Construct · 1 fields · 4 citations

Ship of Theseus: a standalone construct

One name. One construct. A landmark on the map.

● anchor · a standalone construct Nearest construct by meaningIT identitycompare the meanings
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Every construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to Ship of Theseus is IT identity.

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Ship ofTheseus1 CONSTRUCTShip of TheseusPLUTARCH · SAME SHIP?

A single standalone construct; nearby constructs are located against it in the Collider. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.

Metaphysics

a puzzle asking whether an object keeps its identity when its parts are gradually and wholly replaced.

Plutarch's Life of Theseus (ca. 1st century CE) records that the Athenians preserved the ship on which Theseus was said to have returned from Crete, replacing each plank as it decayed, and reports that philosophers had long disputed whether the vessel that remained was still the same ship. The puzzle asks whether an object keeps its identity when its parts are gradually and wholly replaced over time. Thomas Hobbes (De corpore, 1655) sharpened it by imagining the discarded original planks reassembled into a second ship, which forces a further question: if two ships now stand where one stood, which of them, if either, is the original. John Locke drew on cases of this kind in treating how identity persists through change for masses of matter and for living things. In modern analytic metaphysics the case anchors debates over persistence, material constitution, and the relation between an object and the matter that composes it, and it serves as a shared test case against which competing criteria of identity over time are stated and compared.[1][2][3][4]

Unit
A thought experiment: a named test case for judging the identity of a persisting object under complete part replacement
Recovery means
Not applicable
Measured by
Applied as a philosophical test case: a criterion of identity over time is stated, then checked against the judgements the gradual-replacement and reassembly versions elicit

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Nearby constructs

identity6 fields · 14 citationsjingle · one name, six constructsconstitution3 fields · 3 citationsjingle · one word, three constructscase2 fields · 3 citationsjingle · one word, two constructs

References

  1. Plutarch. (1914). Theseus. In B. Perrin (Trans.), Plutarch's lives (Vol. 1, pp. 1–87). Harvard University Press. (Original work published ca. 1st century CE)
  2. Hobbes, T. (1655). Elementorum philosophiae sectio prima: De corpore. Andrew Crooke.
  3. Scaltsas, T. (1980). The ship of Theseus. Analysis, 40(3), 152–157. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/40.3.152
  4. Rea, M. C. (1995). The problem of material constitution. The Philosophical Review, 104(4), 525–552. https://doi.org/10.2307/2185816

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