How is the beginning of something determined?

Question

Imagine I have an egg, powder, cocoa, flour, etc and want to make a "cake". I have been told the "cake" doesn't begin at any time because it's just the cocoa, egg, flour, etc in a different shape or form

What are the arguments against that?

Answer 1

Abiogenesis is a clear idea, we can relate it to systems that harvest Gibbs free energy to maintain areas of local order where entropy does not increase, though of course on average, net, over a closed system, entropy does increase. Eggs substantially preceded chickens in the fossil record.

What does it mean for time to have a 'beginning'? Discussed here: How can time have a beginning when a beginning needs time?

We can relate 'things' to heuristic explanatory layers, and conservation laws to transformations that obey fundamental continuous symmetries, discussed here: Is the idea of a causal chain physical (or even scientific)?

To say a thing has a beginning, is to say a concept, a grouping of phenomena into a conceptual shortcut for ease of reference, has a beginning. These objects in heuristic explanatory layers we overlay on to experience are not arbitrary though: in fact salience landscapes that group experiences and foreground how we can affect things, exactly constitute what we call knowledge.

I would suggest an eternal cosmos, is equivalent to presentism. Things that labels apply to begin and end, but what is fundamental only transforms. Discussed here: Is the idea that "Everything is energy" even coherent?

Answer 2

This seems like just yet another variant off the problem of identity over time. Same as the ship of Theseus paradox. The beginning of anything is just a matter of subjective definitions.

Humans celebrate the beginning of a new year, but the time is just an arbitrary Moment in earth rotations around itself and the sun.

A song begins with the first note. A sentence begins with the first word. A photo begins with the capturing of light on the medium.

Some things have no single moment of creation, but a show process, like from dough to bread, or from milk to yogurt. That's also not a philosophical problem, reality.

Some definitions are more useful than others, but it is useless to discuss which definition is more true in philosophy. But it is very important to decide definitions for laws and justice, so people discuss about them for political and legal reasons, not for philosophical reasons.

For scientists, the philosophic question of how to define life is not that important, because scientists can just use different definitions for different purposes.

The ship of Theseus paradox shows that it's not possible to always find consistent definitions of identity over time, of which beginning and ends are a part.

All this is not a particular philosophy though, i would just call it common sense.

Answer 3

One obvious counter argument is that a cake is not an unmixed set of raw ingredients. Before you can be considered to possess a cake, you must mix the ingredients in certain proportions and subject them to a degree of heat for a period of time. The exact point at which the process yields a cake is impossible to pin down, but practically you can say you have made a cake once you take it out of the oven in a state ready to savour.

Answer 4

This question is a temporal mereological question (SEP), in that it seeks to establish when a collection of parts are brought together in time to become a whole exists as a thing, and therefore is ontological in nature. Your thinking is very much entailed by the ancient question raised in regards to identity in the thought problem of the Ship of Theseus so let's restate for continuity with the Ancient Greek thought:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

Where as the Ship of Theseus challenges us to see identity from an assembly of parts not in terms of the actual parts, but the assemblages of parts, one could simply ask the question, as the shipwrights were building the Ship of Theseus, at what point in the assembly did it become the ship?

One way to avoid the trap of dealing with the mereological and temporal aspects of the concerns is to recognize that the ship is an artifact, and argue that all artifacts begin as teleological designs with the intent of being implemented by agents. Thus, a philosopher could argue, much in the way that Aristotle saw four different causes, that the essence of being an artifact is not external and objective in considering its physical constituents and organization, but instead is subjective and internal to the mind of the designer and to the sailors aboard it. In this case, something begins the moment it is conceived, and not when actual production begins. More concretely, the Ship of Theseus began when the shipwright envisioned it, and not when he began cleaving together a futtock.