to have the same pain. (And it would also be imaginable for two people to feel pain in the same - not just the corresponding - place. That might be the case with Siamese twins, for instance.)
I have seen a person in a discussion on this subject strike himself on the breast and say: "But surely another person can't have THIS pain!" - The answer to this is that one does not define a criterion of identity by emphatic stressing of the word "this". Rather, what the emphasis does is to suggest the case in which we are conversant with such a criterion of identity, but have to be reminded of it.

254. The substitution of "identical" for "the same" (for instance) is another typical expedient in philosophy. As if we were talking about shades of meaning and all that were in question were to find words to hit on the correct nuance. That is in question in philosophy only where we have to give a psychologically exact account of the temptation to use a particular kind of expression. What we 'are tempted to say' in such a case is, of course, not philosophy; but it is raw material. Thus, for example, what a mathematician is inclined to say about the objectivity and reality of mathematical facts is, not philosophy of mathematics, but something for philosophical treatment.

255. The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.

It is not only among numbers that the relationship of identity is to be found. From which it seems to follow that we ought not to define it specially for the case of numbers. We should expect the concept of identity to have been fixed first, and that then, from it together with the concept of Number, it must be possible to deduce when Numbers are identical with one another, without there being need for this purpose of a special definition of numerical identity as well.
As against this, it must be noted that for us the concept of Number has not yet been fixed, but is only due to be determined in the light of our definition of numerical identity. Our aim is to construct the content of a judgement which can be taken as an identity such that each side of it is a number. We are therefore proposing not to define identity specially for this case, but to use the concept of identity, taken as already known, as a means for arriving at that which is to be regarded as identical. Admittedly, this seems to be a very odd kind of definition, to which logicians have not yet paid enough attention; but that it is not altogether unheard of, may be shown by a few examples.

There may be a difficulty here. If A and B are concepts [I used the Greek letters alpha and beta, but never mind] (say, A is the concept "parallel to line a" and B is "parallel to line b"), then I know what is meant by the sentence, "the extension of A is the same as the extension of B". But does it follow that I know what is meant by the phrase, "the extension of A"? Obviously I can't get out of the difficulty by defining the extension of A to mean the extension of the concept "having the same extension as A"!

I think we are beginning to fall of track. Are we really making any confusion between the two concepts as to introduce such obfuscating questions?

Back to the original proposition, you say that what is central is how something can remain the same thing though change, but I think you need to clarify what you mean by same, how are we to justify a differentiation of something that remains same with that of something that is no longer the same?

One way of making the distinction is to take Wittgenstein's advice and not confuse the same with the identical. Another way is to distinguish between two meanings of the word "same". Between qualitatively the same on the one hand, and quantitatively the same (or numerically the same, or "one and the same") on the other hand. For instance, if I say that I am reading the same book that you are reading, I may be saying that I am reading a different copy of the book you are reading, or I may be saying that you and I are sharing one and the same copy. We have but one copy of the book between us. The first is qualitatively the same, the second is quantitatively the same.

You are quantitatively the same person you were when you were a baby, but you are not qualitatively the same person. So, you are the same in one sense, and not the same in a different sense. Problem solved: as so often, by distinguishing two meanings of the same word.

Right, how does the concept "same" remain the same?

Right, and this also explains the reproduction of a bacteria, the new copy remains the same organism qualitatively while being a completely different organism quantitatively. But this concept of same would hit a solid brick wall when applied to consciousness, if a subject were intoxicated we would have no means of knowing or measuring the difference in the individual's state of mind rendering us ignorant of qualitative and quantitative change we could only conclude that the individual remains same even though he's experience on actuality would be completely different from that experienced whilst sober.

But it is not the same organism qualitatively, since the baby and the adult have different properties (or appear to, at least). But they are the same organism quantitatively, since the baby and the adult are one and the same individual. You have it exactly backwards. Or, as Wittgenstein might have said, the baby and the adult are not the same, but the baby and adult are identical.

Are you drunk? How are two copies of the same bacteria the same in quantity if they are two separate individual organisms? You must be hallucinating if you are confusing two distinctly unconnected bodies as one. And how is it not the same organism qualitatively if they share the same identical DNA?

The concept of the same is one of the central philosophical concepts with truth, knowledge, and good. What is central is how something can remain the same thing though change (persistence through change). The person is the same person although he is a baby, and adult, and an old person. The beginning of wisdom here is to take note of Wittgenstein's advice not to confuse the concept of the same with the concept of identity. How does something remain self-identical, although, at the same time, it changes?

Young change to old. I got us from bed, and at the next moment, i am drive away from my house. The word "change" used reflect a daily fact of our experience, but is it valid, and how necessary is this concept at all?