Theseus' Paradox

[NOBLE]

Consider a ship: the Ship of Theseus. At the beginning of its career, the ship is made entirely of wooden planks. The ship sails the same route for many decades and is "preserved" in the following way: whenever one of the wooden planks wears out, it is discarded and replaced by an aluminum one. Eventually the time comes when all of the wooden planks have been replaced by aluminum ones. One day, however, a historian decides to gather all of the discarded planks and rebuild them in their original form. As a result of her work, each plank has the same position that it did in the original ship. She sells her ship to the local museum, and a curator then boasts that he has on display the Ship of Theseus. The crew of the aluminum ship, however, is outraged: "WE are sailing the Ship of Theseus and have been for many years. The Ship of Theseus is here on the water, not there in your museum!" Who is right? Which ship is the Ship of Theseus?

[NOBLE]

Consider a ship: the Ship of Theseus. At the beginning of its career, the ship is made entirely of wooden planks. The ship sails the same route for many decades and is "preserved" in the following way: whenever one of the wooden planks wears out, it is discarded and replaced by an aluminum one. Eventually the time comes when all of the wooden planks have been replaced by aluminum ones. One day, however, a historian decides to gather all of the discarded planks and rebuild them in their original form. As a result of her work, each plank has the same position that it did in the original ship. She sells her ship to the local museum, and a curator then boasts that he has on display the Ship of Theseus. The crew of the aluminum ship, however, is outraged: "WE are sailing the Ship of Theseus and have been for many years. The Ship of Theseus is here on the water, not there in your museum!" Who is right? Which ship is the Ship of Theseus?

[exZACHly]

Feel like there's no right or wrong answer here lol. Hmmmm...imo, the crew is right even though it's rebuilt the curator would just have a model of the ship w/ original parts

[exZACHly]

Feel like there's no right or wrong answer here lol. Hmmmm...imo, the crew is right even though it's rebuilt the curator would just have a model of the ship w/ original parts

[NOBLE]

Originally Posted by exZACHly

Feel like there's no right or wrong answer here lol. Hmmmm...imo, the crew is right even though it's rebuilt the curator would just have a model of the ship w/ original parts

They're both rebuilt. So would you say that the ship's identity is something other that the sum of its parts?

[NOBLE]

Originally Posted by exZACHly

Feel like there's no right or wrong answer here lol. Hmmmm...imo, the crew is right even though it's rebuilt the curator would just have a model of the ship w/ original parts

They're both rebuilt. So would you say that the ship's identity is something other that the sum of its parts?

[exZACHly]

Hmmm now i wanna join the other side of the argument...Eventually if EVERYTHING gets replaced then it's no longer original so it wouldn't be the same (although in this case they are only changing the material used and not necessarily the structure of it) The Curator could claim to have the Ship of Theseus too though because more than one can exist i guess. Take any specific make and model of car for example obv all built the same, but more than one exist. Guess the crew can say their ship just has a new frame whereas Curator can say he has one too...i'm so lost right now LOL

[exZACHly]

Hmmm now i wanna join the other side of the argument...Eventually if EVERYTHING gets replaced then it's no longer original so it wouldn't be the same (although in this case they are only changing the material used and not necessarily the structure of it) The Curator could claim to have the Ship of Theseus too though because more than one can exist i guess. Take any specific make and model of car for example obv all built the same, but more than one exist. Guess the crew can say their ship just has a new frame whereas Curator can say he has one too...i'm so lost right now LOL

[Shodan]

Summary of Response:

This "paradox" is merely a prime example of the holistic vs. reductionist debate at its best... or, as some would say, worst.

In practice, I would say that the crew of the aluminum ship is correct, as they are the party that is in possession of an object that is definable as being a "ship." This, though, merely scratches the surface of the theoretical, philosophical issue. Admittedly, I have not thought about this extremely deeply, but I have to believe that the "true" answer is ultimately subject to the beliefs of whoever is considering it.

~~~

Further Thoughts:

Also note that the defined characteristics of an object can change over time. Suppose that I beat the shit of you and left your bloody corpse lying on the street; would that still be your body? I think we would agree that this is so, despite the fact that your body has undergone a major alteration in its observable properties (alive to dead, bones inside to bones smashed, etc.)

Then suppose that we left your body lying out for a week, but it was in a magical stasis field that prevented its material makeup - state of decay, temperature, etc. - from changing. Does the temporal position - that is, its chronological location, its place with respect to time - itself qualify as a property of your dead body; and, if so, is your body when that stasis field deactivates the same object the dead body that I originally left murdered on the curb? What about the body three days after the stasis field was activated, when the duration of the field was still ongoing - how does that compare, in terms both of its status as the selfsame object and its properties as such - to the body when it was originally placed on the street, or the body after the stasis field deactivates? I would say that it remains the same object with the same properties throughout, with the sole - and here, irrelevant - distinction of existing at a different point in time. (As I have been reiterating, this is, naturally, entirely subjective...)

Now, considering all of this, why would the alteration of the material makeup of the Ship of Theseus prevent it from being such? The problem here is that the answer to the question of, "when does an object stop being what it originally was, as its characteristics have been so severely altered as to have incurred the destruction of the original object and the creation of a new object as its replacement?" is entirely subjective, so we are right back at ▣1 insofar as objective reasoning is concerned. Consequently, this entirely paragraph is no more than superfluous philosophizing.

I could probably write a novel about this shit if I wished, but I have no intention of doing so. In any case, people far more learned and intelligent than I have undoubtedly examined such questions and provided answers equal or superior to my own.

~~~

Another Note:

Calling something an object is, for observable purposes, entirely subjective. The same is true with its properties - what physical arrangement of atoms, quarks, etc. do we call green? When does it become red? What attention does the universe pay, or what amount of care does it give, with reference to what we consider to be a table, a chair, etc. This is all subjective and based on what the answering/solving party [in this case, us] defines to be such a thing.

I'll stop here, as I probably would write that novel I just mentioned if I did not.

~~~

Final Thoughts:

I've probably edited and added on to this post a dozen times by now, lol. I think I'm finished.

[Shodan]

Summary of Response:

This "paradox" is merely a prime example of the holistic vs. reductionist debate at its best... or, as some would say, worst.

In practice, I would say that the crew of the aluminum ship is correct, as they are the party that is in possession of an object that is definable as being a "ship." This, though, merely scratches the surface of the theoretical, philosophical issue. Admittedly, I have not thought about this extremely deeply, but I have to believe that the "true" answer is ultimately subject to the beliefs of whoever is considering it.

~~~

Further Thoughts:

Also note that the defined characteristics of an object can change over time. Suppose that I beat the shit of you and left your bloody corpse lying on the street; would that still be your body? I think we would agree that this is so, despite the fact that your body has undergone a major alteration in its observable properties (alive to dead, bones inside to bones smashed, etc.)

Then suppose that we left your body lying out for a week, but it was in a magical stasis field that prevented its material makeup - state of decay, temperature, etc. - from changing. Does the temporal position - that is, its chronological location, its place with respect to time - itself qualify as a property of your dead body; and, if so, is your body when that stasis field deactivates the same object the dead body that I originally left murdered on the curb? What about the body three days after the stasis field was activated, when the duration of the field was still ongoing - how does that compare, in terms both of its status as the selfsame object and its properties as such - to the body when it was originally placed on the street, or the body after the stasis field deactivates? I would say that it remains the same object with the same properties throughout, with the sole - and here, irrelevant - distinction of existing at a different point in time. (As I have been reiterating, this is, naturally, entirely subjective...)

Now, considering all of this, why would the alteration of the material makeup of the Ship of Theseus prevent it from being such? The problem here is that the answer to the question of, "when does an object stop being what it originally was, as its characteristics have been so severely altered as to have incurred the destruction of the original object and the creation of a new object as its replacement?" is entirely subjective, so we are right back at ▣1 insofar as objective reasoning is concerned. Consequently, this entirely paragraph is no more than superfluous philosophizing.

I could probably write a novel about this shit if I wished, but I have no intention of doing so. In any case, people far more learned and intelligent than I have undoubtedly examined such questions and provided answers equal or superior to my own.

~~~

Another Note:

Calling something an object is, for observable purposes, entirely subjective. The same is true with its properties - what physical arrangement of atoms, quarks, etc. do we call green? When does it become red? What attention does the universe pay, or what amount of care does it give, with reference to what we consider to be a table, a chair, etc. This is all subjective and based on what the answering/solving party [in this case, us] defines to be such a thing.

I'll stop here, as I probably would write that novel I just mentioned if I did not.

~~~

Final Thoughts:

I've probably edited and added on to this post a dozen times by now, lol. I think I'm finished.

[NOBLE]

Originally Posted by Shodan

In practice, I would say that the crew of the aluminum ship is correct, as they are the party that is in possession of an object that is definable as being a "ship."

Why would the ship at the museum not be definable as a ship?

[NOBLE]

Originally Posted by Shodan

In practice, I would say that the crew of the aluminum ship is correct, as they are the party that is in possession of an object that is definable as being a "ship."

Why would the ship at the museum not be definable as a ship?

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by NOBLE

Why would the ship at the museum not be definable as a ship?

In this post, I will assume that reality exists externally and independently of any mind (including my own) - that is, non-solipsistically. If we were to assume otherwise then this would go nowhere.

Near as I can tell, your logic here is based on the incorrect concept that objects can be objectively placed into an abstract category of something. They cannot. Such a mentality is extremely reminiscent of the ideas of the ancient Greeks, who either said that everything is composed of indivisible chunks of object, or - in the case of the early atomists - that it was composed of miniscule particles of object. This is a very human and apparently sensible way of thinking about things but it has nothing to do with reality.

The universe is composed of one or more types of "building blocks," that is, the fundamental composition of reality. Right now, that would appear to be strings, but we don't know for certain. Everything in the universe, everything under everything and everything over everything, is composed of building blocks of some sort. So when we see an object, we aren't seeing an abstract object with specific properties (abstract or otherwise) that objectively exists; rather, we are seeing a configuration of these building blocks that meets certain conditions, and then assigning it the property of being that object. The strings, atoms, molecules, etc. that make up a ship are not themselves chunks of ship - rather, they are particles with certain properties, existing mostly independently of one another, that happen to be in the right points in space and time.

It is the same thing that causes you to be able to read this message. All that actually exists here are electronic signals in various computers being processed and transferred around, as well as photons from the monitor entering your eye so that you can process them. Even the very act of computers processing this message is just particles, charges, and building blocks moving around by interacting with one another. None of this message has any meaning until you process it and assign it a meaning. So, while the signals that make up this message objectively exist, the fact that it is a message, as well as any meaning derived from it, only exist subjectively inside of your mind.

It is also the same reason why it is so difficult to make a computer learn to recognize images. While your brain is hardwired to make abstractions and see abstract objects and categories of such with similarly abstract properties, a computer algorithm sees what is really there - bits, bytes, and pixels - but doesn't have the abstraction capabilities of a human.

With all of this in mind (and I hope I've stated my argument clearly enough to be understood - my writing has never been particularly easy to grasp), it should be obvious that nothing is definable as a "ship" unless the person observing the conglomeration of things existing in the universe decides that it is a ship.

There are no, and indeed cannot be, any completely accurate and objective criteria for determining what is and is not a ship, as the concept of a "ship" is made up by humans - is a ship a superset of the other types of ships? Is a corsair a ship? What about a large fish? What if you hollowed out a giant pumpkin and went downstream in it? Therefore, for any practical purpose, it makes sense to say that the museum is not in possession of the Ship of Theseus, as they do not possess what I, or most people, would define as a ship.

tl;dr: because 1. the universe doesn't care about human abstractions and 2. I think that what the museum has isn't a ship while what the crew is sailing is.

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by NOBLE

Why would the ship at the museum not be definable as a ship?

In this post, I will assume that reality exists externally and independently of any mind (including my own) - that is, non-solipsistically. If we were to assume otherwise then this would go nowhere.

Near as I can tell, your logic here is based on the incorrect concept that objects can be objectively placed into an abstract category of something. They cannot. Such a mentality is extremely reminiscent of the ideas of the ancient Greeks, who either said that everything is composed of indivisible chunks of object, or - in the case of the early atomists - that it was composed of miniscule particles of object. This is a very human and apparently sensible way of thinking about things but it has nothing to do with reality.

The universe is composed of one or more types of "building blocks," that is, the fundamental composition of reality. Right now, that would appear to be strings, but we don't know for certain. Everything in the universe, everything under everything and everything over everything, is composed of building blocks of some sort. So when we see an object, we aren't seeing an abstract object with specific properties (abstract or otherwise) that objectively exists; rather, we are seeing a configuration of these building blocks that meets certain conditions, and then assigning it the property of being that object. The strings, atoms, molecules, etc. that make up a ship are not themselves chunks of ship - rather, they are particles with certain properties, existing mostly independently of one another, that happen to be in the right points in space and time.

It is the same thing that causes you to be able to read this message. All that actually exists here are electronic signals in various computers being processed and transferred around, as well as photons from the monitor entering your eye so that you can process them. Even the very act of computers processing this message is just particles, charges, and building blocks moving around by interacting with one another. None of this message has any meaning until you process it and assign it a meaning. So, while the signals that make up this message objectively exist, the fact that it is a message, as well as any meaning derived from it, only exist subjectively inside of your mind.

It is also the same reason why it is so difficult to make a computer learn to recognize images. While your brain is hardwired to make abstractions and see abstract objects and categories of such with similarly abstract properties, a computer algorithm sees what is really there - bits, bytes, and pixels - but doesn't have the abstraction capabilities of a human.

With all of this in mind (and I hope I've stated my argument clearly enough to be understood - my writing has never been particularly easy to grasp), it should be obvious that nothing is definable as a "ship" unless the person observing the conglomeration of things existing in the universe decides that it is a ship.

There are no, and indeed cannot be, any completely accurate and objective criteria for determining what is and is not a ship, as the concept of a "ship" is made up by humans - is a ship a superset of the other types of ships? Is a corsair a ship? What about a large fish? What if you hollowed out a giant pumpkin and went downstream in it? Therefore, for any practical purpose, it makes sense to say that the museum is not in possession of the Ship of Theseus, as they do not possess what I, or most people, would define as a ship.

tl;dr: because 1. the universe doesn't care about human abstractions and 2. I think that what the museum has isn't a ship while what the crew is sailing is.

[NOBLE]

Originally Posted by Shodan

In this post, I will assume that reality exists externally and independently of any mind (including my own) - that is, non-solipsistically. If we were to assume otherwise then this would go nowhere.

Near as I can tell, your logic here is based on the incorrect concept that objects can be objectively placed into an abstract category of something. They cannot. Such a mentality is extremely reminiscent of the ideas of the ancient Greeks, who either said that everything is composed of indivisible chunks of object, or - in the case of the early atomists - that it was composed of miniscule particles of object. This is a very human and apparently sensible way of thinking about things but it has nothing to do with reality.

The universe is composed of one or more types of "building blocks," that is, the fundamental composition of reality. Right now, that would appear to be strings, but we don't know for certain. Everything in the universe, everything under everything and everything over everything, is composed of building blocks of some sort. So when we see an object, we aren't seeing an abstract object with specific properties (abstract or otherwise) that objectively exists; rather, we are seeing a configuration of these building blocks that meets certain conditions, and then assigning it the property of being that object. The strings, atoms, molecules, etc. that make up a ship are not themselves chunks of ship - rather, they are particles with certain properties, existing mostly independently of one another, that happen to be in the right points in space and time.

It is the same thing that causes you to be able to read this message. All that actually exists here are electronic signals in various computers being processed and transferred around, as well as photons from the monitor entering your eye so that you can process them. Even the very act of computers processing this message is just particles, charges, and building blocks moving around by interacting with one another. None of this message has any meaning until you process it and assign it a meaning. So, while the signals that make up this message objectively exist, the fact that it is a message, as well as any meaning derived from it, only exist subjectively inside of your mind.

It is also the same reason why it is so difficult to make a computer learn to recognize images. While your brain is hardwired to make abstractions and see abstract objects and categories of such with similarly abstract properties, a computer algorithm sees what is really there - bits, bytes, and pixels - but doesn't have the abstraction capabilities of a human.

With all of this in mind (and I hope I've stated my argument clearly enough to be understood - my writing has never been particularly easy to grasp), it should be obvious that nothing is definable as a "ship" unless the person observing the conglomeration of things existing in the universe decides that it is a ship.

There are no, and indeed cannot be, any completely accurate and objective criteria for determining what is and is not a ship, as the concept of a "ship" is made up by humans - is a ship a superset of the other types of ships? Is a corsair a ship? What about a large fish? What if you hollowed out a giant pumpkin and went downstream in it? Therefore, for any practical purpose, it makes sense to say that the museum is not in possession of the Ship of Theseus, as they do not possess what I, or most people, would define as a ship.

tl;dr: because 1. the universe doesn't care about human abstractions and 2. I think that what the museum has isn't a ship while what the crew is sailing is.

I'm not sure where you are getting at with saying my "logic here is based on the incorrect concept that objects can be objectively placed into an abstract category of something." To refer to a ship or any other thing, is that not based on the concept that objects can be objectively placed in a category? Your earlier statement seemed to suggest that the aluminium ship that is being sailed is definable as a ship while the one in the museum is not. Now you are saying that nothing is (objectively) definable as a ship since ships are made up by humans. You seem to contradict yourself though. When you say that you assume reality exists externally and independently of your mind or any observer, that sounds like an argument for objectivity. So objectivity exists, but nothing is objectively definable? Then how do you know objectivity exists? I wasn't aware that most people wouldn't define the ship in the museum as a ship, and that is what I was trying to find out when I asked why the one in the water would be more definable as a ship rather than the one in the museum. If your answer had been something like "because it is the one being sailed, ships are objects which are sailed," for example, it would have opened up a new set of problems. I probably would have asked if the aluminium ship was still a ship while it was docked and not being sailed. The "ship" in the museum could still be sailed if it were placed in the water. Is its not being "definable" as a ship then solely because it is not being used as such? Is it safe to assume your final answer is to say "there is no Ship of Theseus and there never has been because ships cannot be objectively defined?"

[NOBLE]

Originally Posted by Shodan

In this post, I will assume that reality exists externally and independently of any mind (including my own) - that is, non-solipsistically. If we were to assume otherwise then this would go nowhere.

Near as I can tell, your logic here is based on the incorrect concept that objects can be objectively placed into an abstract category of something. They cannot. Such a mentality is extremely reminiscent of the ideas of the ancient Greeks, who either said that everything is composed of indivisible chunks of object, or - in the case of the early atomists - that it was composed of miniscule particles of object. This is a very human and apparently sensible way of thinking about things but it has nothing to do with reality.

The universe is composed of one or more types of "building blocks," that is, the fundamental composition of reality. Right now, that would appear to be strings, but we don't know for certain. Everything in the universe, everything under everything and everything over everything, is composed of building blocks of some sort. So when we see an object, we aren't seeing an abstract object with specific properties (abstract or otherwise) that objectively exists; rather, we are seeing a configuration of these building blocks that meets certain conditions, and then assigning it the property of being that object. The strings, atoms, molecules, etc. that make up a ship are not themselves chunks of ship - rather, they are particles with certain properties, existing mostly independently of one another, that happen to be in the right points in space and time.

It is the same thing that causes you to be able to read this message. All that actually exists here are electronic signals in various computers being processed and transferred around, as well as photons from the monitor entering your eye so that you can process them. Even the very act of computers processing this message is just particles, charges, and building blocks moving around by interacting with one another. None of this message has any meaning until you process it and assign it a meaning. So, while the signals that make up this message objectively exist, the fact that it is a message, as well as any meaning derived from it, only exist subjectively inside of your mind.

It is also the same reason why it is so difficult to make a computer learn to recognize images. While your brain is hardwired to make abstractions and see abstract objects and categories of such with similarly abstract properties, a computer algorithm sees what is really there - bits, bytes, and pixels - but doesn't have the abstraction capabilities of a human.

With all of this in mind (and I hope I've stated my argument clearly enough to be understood - my writing has never been particularly easy to grasp), it should be obvious that nothing is definable as a "ship" unless the person observing the conglomeration of things existing in the universe decides that it is a ship.

There are no, and indeed cannot be, any completely accurate and objective criteria for determining what is and is not a ship, as the concept of a "ship" is made up by humans - is a ship a superset of the other types of ships? Is a corsair a ship? What about a large fish? What if you hollowed out a giant pumpkin and went downstream in it? Therefore, for any practical purpose, it makes sense to say that the museum is not in possession of the Ship of Theseus, as they do not possess what I, or most people, would define as a ship.

tl;dr: because 1. the universe doesn't care about human abstractions and 2. I think that what the museum has isn't a ship while what the crew is sailing is.

I'm not sure where you are getting at with saying my "logic here is based on the incorrect concept that objects can be objectively placed into an abstract category of something." To refer to a ship or any other thing, is that not based on the concept that objects can be objectively placed in a category? Your earlier statement seemed to suggest that the aluminium ship that is being sailed is definable as a ship while the one in the museum is not. Now you are saying that nothing is (objectively) definable as a ship since ships are made up by humans. You seem to contradict yourself though. When you say that you assume reality exists externally and independently of your mind or any observer, that sounds like an argument for objectivity. So objectivity exists, but nothing is objectively definable? Then how do you know objectivity exists? I wasn't aware that most people wouldn't define the ship in the museum as a ship, and that is what I was trying to find out when I asked why the one in the water would be more definable as a ship rather than the one in the museum. If your answer had been something like "because it is the one being sailed, ships are objects which are sailed," for example, it would have opened up a new set of problems. I probably would have asked if the aluminium ship was still a ship while it was docked and not being sailed. The "ship" in the museum could still be sailed if it were placed in the water. Is its not being "definable" as a ship then solely because it is not being used as such? Is it safe to assume your final answer is to say "there is no Ship of Theseus and there never has been because ships cannot be objectively defined?"

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by NOBLE

Is it safe to assume your final answer is to say "there is no Ship of Theseus and there never has been because ships cannot be objectively defined?"

Yes.

[Shodan]

Originally Posted by NOBLE

Is it safe to assume your final answer is to say "there is no Ship of Theseus and there never has been because ships cannot be objectively defined?"

Yes.

They are both correct.

While Theseus is in possession of the aluminum ship, the materials from which the ship in the museum was made, were at a previous time the ship on which Theseus sailed.

They are both correct.

While Theseus is in possession of the aluminum ship, the materials from which the ship in the museum was made, were at a previous time the ship on which Theseus sailed.