[tuesdayrain]

> When I first read about Wittgenstein in some junior encyclopedia, it said that he discovered that many problems in philosophy were meaningless because words might mean different things.

That's how I've always intuitively felt about the Ship of Theseus thought experiment. It only seems paradoxical when people try to apply imprecise language to a precise situation. The way I see it, it's technically a new ship with every part that gets replaced. Nothing unusual about it.

[fmihaila]

> It only seems paradoxical when people try to apply imprecise language to a precise situation.

Yes, but the very notion of precise language is more elusive than at first glance. It could be argued that every language is necessarily imprecise.

[goatlover]

It's unusual because our ordinary language does not talk about objects being new with every change. The ship that sets sails is supposed to be the same ship that returns. And yet change is part of life. Everything undergoes change, as Heraclitus noted a long time ago. So why do we talk so imprecisely about objects as if they have permanence? Why is it the same river the next time we step in it?

[smallnamespace]

> So why do we talk so imprecisely about objects as if they have permanence? Why is it the same river the next time we step in it?

Why do most languages allow variables to mutate, rather than forcing us to write in static single assignment style?

Because it is useful; the imprecise name still communicates something of value to both parties: that variable foo and variable foo', although not identical, are joined by a common purpose.

[coldtea]

>So why do we talk so imprecisely about objects as if they have permanence? Why is it the same river the next time we step in it?

Because the concept of river describes a body of water in flow starting from and passing through specific geographical locations.

Those all remain, even if the water at any point X of the river changes...

[goatlover]

Those all undergo change as well. In context of the parent, any change whatsoever results in a new object. Which was the point of Heraclitus not being able to step in the same river twice. It's all flux.

That's what motivated Plato and Kant to come up with their philosophical responses to the flux. One with eternal forms and the other with categories of thought.

[coldtea]

>Those all undergo change as well

And we are free to disregard small changes, like we do everywhere.

I'm aware of Heraclitus' thought (and other pre-socratics, Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Hegel, and many others besides) but it's not a binding observation (that one should fell compelled to respond by resolving some great paradox).

"Yeah, the river undergoes small changes all the time, and bigger changes from time to time. Still enough remains common for us that we still don't care and will call it by the same name, what are you gonna do about it?" is a nice common sense response...

[goatlover]

Right, but the paradox is that a bunch of inconsequential changes lead to major changes over time, such as the ship being replaced plank by plank until it has none of the original material.

[deltron3030]

> Why is it the same river the next time we step in it?

Maybe because the river bed is more or less still the same location. Location is important for mapping the environment.

[coldtea]

>The way I see it, it's technically a new ship with every part that gets replaced. Nothing unusual about it.

That's still unusual because we don't consider a house a "new house" if we replace the door or rebuild a wall or whatever. We don't consider a person a new person when we e.g. give them an artificial leg. We also never consider a ship a "new ship" when we replace a part of the ship. Not instinctively, not casually, and nor "technically" (e.g. as far as the law is concerned).

So not sure why you think there's "nothing unusual about it", and what's your solution. You merely picked a side to a two-sided paradox, you didn't solve it...

[shoes_for_thee]

So are you technically a different person when your every cell is replaced?

[chernov]

One may argue you are a different person even once some of your cells are replaced.

I imagine your next question might be whether you owe something to now-me if you were to take a loan from a previous-me.

This looks like a pair of mirror bugs. Yeah, the person is already a new one, but if we'd really treat them that way, we'd have to make our laws and morals even more complex. Instead, we just pretend that's the same person.

[shoes_for_thee]

These are excellent, very much open questions.

I mostly wanted to point to the parent comment and say, "Things are not quite so pat." I should have explicitly said so.

Sometimes I think paradoxes exist to teach us that many things are not precisely true or false.

[ZoomZoomZoom]

So, one grain of sand is a heap?

If one cell is enough, than one atom is enough and so on. Then, nothing's really the same. But we use this notion because it's convenient, so we're back at the beginning.

[chernov]

>So, one grain of sand is a heap?

"Is a single grain a heap" doesn't look like a paradox to me. A "heap" is just a word with an ambiguous definition. Once you define it, you'll have your answer :)

>Then, nothing's really the same

If that was the case, intelligence would've been impossible. We need similarities as well as the differences to be able to compare things (including abstract concepts)