Chapter 9 - Sames Versus Sameness in Conceptual Contents and Vehicles

Summary

SAMES, DIFFERENTS, SAME, AND DIFFERENT

For certain purposes sameness can be treated as a relation. So treated it is of special interest because, although there is only one kind of real sameness relation, hence only one kind of sameness in the real world, and only one kind of sameness on the level of intermediaries (intermediaries are, after all, supposed to be real in their own realm) there are two separate relations corresponding to sameness on the level of intentional content. A visaging might involve (1) two or more presentations of what is the same content in fact or (2) two or more presented contents visaged as being the same. Call the first of these a “visaging of sames,” the second a “visaging of sameness.” Either can occur without the other – as I will slowly try to make clear – or they can occur together. Compare other internal relations. One might visage a tone, say, middle C, and also visage a different tone, say, A above C, but not visage one being a fifth higher than the other though of course it is. Or one might visage that one color was brighter than another without visaging either of these as a definite brightness or even as very definite hues. Imagine, for example, that the lighting is poor and peculiar, so one can't really tell “what the colors are.” The passive picture theory of perception (Section 8.2), however, with its projection of properties of the visaged onto the intermediaries of the visaging, requires that visaged sameness should correspond to real sameness in intermediaries, that is, that sameness should be represented by sameness.