The idea of identity
The question that is asked of the philosopher is “if a window is broken ,will it continue to be a window ? The answer given here (Ask philosophers) is it depends upon how much broken it is. If the damage is not substantial it can still be called a window.If ,on the other hand, the glass is broken and the wood has come apart , Will it still qualify to be called a window ? Here the question is one of identity. A caterpillar ceases to be one and becomes a butterfly .
The butterfly
Stinging, stinking caterpillar
Ate beauty-holes in our cheekoo leaves
And disappeared into
The rainbow outside our compound.Â
If the water becomes ice ,the H2O will still remain and in several transformations the original qualities may still persist although the identity has undergone a change. Einstein’s E=MC2 would imply that the transformation means that the original identity will remain in some form.
My own perception is that the window ,if broken, will not cease to be a window. When we are talking of the window we are not talking of the mere wooden frame or the glass pane .We are dealing with the idea of a gap or a crevice within the opacity of a wall which gives us a view of the world outside. Thus even a hole with no wooden frame or glass pane will qualify to be called a window as long as it functions as a window.
Links:
amherst.edu
“window” is a noise. It can be used by a human, given a list of aspects and thresholds depending on what he uses it for. Many things, like ice and butterflies are stages in a process. It’s the applicability of the noise that changes. No window is perfect – every window has the seeds of its own destruction and it thus “broken”.