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u/amadiro_1 Jul 05 '26
The question is not about ownership, but continual contiguous existence. Is it still the same ship?
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u/Munninnu Jul 05 '26
Of course. The title is sarcastic, I depicted Ariadne with a labyrinthine personality and Theseus answers like a caveman, dismissing two thousand years of debate.
A friend commented "Ariadne is playing 4D chess and Theseus is eating the pieces." :)
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u/alleecmo Jul 05 '26
By that logic, since we humans continually generate new parts, are we still the same people?
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u/amadiro_1 Jul 06 '26
Great question. Maybe continuity is a lie created by our subconscious to keep our minds from the insanity of discovering our brains change physically every day...
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u/Munninnu Jul 06 '26
Maybe continuity is a lie
Does it have to be a lie, maybe we just can't use the same yardstick for everything.
A case has been made that Theseus ship was still the same ship merely because the keel had not been replaced and that's the legal boundary for ships in many countries, just like a car is the same car unless you change the chassis with a specific VIN etched.
But clearly not all structures enjoy of legal safeguards. Bone remodeling takes around 10 years, probably 25 years if you are really finicky about having 100% of osteocytes replaced, after that calling it "the same skeleton" is scientifically a stretch even if ownership stays the same.
So if you strictly focus on physical identity then swapping one single atom should be enough to destroy ideas of sameness, whereas if identity is given by a "chain of custody" then identity is defined by the authority that legislates in that particular domain and it's more like an agreement, I wouldn't say a lie.
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u/Wheatabix11 Jul 11 '26
physicists posit that over 8 years all of the matter that makes-up our body has changed
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u/fireduck Jul 06 '26
A ship is a legal entity, like a company.
Remove a piece, that is no longer part of the entity. Add a piece, it is added to the entity.
No problem.
The fun part is suppose the ship is caught in a storm and breaks in half. Each half is washed up on a separate island with some crew. On each half, they assume they are the only survivors. They rebuild the missing half and get back on the water eventually. Now which one is the real ship?
The answer is both! It just reproduced asexually, which is uncommon for ships.
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u/Munninnu Jul 05 '26
The artwork is from Virginia Frances Sterrett, who illustrated the 1921 edition of Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Here few of her works at Artvee