Personal Identity and Clothing

[askthepaperclip he/him]

@ Darnam/Kurkistan: Lol yes, that would explain it. So, in that case, I stand by my original assessment!

Edited December 4, 2013 by Ookla the Nerdspren

[entropicscholar he/him]

I will begin by saying that I am less familiar with the books in question than I would like to be.

The Philisophical question itself is however quite straightforward.

 

Identity has to do with perception of reality.

Normally, normal people do not consider their clothing to be a part of their "surroundings", or a part of "the environment" they are in. Thus it cannot be considered a part of the environment, when using magic.

 

But do people consider their clothing to be a part of their self? Well, yes and no.

Conciously no. Subconciously yes. For example, when someone is keeping a knife hidden one their person this generally does not indicate skin to skin contact with the weapon. More likely it indicates the kife is in their pocket, or up their sleeve--meaning that it's actually hidden in their clothes, rather than their body.

This simple quirk of language demonstrates that people assume their clothing to be a part of them selves unconciously.

 

once again: Identity reflects an intuitive understanding of yourself and others. It does not need to be 100% rational.

 

Now lets take a look at your two examples:

 

1. Jasnah's combat-soulcasting. When she soulcasts the thugs, she wipes them out completely, clothes and all. She doesn't turn a man into a statue with clothes on it, but everything from hair to boots into crystal.

 

Clearly, when Jasnah was considering the thugs, she saw them as a threat. she did not diferentiate between one and another, nor did she diferentiate between the people themselves and the weapons they were holding: it was all one thing to her.

Because of this perception, the entire group can be said to have a single identity.

 

When Jasnah soulcasts, she therefore must affect ALL of the thugs, AND their clothing and weapons. There is no barrier in her mind to separate one part of the group from another.

This also explains why she did not have to crystalize them one at a time.

 

If (now I'm revealing here I havn't yet read the book) Jasnah had been unable to see or been unaware of one of the thugs, that thug would have been excluded from the effect. or if one had been off to the side, and she wanted to take him as a prisoner, that one would no longer identify in her mind as a threat, but rather, he would identify to her (and her soulcasting) as though he already were a prisoner.

 

2. Lift's "Slick". This one is the one you say caught your attention. Lift, it seems, includes her clothing in the effect whenever she goes "Slick". I scoured the interlude to make sure that it wasn't just her bare skin, but at one point she slides full-body across the floor, so that suggests (unless she was secretly nude the whole scene) that her clothing is included.

 

I agree. If this kind of effect were dependent on direct physics it would never work. Saddly, my answer, is very anticlimactic.

Just as I said above, most people (including Lift) will assume that their clothes are irremovably attached to their being--unless they are specifically thinking of taking them off.

The exception to this, I beleive is with very uncomfortable clothes, alien fashions and weather-atire. When you wear a heavy coat in a snowstorm, you don't think of the coat as part of yourself; you think of it a a barrier and protection against the snow.

In this case Lift would likely be unable to "Slick" effectively because she would think of the clothing as a forein entity, with an identity separate from his own. If, on the other hand, she were attacked by a polar bear, she would be much less likely to perceive her clothing at all thus allowing her to (possibly) return to the above assumption where clothes are attached and irremovable.

Edited December 12, 2013 by entropicscholar