Is there an answer to the Ship of Theseus dilemma?
The story is: In ancient times, there was a ship, called the "Theseus" after its famous former owner. As the years wore on, the Theseus started getting weak and creaky. The old boards were removed, put into a warehouse, and replaced with new ones. Then, the masts started tottering, and soon they, too, were warehoused and replaced. And in this way, after fifty years, this ship now has all new boards, masts, and everything. The question then arises: Is the ship in the harbor, now called S2, the same ship as the ship that was in the harbor, fifty years ago (called S1, for convenience)? In other words, is S2 really the "Theseus"?
The same can be said about a chair, for example. Let's say that we have a chair and one of the leg breaks off, we then replace the leg with a new one. Over time, though, another leg breaks, and then the backrest, and so on, until there comes a time that the chair in front of us has none of the parts from the original because the parts were replaced.
As an aside:
Then, there is the Perdurantism vs. Endurantism debate. On top of that, humans are also brought into the picture.
Lastly, even religions come down to this, as far as humans go. The Buddhists hold to the notion, or rather, doctrine of "No-Self," while in the West, due to the Judeo-Christian context we hold to the "Self" being the same throughout time (when judgment will come it will be on the person [the whole person, from day one to his last breath will be counted, meaning he was the same person throughout all his life]).
The human part seems straight forward to me, that we are the same throughout time. This is where the Buddhist doctrine falls apart because of their belief in Karma, the problem arises on who does the Karma "catch up" with, since there is no self.
However, I just want to keep it to the basic Ship of Theseus example. In this scenario what would you guys say, that S2 is the Theseus or not? If it is not, then at what point did it become so? (was it after 50% of the original Theseus wood was replaced with the new one that it stopped being the Theseus)?
The story is: In ancient times, there was a ship, called the "Theseus" after its famous former owner. As the years wore on, the Theseus started getting weak and creaky. The old boards were removed, put into a warehouse, and replaced with new ones. Then, the masts started tottering, and soon they, too, were warehoused and replaced. And in this way, after fifty years, this ship now has all new boards, masts, and everything. The question then arises: Is the ship in the harbor, now called S2, the same ship as the ship that was in the harbor, fifty years ago (called S1, for convenience)? In other words, is S2 really the "Theseus"?
The same can be said about a chair, for example. Let's say that we have a chair and one of the leg breaks off, we then replace the leg with a new one. Over time, though, another leg breaks, and then the backrest, and so on, until there comes a time that the chair in front of us has none of the parts from the original because the parts were replaced.
As an aside:
Then, there is the Perdurantism vs. Endurantism debate. On top of that, humans are also brought into the picture.
Lastly, even religions come down to this, as far as humans go. The Buddhists hold to the notion, or rather, doctrine of "No-Self," while in the West, due to the Judeo-Christian context we hold to the "Self" being the same throughout time (when judgment will come it will be on the person [the whole person, from day one to his last breath will be counted, meaning he was the same person throughout all his life]).
The human part seems straight forward to me, that we are the same throughout time. This is where the Buddhist doctrine falls apart because of their belief in Karma, the problem arises on who does the Karma "catch up" with, since there is no self.
However, I just want to keep it to the basic Ship of Theseus example. In this scenario what would you guys say, that S2 is the Theseus or not? If it is not, then at what point did it become so? (was it after 50% of the original Theseus wood was replaced with the new one that it stopped being the Theseus)?