| In Last Chance To See, Douglas Adams' survey of then almost extinct species (and there's a man who knew more than he let on) there's mention of the Kinkaku-ji, the Temple of the Gold Pavilion, in Kyoto. It's centuries old, having been built by Shogun someone-or-other in thirteen-something CE. Since then it's burned down completely and been rebuilt with entirely new materials at least once. But what you see now is, and this is what puzzled Adams, still the centuries old temple built by the Shogun. It last burned down about fifty years ago, but that doesn't matter. There is, and has since its original construction only ever been exactly one, always self-identical temple.
But it gets better. What Adams doesn't mention (and I wonder what he would have thought about it), is the Inner Shrine at Ise, very holiest shrine of the Shinto religion, the place where the ancestor-god of the Japanese Imperial familiy is venerated. Take a look at the photo at the top here
In the photo, you can see a bare rectangular area next to the shrine. Every twenty years the shrine is completely dismantled and rebuilt on the adjacent empty site, using entierly new materials. But there is now, and only every has been, exactly one, always self-identical shrine.
What examples like this do is focus our attention on just where it is that "thingness" resides. The matter couldn't be clearer, in my opinion, although given how clear it is, it took me a long, long time to figure it out. Partly becuase I'm not very smart, and partly becuase the clearest things can be the hardest to see, and partly because I was trained from an early age not to. It's a funny old world.
-- Keith Braithwaite
See also What Is Thing, Taoist Thing, Thinger Thinker.
Um, thingness? If you're going to go coining words do please distinguish 'em for us. -- not kb
Keith Say What You Think. Where does the thingness reside, subject?, object? the connection between them (careful there or I'll beat you to death with a quality copy of Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance :-) You have obviously that critically about this so give me a leg up please. -- ta
Okay, I'll bite. Where is the thingness? As far as I can figure we have a bunch of people who believe that shrine on site A and (later) shrine on site B are the same shrine. People believe a lot of stuff, don't make it true. You've obviously spotted something I've missed. -- ta
As a matter of process, do they take one down then build the other? in which case where does the eternal shrine go in the mean time? Or do they build first? in which case where does the 'uniqueness' go in the interim.
(and I don't think it's the same as Washington's axe or our bodies, there is a break in continuity here) -- ta
I tend to agree with Tom. Unless you are proposing that the shrine/palace has some form of soul where it's identity resides, I don't see how a rebuilt from new materials shrine can be the same as the very first shrine built. It remains a copy -- aoha
In answer to the above: The shrine and shrine precinct (this holds true for all Shinto Shrines) is the abode of the Kami (shinto god or spirit of a great personage). Thus one could say that the shrine does have a soul. More importantly the building itself is only sacred in that it houses the Kami relics (traditionally a bronze mirror and a sword). One could thus make the statement that the building is the body while the relics are the soul. When the building is rebuilt the relics are transferred with great ceremony to the new building. --Michael Chean
So what makes it the same is the relics? -- Aonghus Ó hAlmhain
That would only work if you thought that taking the relics from Ise to, say, your garden shed would make your shed identically the shrine at Ise. -- Keith Braithwaite
That seems to be the essence of what Michael siad above -- aoha
And does that make sense to you? -- Keith Braithwaite
More sense that a rebuilt copy is somehow mystically the same as the original with no explanation of why it should be so. The idea that it is the same, because due to the relics the spirit continues to inhabit it I find coherent. I don't share the faith that would cause me to believe this, but I find it worth respecting -- Aonghus Ó hAlmhain
The building can be rebuilt, but integrity is maintained by preserving the relics - what would happen if the relics were destroyed in the fire? -- aoha
Well, the beauty thing about this arrangement - and I'm going from memory here, is that the relics are not actually seen by anyone but the Shinto Priests. So it may be the case that they are gone already. The laity believes based on the 'faith' that the shrine holds something sacred, and in fact it may be the case that this belief has become more generalized and that the relics are meaningless to everyone but Shinto priests and scholars. I think that if you were to check with the books you would find that the sense of integrity or in this case sacredness has been generalized to the area of the temple. Indeed if I remember correctly natural phenomena such as waterfalls and Islands are considered sacred as well. I will need to check this at some point its been 20 years since I studied this.--MichaelChean
Thank you Michael, that indeed makes more sense to me -- Aonghus Ó hAlmhain
That word soul comes with a lot of baggage though. What not try specification. If the spec is identical, it's the same thing. A subsect of Braithwaitism Assumed here, of course. -- Richard Drake
Possibly we need to use the philosophical terms "accidents" and "essence" rather than soul or specification. After all, you can build n incidents of a specification... but I'm no nearer to understanding where the sameness of a rebuilt shrine comes in -- aoha
(Desperately trying to leave no mark on the ricepaper) If you view something as having an emergent property of identity over and above its constituents(such as I feel I have) then its constituents can change and its identity remain. I don't think a specification is enough, there must be a history as well. This is what I think the shrines don't have. -- ta
The shrine has tons of history. It gets rebuilt every twenty years, and that's been going on for centuries, how much history do you want?
I am using history in a different sense. Perhaps continuity would be better word. I begin to suspect that "thing" is too vague a concept to do much with though. -- ta
By the way, I don't know what the process is, exactly, but I suspect strongly that the new building is built while the old one stands. I suspect this because I do know that there is a ceremony where the ancestor spirits are enjoined to move from one to the other, which wouldn't make sense any other way. I'm reluctant to mention this, as the movment of the spirits is on the one hand utterly a red herring and quite beside the point. On the other hand, it is also exactly the answer.
Perhaps its the Thing word that is the problem here. I am perfectly happy to agree that there has always been one self-identical shrine. OK then. So why all the questions?
I am also of the opinion that it occasionally moves a few yards to the left or right (or perhaps the world moves around it). Fair enough.
Now do you think there has always been one and only one self-identical shrine shaped building on the site? -- ta (and don't you dare call me "grasshopper")
No, of course not. There have been many, many different shrine-shaped buildings from time to time.
Identity and existence can be exactly in the interaction between subject and object, if you want. But there's no, absolutely no, reason to require any one particular, or even any at all, distinction between subject and object.
If you're going to beat me with ZATAOMM, you might want to throw in a few quick strokes with Mostly Harmless, too. Remember the Whole Sort Of General Mish Mash?
Warning! Untested assertions ahead.
I think the place where Thinger Thinkers get lost is the assumption that there has to be exactly one correct way to slice up the WSOGMM, and the the alternative can only be that there are infinitly many arbitrary ways to slice it up.
Subject/object is one way to do the job, and a very effective one in many cases. But it doesn't help much with unerstanding what's going on at Ise, for instance. There, you need to think about the system of the site, the buildings (the buildings past, present and future) and the people (ditto) as one "thing", in order to avoid appeals to claptrap like the identity of the shrine being a soul, or it just being the opinion of the worshippers, or some such nonsense.
There are many ways to slice the mish-mash, and even many schemas for generating ways to do it, but you don't get to just invent one how you please. There is a (alluding once more to Barmy Ludwig of Cambridge) grammar to the way the slices are made.
Physics is the business of examining one of those schemas (not the whole grammar). Come the happy day when physics is complete, there will still be other schemas to explore, but they won't lead to any slice that contradicts any of the slices drawn from the completed-physics schema.
Ah, thats a relief. I thought we were really going off the deep end for a while. Do you have any pointers on Wittgenstein's schema stuff?
Some people would think that we are already standing unsteadily on the very brink of the chasm.
The idea of there being schemas for different kinds of grammar is mine, not W's, so far as I know. He covers his idea of philosophical grammar at length in the Philosophical Investigations and the Philosophical Grammar. He presents several different "language games", but all with the same kind of grammar, albeit different actual grammars, I think. Rachel knows more about this stuff that I do, ask her the next time you see her. -- kb
- Quick point. Looking at it this way the slice that treats the two buildings as alternately being the self same identical shrine seems to include elements of Shinto. Obviously the elements to make the buildings into one Shrine Thing do not contradict your schema. Do you need Shinto beliefs for the shrine to be this way or are those elements seperate from shinto? and what are they (if they are amenable to language)? -- ta
Couldn't help but notice the parallel between this subject and web architecture, in which a resource is purely conceptual and so a URI attaches to a meaning, not a specific or concrete representation. The temple is the same temple moving lot to lot because it means more that way, even though there was no argument that physically they are different buildings. Meanings are more important than facts that seem to contradict them. Where's the mystery here?
Where indeed?
I like the web architecture analogy. We're just now doing some buzzword compliance^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcutting edge technology proof-of-concept stuff with SOAP. And what a conceptual crock it turns out to be. Give me REST any day. -- kb
I like how you used my lead-in to trash SOAP. Looks like we've been having the same experience, but on different lots. Could be you and I are the same temple as far as Don Box is concerned. I grant you REST...today.
"meanings are more important than facts that seem to contradict them". Surely we should investigate further until there is no contradiction? On the other hand I'm sure I live happily with several contradictions all the time -- ta
There are contradictions and then there are troubling contradictions. The epistemologist knows how to find an infinite number of the former in any context, while the religious zealot knows how to lose an infinite number of the latter in any context. :~) Yup, creativity is our stock in trade for us religious zealots! -- Mark Tilley
Speaking of creativity, music offers another example of the temple phenomenon. In most harmonic contexts, two notes exactly one octave apart are almost of identical meaning, often close enough not to matter. In a melodic context, they are not identical at all.
Late night's templar reflections ...
They have not a lot to do with this page as such, but it's a great one to restore to the active memory of Recent Changes, and
- What Suleman Ahmed patiently explained to me on Friday about the deep significance that Muslims see in Jesus' radical actions in the Jewish temple of his day ("overturning the tables of the moneychangers or usurers", as followers of the Koran would see it) has been one of the most helpful keys to Islam for me for many a month. More in No Priesthood before very long, I hope.
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