ontolgical facetism

I think that a thing is not only their components, but the ideas, uses, properties, and history associated and applied to the object. But what is a use or a property? Where is the divide between the glass and the cup? Don't worry, I will explain. First some definitions. Use is what an object can do, can be used for, or something that can be done to it. A broom can sweep. Sweeping is one of its uses. It can also be burned, thrown, eaten, brandished, leaned on, and used to beat someone over the head. It however can not be used to perform a surgery. Surgery is not one of its uses. Properties are things that formulate something's description. For example, the broom is made of wood. It is brown and long. Nots can also be properties. The broom is not pink. The broom does not have legs. Properties are sections of what makes something identifiable. History is where something has been. What it has done. This is where things start to get specific. My broom at home was used to clean my floor. That is one of the things that makes it different from my neighbor's broom. Ideas are probably the hardest of these to explain. It is what you think an object is. What people in general think an object is. It is the ideas and exceptions associated with an object. You think that a broom should have a long handle. This idea makes a long handled broom defined as different from a short handled broom. A dog is expected to bark. That is one of the ideas that makes a dog, a dog. Ideas go on top of uses, properties, and history. The ideas, properties, uses, and history of an object are called its facets. Everything has facets and these facets define the object.

Now in the beginning I mentioned something called components. Think of a pocket watch. Now disassemble the pocket watch into the gears that made it. Now you have gears. What happened to the watch? Back when there was still a watch, it was made of gears. The gears were the watch. That can’t be true however. Gears are not watches, as proven by disassembling the watch we had. The gears were components of the pocket watch. If we reassemble the pocket watch using the gears the gears gain, through the process of assembly the idea of the pocket watch. The parts of the pocket watch, much like uses, properties, history, and ideas, are a facet of the pocket watch. Then the gears are made of molecules. The molecules are made of atoms. Things are both themselves and their components. Being a thing is a relationship between components, their composite parts. But what happens when a component is removed, just one component. So we now have a pocket watch, minus one gear. Is it still a pocket watch? Yes, but it is different. The pocket watch has lost the idea of a working pocket watch. It has gained the idea of a broken pocket watch. It lost the component of a gear. It gained the component of an empty space. But the strangest part is it keeped the idea of our pocket watch. How? That was a specific idea defining only our pocket watch. But that idea changed. It has always been changing. One of the facets in the list of requirements was to have that gear, but it was rewritten when we removed the gear. It also changed when we disassembled and reassembled the watch a few minutes ago. The idea of the pocket watch could survive the change. But there are changes that the idea can not survive. Can not change to. Like being disassembled.

Now things get interesting. Human consciousness, or conscious in general. What is it to be sentient? Right now, I think it is a constellation formulated of components and the communication between those components. To start, let's talk about Sam and Jeff. Sam is a theoretical pianist. A master of his craft. But unfortunately, he has gotten into a car crash. In the accident he lost his left hand. Through a groundbreaking surgical procedure, his hand was perfectly replaced with that of a donor. The donor’s name is Jeff. Jeff is an amazing calligraphy artist. The piano muscle memory in Sam’s original hand was indefinitely a part of him and his mind, but now it’s gone. Is he still sam? It was then replaced with Jeff’s hand and its muscle memory. Is he still Sam now? I think so. People change. People change a lot, and often. You are still yourself, even if you are different from how you were yesterday. Different from how you were a month ago, a year ago. Different from how you were the day you where born. I call this momentary truth. You and everything around you is in a constant state of change. Everything from the grass on your lawn to the mona lisa to the rising sun is ephemeral in some way. Grass dies, but it also moves in the wind. It grows and lives as all things do. Sam was changing long before the car crash. Getting a new hand was just a drastic change, faster then he was used to. On the drive before the crash the brain cells in his left and right brain were dying and performing mitosis, the two halfs in constant communication. His gut bacteria and the chemicals that control his emotions were shifting, his skin cells rubbing off onto the wheel. He was making a memory of the drive. He was thinking about his kids. That changed him too. Living means movement. Movement means change. The only thing you can do is direct the change.