[Ads-l] suspect, adj.

[Jonathan Lighter]

That's my understanding as well.  Add to it the fact that every
molecule in the river is flowing, grains of earth on the shore are
crumbling, bugs and dirt are floating, etc., etc.  So while the river
might look the same to the human eye, it is not precisely the same
river it was a few seconds ago.

A non-philosophical wiseguy once insisted that Heraclitus was full of
it, because if you step into the Hudson River once, and then step into
it again, it's still the Hudson River.

Close enough for government work.

JL

On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 8:46 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 1, 2016 at 5:43 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> >"You can't even step into the same river *once*!"
>>
>> This is obviously true, since "same" implies that you've stepped into
>> "it"  before (assuming it's the "same" in the Heraclitian sense). Thus
>> it is a more exacting, yet essentially synonymous, statement of the
>> Heraclitian principle.
>>
>>
> Have you ever considered going into philosophy? Nobody has ever explained
> to me that way, before. That analysis is interesting, given that it's of
> the top of your head and is consistent with mine own analysis and both
> analyses are reasonably close to the ones given by the pros.
>
> My naive interpretation was that you can't step into same river twice
> because, even as the first hydrogen atom of your big toe is touching the
> first hydrogen atom of the river, that part of the river is flowing away.
> So, you can't, sensu stricto, step into the "same" river, because the fact
> the river is *flowing* makes it incompatible with the concept, <same>.
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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