![]() Studying this human confusion can reveal much about the brain's operation, but little about the nature of the human-independent external world. Cognitive science would treat this thought puzzle as the subject of an investigation of the human mind. Chomsky says that this is not an unassailable assumption, from the perspective of the natural sciences, because human intuition is often mistaken. Cognitive science Īccording to other scientists, the thought puzzle arises because of extreme externalism: the assumption that what is true in our minds is true in the world. ![]() Temporal parts Īnother common theory put forth by David Lewis, is to divide up all objects into three-dimensional time-slices which are temporally distinct which avoids the issue that the two different ships exist in the same space at one time and a different space at another time by considering the objects to be distinct from each other at all points in time. ![]() Constitution is not identity Īccording to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the most popular solution is to accept the conclusion, that the material that the ship is made out of is not the same object as the ship, but that the two objects simply occupy the same space at the same time. The Ship of Theseus paradox can be thought of as an example of a puzzle of material constitution - that is, a problem with determining the relationship between an object and the material that it is made out of. Hobbes considers the two resulting ships as illustrating two different definitions of "Identity" or sameness that are being compared to the original ship: 1) the ship that maintains the same " Form" as the original, that which persists through complete replacement of material, and 2) the ship made of the same " Matter", that which stops being 100% the same ship when the first part is replaced. so that a Ship, which signifies Matter so figured, will be the same, as long as the Matter remains the same but if no part of the Matter is the same, then it is Numerically another Ship and if part of the Matter remains, and part is changed, then the Ship will be partly the same, and partly not the same. But we must consider by what name anything is called when we inquire concerning the Identity of it. įor if that Ship of Theseus (concerning the Difference whereof, made by continual reparation, in taking out the old Planks, and putting in new, the sophisters of Athens were wont to dispute) were, after all the Planks were changed, the same Numerical Ship it was at the beginning and if some Man had kept the Old Planks as they were taken out, and by putting them afterward together in the same order, had again made a Ship of them, this, without doubt, had also been the same Numerical Ship with that which was at the beginnings and so there would have been two Ships Numerically the same, which is absurd. Hobbes posed the question of which of the two resulting ships, the custodians or the Athenians, was the same ship as the "original" ship. In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time, and has inspired a variety of proposed solutions and concepts in contemporary philosophy of mind concerned with the persistence of personal identity.Ĭenturies later, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes extended the thought experiment by supposing that a custodian gathered up all of the decayed parts of the ship as they were disposed of and replaced by the Athenians, and used those decaying planks to build a second ship. ![]() A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship? Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. According to legend, Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. For the film, see Ship of Theseus (film). This article is about the thought experiment.
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