Mind game - The Ship of Theseus

JupiterKid

Ok - here’s a little mind game for you to figure out. The Ship of Theseus is a large wooden sea ship with big sails. Over a 200 year period, the wood making up the Ship gets tired and rotten is gradually replaced, plank by plank.

Eventually all the original wood in the Ship is replaced. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?

Well?

Chancer3001

once its over 50% changed it's not.

Thats my take

Barry Badrinath

Yes, it's still Theseus's ship.

Ipso

http://foolsandhorses.weebly.com/triggers-broom.html

The Backwards Man

Once you urinate your weight in pish are you still you?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

This is an old paradox. If the water in a river is constantly flowing and being replace is it still the same river. A view states that considering objects to extend across time as four-dimensional causal series of three-dimensional "time-slices" could solve the ship of Theseus problem because, in taking such an approach, all four dimensional objects remain numerically identical to themselves while allowing individual time-slices to differ from each other. The aforementioned river, therefore, comprises different three-dimensional time-slices of itself while remaining numerically identical to itself across time; one can never step into the same river-time-slice twice, but one can step into the same (four-dimensional) river twice.

Or just consider Trigger's sweeping brush.

Cee-Jay-Cee

JupiterKid wrote: »

Ok - here’s a little mind game for you to figure out. The Ship of Theseus is a large wooden sea ship with big sails. Over a 200 year period, the wood making up the Ship gets tired and rotten is gradually replaced, plank by plank.

Eventually all the original wood in the Ship is replaced. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?

Well?

Yes of course it is because 'Ship of Thesus' suggests that it belongs to Thesus, so regardless of how much or little of it is replaced, it will still be the ship of thesus unless he sells it to Trigger whereby it becomes the Ship of Trigger.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

Yes of course it is because 'Ship of Thesus' suggests that it belongs to Thesus, so regardless of how much or little of it is replaced, it will still be the ship of thesus unless he sells it to Trigger whereby it becomes the Ship of Trigger.

He had died and the ship was preserved by the Greeks over the two hundred year period.

Ipso

Jovanni Ugly Tribune wrote: »

This is an old paradox. If the water in a river is constantly flowing and being replace is it still the same river. A view states that considering objects to extend across time as four-dimensional causal series of three-dimensional "time-slices" could solve the ship of Theseus problem because, in taking such an approach, all four dimensional objects remain numerically identical to themselves while allowing individual time-slices to differ from each other. The aforementioned river, therefore, comprises different three-dimensional time-slices of itself while remaining numerically identical to itself across time; one can never step into the same river-time-slice twice, but one can step into the same (four-dimensional) river twice.

Or just consider Trigger's sweeping brush.

'A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.'

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Ipso wrote: »

'A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.'

Can't argue with that.

I was never a fan of philosophy in it's current sense.

biko

Yes, in the same way your body's cells die and new ones take their place.

me_irl

Same riddle could be used for the human body.

Omackeral

If you punch yourself and you cry, is it because you're too strong or too weak?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

If you replace all the components of a ship one by one over a period of time and use the removed components to assemble another ship, does the ship exist in two places?

biko

Ehrmagerd, it's like in Star Trek!

The_Valeyard

Think I remember doing this in religion class in school back in the day.

Grayson

It depends on which branch of metaphysics you subscribe to.

You're essentially asking what it means to be a boat. Is the boat what makes it or is there a "Boatiness" that goes beyond it's construction materials.

Cee-Jay-Cee

Jovanni Ugly Tribune wrote: »

He had died and the ship was preserved by the Greeks over the two hundred year period.

Well then in that case, who gives a fcuk....certainly not old dead Thesus.

Capt'n Midnight

What is a ship ?

It's more than the sum of it's parts. It's how they are connected too. Separate the parts and you don't have a ship you have the parts that a ship could be built from.

It's Shipness is from it's form which only exists as a combination of the parts.

The only ambiguity is if you were to cut the ship exactly in half and rebuild both.
But then since half a ship isn't really a ship could either truly be as before.


PS. It's the banks ship until the last payment.

Wibbs

Jovanni Ugly Tribune wrote: »

If you replace all the components of a ship one by one over a period of time and use the removed components to assemble another ship, does the ship exist in two places?

Hmmm. You bastard. Good point though. I would say the symbol of the ship would exist in two places, the reality no. But then what if we kept more continuity and replaced 50% of one ship with 50% of the other? Would they be more the same ship in two places?

I think human sentiment plays a huge part too. I've seen guys who've rebuilt 1930's race cars(and old aircraft) from a few components and original chassis and engine plates and they're seen as the same car. By many anyway. But when push comes to shove the rebuilt ones are worth less in monetary terms than original examples. So the market sees a difference. Reality and authenticity costs more(as does faux reality and authenticity).

If we look at the human scale; yes all our cells are different at 30 than they were at 13, but we have the continuity of memory of consciousness each step of the way, so we're still the same ghost in the machine. Or are we and that memory of consciousness is an illusion.

If we get down to the subatomic even quantum level(Deepak Chopra, fcuk off), then if we made an exact quantum copy of ourselves it would be the same us, though IIRC to do so would require destroying the original. Would our memory of consciousness transfer in that case? I suspect it would. It would be like the above 13 to 30 example speeded up.

Or maybe that only works if parts are replaced over time, rather than the whole all at once? Like if you took your car and somebody replaced bits and bobs with the same kind and age of bits and bobs over ten years without your knowledge, you'd likely not notice, or if you did, you'd also likely ignore it, but if they did it overnight you would and it wouldn't be your car anymore?

Grayson

greencap

No.

AllForIt

biko wrote: »

Yes, in the same way your body's cells die and new ones take their place.

This one always gets to me. If all the cells in our body are renewed then is the mind I have now a different mind from the one I had say 10 years ago. If one considers the mind to essentially be the essence of oneself and limbs and so on are on are just practical addons, then the person I was when I was a child is no more and I am a completely different person from the person I was back then. Which I think is true, I'm not the person I was when I was a child. But does that mean that the mind I have now is just a copy of the mind I had 10 years ago and thus essentially a completely different new person who just happens to to be similar to the person of old due to memories being passed on in the process of cell renewal.

Fourier

Wibbs wrote: »

If we get down to the subatomic even quantum level(Deepak Chopra, fcuk off), then if we made an exact quantum copy of ourselves it would be the same us, though IIRC to do so would require destroying the original. Would our memory of consciousness transfer in that case? I suspect it would. It would be like the above 13 to 30 example speeded up.

Copying all quantum mechanical information from one set of particles to another requires scrambling of the information at the original site, in layman's terms destroying the original.

Although I should be clear that properly in quantum mechanics there are no "particles here" and "particles there", there are just regions that produce particle-like data when examined. Or put another way in quantum mechanics there are just "information producing regions". If you swap the information being produced by two locations, quantum mechanics just views this as the information being moved. No different to how it views you walking. The only difference being the information was being produced sequentially between the points over time.

The main kicker is that it is impossible to take a region producing one type of information (say a person) and turn it into two regions producing that information (two identical people). You can only transfer information.

bilbot79

JupiterKid wrote: »

Ok - here’s a little mind game for you to figure out. The Ship of Theseus is a large wooden sea ship with big sails. Over a 200 year period, the wood making up the Ship gets tired and rotten is gradually replaced, plank by plank.

Eventually all the original wood in the Ship is replaced. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?

Well?

If you're still jupiterkid after all your cells have constantly died a regenerated over your lifetime then yes it is still the ship of theseus

Tigger

me_irl wrote: »

Same riddle could be used for the human body.

If my body is replacing itself why are my home made tattoos from 1990 still on my arm

Ficheall

This is a pretty shit game.

Your Face

Reminds me of Heraclitus' River

Plopsu

Ipso wrote: »

'A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.'

The theologian doesn't find the cat. He finds something foul smelling that he insists is cat crap and therefore evidence of the cat and demands that everybody else join him in huffing lungfulls of the odour. He will continue to do this even after the scientist has proved conclusively that the substance is in fact the teologians own crap.

weldoninhio

JupiterKid wrote: »

Ok - here’s a little mind game for you to figure out. The Ship of Theseus is a large wooden sea ship with big sails. Over a 200 year period, the wood making up the Ship gets tired and rotten is gradually replaced, plank by plank.

Eventually all the original wood in the Ship is replaced. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?

Well?

No, the modern day versions of that are Rangers F.C. and Triggers Broom. https://youtu.be/f27gqyV7al8

Ownership is a legal construct. And at law yes, it is still his ship.

If I sell my house, I can't hack the tiles off the walls and take them with me on the basis that I only sold the bricks and mortar. Those items, like the planks of the boat, became fixed to and part of the property, and as someone is buying the property they take all that is built into it.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Jovanni Ugly Tribune wrote: »

If you replace all the components of a ship one by one over a period of time and use the removed components to assemble another ship, does the ship exist in two places?

Well, the ship becomes Schrodingers ship then:pac:

o1s1n

Deleted User wrote: »

Ownership is a legal construct. And at law yes, it is still his ship.

If I sell my house, I can't hack the tiles off the walls and take them with me on the basis that I only sold the bricks and mortar. Those items, like the planks of the boat, became fixed to and part of the property, and as someone is buying the property they take all that is built into it.

It's not just about ownership though, it also involves the physical item itself.

So if you replace all parts of a physical item over time, separately, is it the same physical item?

If my family had an axe that was passed down and over the generations, the handle was replaced by my grandfather, the axe head by my father, is it still the same family axe by the time it gets to me?

silverharp

]

_Roz_

It's not the same physical item. The emotional attachment someone has to it, combined with the gradual replacement of parts, might mean that symbolically for that person, it is the same item. But I think once all the original parts were gone, I'd consider the original gone too.

weldoninhio

_Roz_ wrote: »

It's not the same physical item. The emotional attachment someone has to it, combined with the gradual replacement of parts, might mean that symbolically for that person, it is the same item. But I think once all the original parts were gone, I'd consider the original gone too.

Exactly, if artists start replacing the pages of the book of kells today and by 2020 it is completely replaced, its no longer the book of Kells, its a copy of the book.

Think of a bus stop its called say Mrs Ryan's shop, shop long gone replaced with a housing estate the bus stop is still called Mrs Ryan's shop even though the psychical presence of the shop is gone. There are lots of example like that.

The name of bus stops in Ireland would make a really interesting whimsically book.

bilbot79

Jovanni Ugly Tribune wrote: »

This is an old paradox. If the water in a river is constantly flowing and being replace is it still the same river. A view states that considering objects to extend across time as four-dimensional causal series of three-dimensional "time-slices" could solve the ship of Theseus problem because, in taking such an approach, all four dimensional objects remain numerically identical to themselves while allowing individual time-slices to differ from each other. The aforementioned river, therefore, comprises different three-dimensional time-slices of itself while remaining numerically identical to itself across time; one can never step into the same river-time-slice twice, but one can step into the same (four-dimensional) river twice.

Or just consider Trigger's sweeping brush.

Can you provide a glossary of non English terms to help us understand?

Fourier

For anybody interested the ultimate extension and extrapolation of this paradox as it relates to thinking beings is Greg Egan's "Dust Theory", a distillation of various philosophical issues in AI research.

Grayson

weldoninhio wrote: »

Exactly, if artists start replacing the pages of the book of kells today and by 2020 it is completely replaced, its no longer the book of Kells, its a copy of the book.

But if most of it had been replaced over a period 1000 years and what we have now is the product of that, you'd still refer to it as the book of kells.

Wittgenstein said that all philosophical problems are just a problem of language. I don't agree with that but i do think it affects some metaphysical problems like this.

It's not what the boat is, it's whether we can refer to the boat as the same boat.

Think of it this way, if the boat had been in the ownership of a family and every 40 years it passed from one generation to another then the current owner could honestly say that a member of his family had been captain of this boat for 5 generations. However if the change had happened overnight then the guy would say someone had replaced the boat.

The difference is perspective and how we apply our perspective to objects.

My daughter partner who works in IT is convinced that fairly soon AI will be so good that when you phone a bank or utility provider customers will be put through to an AI computer but it will so good the customer will think they are talking to a person.

I don't think that can happen there are lots of example of why.

The story of king Canute ordering the tide to stop is usually interpreted in modern times as he though he was great and all powerful and thus could command the sea. ( a bit of trump charterer ). The real meaning was that he was religious and was making the point that the might be powerful but he would never be as powerful as God who could turn back the tide.

The point is the same information can be interpreted several ways, words language and meaning are fluid and change their meaning all the time.

AI will never have the intuitive understanding humans have.

Fourier

Well the truth is that we have no way of knowing how close we are to true AI, as we don't know the mechanism behind sentience, could be ten years, could be one thousand, or indeed never.

wakka12

You have that same problem in architecture. When buildings were destroyed in ww2 many were against rebuilding them as its not the same, its an imitation of what was just there

And no the ship is literally a different thing now but just remains with the same name as its appearance hasn't been altered noticeably

Grayson

mariaalice wrote: »

AI will never have the intuitive understanding humans have.

It doesn't have to. It just has to be able to mimic it.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

bilbot79 wrote: »

Can you provide a glossary of non English terms to help us understand?

Apart from a single Greek name, it's all in English.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

wakka12 wrote: »

You have that same problem in architecture. When buildings were destroyed in ww2 many were against rebuilding them as its not the same, its an imitation of what was just there

And no the ship is literally a different thing now but just remains with the same name as its appearance hasn't been altered noticeably

The paradox is related to gradual replacement of components over an extended period, unlike the rebuilding of an entire structure in one operation.

AllForIt

mariaalice wrote: »

My daughter partner who works in IT is convinced that fairly soon AI will be so good that when you phone a bank or utility provider customers will be put through to an AI computer but it will so good the customer will think they are talking to a person.

I don't think that can happen there are lots of example of why.

The story of king Canute ordering the tide to stop is usually interpreted in modern times as he though he was great and all powerful and thus could command the sea. ( a bit of trump charterer ). The real meaning was that he was religious and was making the point that the might be powerful but he would never be as powerful as God who could turn back the tide.

The point is the same information can be interpreted several ways, words language and meaning are fluid and change their meaning all the time.

AI will never have the intuitive understanding humans have.

Absolutely. AI = Artificial intelligence, artificial in the sense that it creates the illusion that there is some inherent intelligence there which there isn't. Some seem to think that artificial means that somehow intelligence has been created in a machine akin to our own human minds. No truth to what whatsoever but it does make for some good sci-fi movies.

Oldtree

JupiterKid wrote: »

Ok - here’s a little mind game for you to figure out. The Ship of Theseus is a large wooden sea ship with big sails. Over a 200 year period, the wood making up the Ship gets tired and rotten is gradually replaced, plank by plank.

Eventually all the original wood in the Ship is replaced. Is it still the Ship of Theseus?

Well?

If the ships name plate, after 200 years, still says "Ship of Theseus" then yes, but if the name plate was transferred to another ship, that ship would then be the "Ship of Theseus".

lonewolf1961

what,s black and white . but red all over ??? answers please .

Your Face

lonewolf1961 wrote: »

what,s black and white . but red all over ??? answers please .

A modern day socialist.

sydthebeat

Jovanni Ugly Tribune wrote: »

The paradox is related to gradual replacement of components over an extended period, unlike the rebuilding of an entire structure in one operation.

http://www.markstephensarchitects.com/japan-handles-conservation-rebuilding/

An interesting look at the Japanese approach to architectural conservation.

While the building may not be the authentic structure that stood 1300 years ago, due to the degradation of materials, the building processes and skills have endured because of the willingness to rebuild the complete structures using traditional methods.

So adapting that scenario to the original paradox, if the boats timbers are replaced using modern methods, does that mean it's less "the same boat" than if they were replaced using the original processes and skills??