> Then you're admitting that there's something non-physical that defines the identity of the physical thing It's not a question of being physical but that of i

> Then you're admitting that there's something non-physical that defines the identity of the physical thing It's not a question of being physical but that of independently describable. > Or is identity itself meaningless Identity is how we frame and contextualize for the purpose of thought and communication. For the purpose of thought I might consider the modified ship the same as the one in the initial state but if the law requires you to rename and re-register as new when you modify so much of a ship then for legal purposes I will start identifying it as a new ship but the people that use the ship will probably consider it that same old ship because for the purpose of thought the independently describable object has not changed. It is not identity that has no meaning but that physical objects themselves have no meaning to us unless framed in an independently describable context (i.e.: as separate from all other things in the context). For a computer program, does the letter 'A' exist? It does if the program can decode a byte as such, but does its inability to describe the bits and bytes that way mean the letter 'A' does not exist? Maybe it is 0x41? Identity has meaning but only to those who are able to describe that identity and reason about the context.