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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?

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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.

[Deleted User]

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

[Deleted User]

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.