Hmm, interesting. You interpet it as a Sissefos thing?

Explain please, what is a Sissefos thing?

OK, if you shift it in another perspective, as i had agreed in another OP, truth is a white lie.

---------- Post added 03-16-2010 at 01:27 AM ----------

I agree it is possible for something to change and yet being the same, but that is half-cooked and not realistic.

Hmmm. Rare roast beef is very realistic. Ummm.
Then, if you change from being a child to being an adult, you are not realistic, but only half-cooked? Well, could be.

There sure is a lot of speculation about what a river is for a statement negating free-will.

By the way, the guy's name was Sisyphus.

You can't push the same boulder up Mt. Olympus once!

:flowers:

You can't push the same boulder up Mt. Olympus once!

:flowers:

Nice!

I think that Heraclitus is both right or wrong, depending on how one reads him. Is the river the form of the water in flux, or the water? I think we generally mean the form. And maybe Heraclitus was actually just pointing at that form in flux/strife.

What he said was false. What he meant only he knew.

Hmm. I don't think it's that easy. And he may have said it only to bring something to our attention. The problem of abstractions.

Yes, as I said, his motives were his own. What he said was false.

That all depends on how one interprets him, of course. Surely he knew the usual sense of a phrase like that was false. He was making a point.

Metaphysicians are notorious for asserting sincerely what they believe to be false. E.g. "time is unreal", "we never see objects but only our own sensations", "no one every acts of his own free will", etc., etc.. So, that's not much of an argument.

It's a matter of interpretation. It's similar to the notion that our body replaces its material every so often, but we are still ourselves. One can't talk to the same Heraclitus twice.

But that is clearly false. One can talk to Heraclitus twice. I am sure that when he was alive, many people talked to Heraclitus a number of times. Why would the fact that H.'s body changes matter. We all know that it is one and the same (identical) Heraclitus even there are bodily changes. The job of the philosopher is to show why this is true. As Wittgenstein writes, we should not confuse "same" with "identical".

But this is just another example of the peculiar phenomenon remarked on by G.E. Moore that philosophers go about sincerely asserting what they know to be false. Nothing new.

Right, and it's not new because it's an interesting technique. Say something counter-intuitional and this forces the offended hearer to manifest his reasons. Surely, H knew that in a normal sense we can step in the same river twice. But did they stop to consider that this river was always different water? The river is the form, and not the water. The river is a concept used to interpret sensation. The nonphilosophical mind doesn't pay attention to this.

Right, and it's not new because it's an interesting technique. Say something counter-intuitional and this forces the offended hearer to manifest his reasons. Surely, H knew that in a normal sense we can step in the same river twice. But did they, the less abstract, stop to consider that this river was always different water? The river is the form, and not the water. The river is a concept used to interpret sensation. The nonphilosophical mind doesn't pay attention to this.

imo,
Just as we can identify a predicate with the totality (set) of individuals which satisfies it, we can identify a thing, eg. a river, as the totality (set) of predicates in which it occurs, throughout the duration in which it exists.

The river is not identical to the same river at different times.
The flow of water is different at differing times.
We cannot step into the identical flow of water at different times.

The same river is that river which has the same location, same banks, etc..

The river at T1 is identical to the river at T1.
But, the river at timeT1 is never identical to the river at time T2, even though it is the same river.

Things are all that they have been up to the time considered.
Obviously this set differs at different times.