Argument
Ship of Theseus
Overview
The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a paradox and common thought experiment about whether an object (in the most common stating of the paradox, a ship) is the same object after having all of its original components replaced with others over time.
In Greek mythology, Theseus, the mythical king of the city of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the Minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians would commemorate this by taking the craft on a pilgrimage to Delos to honour Apollo. Over time, various of its timbers rotted and were replaced. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: If no pieces of the original remained in the current ship, was it still the Ship of Theseus? If it was no longer the same, when had it ceased existing as the original ship? Seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes further questioned how to consider a second ship that had been built entirely from pieces removed from the original.
In contemporary philosophy, the thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time. Within the contemporary philosophy of mind, it has inspired a variety of proposed solutions and concepts regarding the persistence of personal identity.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
For this cause he there founded a city, which he called, from the name of Apollo, Pythopolis, and, in honor of the unfortunate youth, he named the river that runs by it Soloon, and left the two surviving brothers intrusted with the care of the government and laws, joining with them Hermus, one of the nobility of Athens, from whom a place in the city is called the House of Hermus; though by an error in the accent it…
Plutarch, The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch
States what Ship of Theseus is; the author is tied to Ship of Theseus in the knowledge graph.
The figures of atoms cannot be incomprehensible, but they are not infinite. These figures are neither hooked nor trident-shaped nor ring-shaped, such figures as these being exposed to collision; but the atoms are impassible, impenetrable; they have indeed figures of their own, which are conceived only by reason. It is called an atom, by reason not of its smallness but of its indivisibility; in it no vacuity, no…
Plutarch, Complete Works of Plutarch — Volume 3
States what Ship of Theseus is; the author is tied to Ship of Theseus in the knowledge graph.
THEAETETUS: Never. SOCRATES: And do you suppose that any other man, either in his senses or out of them, ever seriously tried to persuade himself that an ox is a horse, or that two are one? THEAETETUS: Certainly not. SOCRATES: But if thinking is talking to oneself, no one speaking and thinking of two objects, and apprehending them both in his soul, will say and think that the one is the other of them, and I must…
Plato, Theaetetus
States what Ship of Theseus is.
Philosophers who discussed Ship of Theseus
Related ideas
- Athens
- Intuition
- Roland Barthes
- Metaphysics
- Pompeii
- Noam Chomsky
- Greek mythology
- Paradox
- Plutarch
- Externalism
- Thomas Hobbes
- Theseus
- Personal identity
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- David Lewis (philosopher)
- Thought experiment
- Cognitive science
- Apollo
- Deflationary theory of truth
- Crete
- Philosophy of mind
- Philosophy of matter
- Hilary Putnam
- Delos
Place in the tradition
Part of Analytic philosophy.