In philosophy at college we covered lots of this kind of stuff, including Aristotle. And even at the time, I wondered...
Hasn't our understanding of the world changed significantly since these guys were racking their brains trying to figure everything out with their intellect?
The implicit assumption in their logic appears to be rooted in the notion that we live in a world of solid objects which can be categorised and understood with mind. However, we now know that this is an illusion and the seeming solidity of objects in the world is a sensory delusion. Everything in the material world is in fact 99.9999999999999% empty space (I didn't add all those 9s to be funny, I believe there is in fact 13 of them ).
Soooo...to me, the reasoning of Aristotle and others is akin to Plato's cave. It's like creating a science examining and detailing and categorising the images on the cave wall, without having any idea of the source of them. It's kind of pointless unless you know what's creating the images.
The notion of identity as purported by Aristotle doesn't sit with me. It's based on mental fabrications and stories. We slap a label on things: 'tree', 'cat', 'dog' and then think we know them. But take a tree and really show me what the essence of 'tree' is. Ultimately it's just a formation of energy and information on the quantum level. Same with 'cat' and 'dog'. And 'person'. We label them for ease of communication, but this 'identity' that we give it is just story. Maybe it's just me.....but I can no longer accept any story about myself, others or the world as being ultimately true. It's just restless mind grasping onto the shadows on the wall, trying to make sense of something which is just a pale reflection of an invisible source.
Those are my feelings. All differing perspectives are relevant and necessary.
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