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What makes an object unique

staticphoton October 26, 2019 at 20:10 1850 views 2 comments
Not in the sense that a couple rocks from the same pile are almost indistinguishable, but in a more fundamental level where physical characteristics between two or more of the same objects are completely indistinguishable to us. Lets say a "proton" just to pick something.

All protons share many physical characteristics, but regardless of the frame of reference you observe them from, their position in the universe is unique. At every instant of time each proton has a position relationship with the rest of protons that is unique.

Would you consider the position of protons in the universe relevant to its set of characteristics, (in an extrinsic way, assuming that if you changed the location of every proton in the universe, the universe would change accordingly), or would you say a proton's identity is intrinsic and nothing that happens around it is relevant to its set of characteristics.

Comments (2)

OmniscientNihilist October 29, 2019 at 00:36 #346584
Reply to staticphoton and what if a mirror universe exists, beside this one, that is 100% identical. If you flew a spaceship out of this universe towards it you would run into yourself doing the exact same thing. Attempting to talk to yourself you both say the exact same thing at the exact same time. Nobody would ever be able to visit the mirror universe because they would not be able to get past their mirror self attempting to do the exact same thing. If you tried to kill your mirror self your bullet would just impact his cancelling each other out. The only way to kill him would be to kill yourself, he would die in the exact same way at the exact same time. He would know every secret you ever had, and you would know his.
I like sushi October 29, 2019 at 07:36 #346675
Spaciotemporal position. Also, we cannot hold the entire object at the same time - we cannot ‘view’ it from every angle at once. In this respect the object is most ‘assumed’ rather than in ‘direct’ eidetic experience.