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Theseus' paradox
Topic Started: Jan 24 2013, 12:36 AM (589 Views)
CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus_paradox

This is something that's been puzzling me for years, but I only just now learned that it had a name. It centres around the Ship of Theseus, an old ship which is preserved. Over time, all of the parts that make up the ship decay, and so, one by one, over time, they're replaced - until all of the original parts have been replaced. The question is: can we still say that this ship is the Ship of Theseus?

This is puzzling enough....but, let's suppose that somebody gathered together all of the original parts, and built an identical ship out of them. Which, ship, if either, would be the original Ship of Theseus?

If ships are a bit complicated, we could just as easily consider something simpler. For example, if I told you that I still used the same broom that my grandfather used - but over the years, it had had 34 new handles and 58 new heads - would I really still be using the same broom? Each of the parts that make up the broom would have been replaced many times over, and yet the broom would still retain some sense of its original identity.

So, does anyone know where to start with this????
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CJ
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A very minor case of serious brain damage

Two years on, this is still making my head spin >_< . However, I did find a video on the topic, which proposes several possible solutions:



I don't know which of these solutions, if any, is the 'best'. Myself, I lean towards solution 1 (that is, the identical ship built with all of the original parts is not the Ship of Theseus; rather, it is a new ship constructed using parts that had previously belonged to the Ship of Theseus). In my mind, what defines the ship is not the specific pieces used to make it, but rather the "spatio-temporal continuity" of its existence. To go back to my hypothetical grandfather's broom from the previous post, all of its component parts have been replaced many times over, but it remains the 'same' broom because the original broom and the current broom are connected through a single continuous lineage of handles and heads.

I will acknowledge, though, that my preferred solution poses problems of its own. For example, a lot of vehicles - ships or otherwise - get dismantled temporarily for major overhauls, and then reconstructed (usually with some parts replaced!); would a vehicle which undergoes such an overhaul still be the 'same' vehicle afterwards? If so, then "spatio-temporal continuity" would need to be defined carefully in order to accommodate things like this without opening us back up to the original paradox.
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GrieferLord
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Tank Sniper

imo you can replace all the original parts and it's still the same ship, you simply update it so it's legacy lives on.

example when you take a ship back for a re-fit it is the same ship and same class just simply updated for the times for better functionality. if anything you add the date to which you "refitted" it as the time to which you improved and repaired it.
Edited by GrieferLord, Feb 9 2015, 03:19 AM.
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