[AnimalMuppet]

As Paul Graham pointed out in his essay on philosophy, it depends on your definitions. Here, it depends on your definition of "same". But that makes it a much less interesting discussion about different (mostly unstated) definitions of the word "same", rather than a profound philosophical discussion about something...

[coldtea]

No, it's obviously still a profound philosophical discussion about identity.

Saying "it depends on your definitions" sidesteps the whole issue of how you come to these definitions, and what impact they have on how we view reality. In other words, it hides the profound issues under the rug.

For example, a common argument against moving your brain information to a robot as a way to "live forever", is that then it's no longer you (since your physical brain ceazes to live).

The Ship of Theseus sidesteps this argument, since an example of it would be replacing your neurons one by one with artificial ones -- with you awake.

With such a procedure, you feel exactly the same at all times, and you have no recourse to saying your personality was merely "transfered".

It feels like you were the physical person X, and after these steps, you were the same person with a robotic brain, but with no abrapt change or loss of consciousness, just a continuous process.

[AnimalMuppet]

All right, let me put it this way: There may be a profound philosophical question about identity. However, because of the problems of the differing, unstated definitions of "same", almost all of the discussion is really about the assumed definitions of words, and is therefore almost completely a waste of time. It appears to be about the profound philosophical question, but it's mostly not.

[coldtea]

It still is profound whatever one's definition of same. Pick a definition of same. Make it as precise as you want. It might be totally compatible with some of those definitions you come up with. For all others, The Ship Of Theseus still makes a powerful questioning tool that raises insights to question those "single, precise" definitions.

There's a naive (mostly anglosaxon/empiricist) idea that philosophy is just noise because of the conflicting definitions of things.

Whereas it's the total opposite: questioning and disecting the definitions we use (and what they presuppose), is the exact role of philosophy.

The Ship of Theseus (and countless others ideas and paradoxes) are tools in questioning those beliefs and "definitions".

Those examples don't stem because of our confusion about what is same -- they are tools to probe what we consider same, to poke holes in our idea of sameness.

And I call the objection to this naive, because having a "single objective definition" is not something possible (like science doesn't claim to know some ultimate "reality", just to make ever better models and approximations of it).

We have to live with various ideas about identity/sameness, and we need philosophy and arguments like The Ship, to question them and see their partial nature.

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't think there's a "single objective definition". There are multiple valid definitions. What I'm saying is that most of the discussion about The Ship Of Theseus is really discussions about the definition of "same", but most of the time, people don't realize that that's what they're arguing about. This means that most of the argument is wasted time.

Sure, have a discussion about different definitions of sameness. (Ironic, that.) Poke holes in the various definitions. That's fine. Just don't have conversations where two different people have different implicit definitions of sameness, and each sees the other's position as clearly stupid, because the other person is using an unstated, but different, definition of "same".

[coldtea]

>Just don't have conversations where two different people have different implicit definitions of sameness, and each sees the other's position as clearly stupid, because the other person is using an unstated, but different, definition of "same"

As you say, discussing X while having 2 different ideas of X is obviously wrong -- people practically talking past each other.

But that's only if the discussion is not philosophical but just a practical, everyday conversation.

That's because in the latter people talk and talk about X while X goes unexamined, where the essense of a philosophical conversation is to examine X, and investigation how each one defines it, and what might be correct or wrong about any singular definition.

A non-philosophical discussion would be: - X song is the same as Y, they stole it. - No it's not, they just have the same chord changes. - They should come out with their own, they're copycats.

Whereas a philosophical disussion would be in the vein of: "what is sameness?" (itself), "when we can say that a song is stolen from another?" etc.