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Single Idea 12972

[filed under theme 9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 9. Ship of Theseus ]

Full Idea

We must acknowledge that organic bodies as well as others remain 'the same' only in appearance, and not strictly speaking. It is rather like the river whose water is continually changing, or like Theseus's ship which Athenians constantly repaired.

Gist of Idea

Bodies, like Theseus's ship, are only the same in appearance, and never strictly the same

Source

Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.27)

Book Ref

Leibniz,Gottfried: 'New Essays on Human Understanding', ed/tr. Remnant/Bennett [CUP 1996], p.231

A Reaction

This is Leibniz's standard view, that something only remains the same if it has a unifying substance, and so a collection of planks is just an aggregate, and doesn't have any identity to begin with.

The 19 ideas with the same theme [does his ship remain if its parts are steadily changed?]:

16516 The ship which Theseus took to Crete is now sent to Delos crowned with flowers [Plato]
1212 Replacing timbers on Theseus' ship was the classic illustration of the problem of growth and change [Plutarch]
12853 Some individuate the ship by unity of matter, and others by unity of form [Hobbes]
17256 If a new ship were made of the discarded planks, would two ships be numerically the same? [Hobbes]
12972 Bodies, like Theseus's ship, are only the same in appearance, and never strictly the same [Leibniz]
21301 The purpose of the ship makes it the same one through all variations [Hume]
16157 Insurance on the original ship would hardly be paid out if the plank version was wrecked! [Frede,M]
11858 The question is not what gets the title 'Theseus' Ship', but what is identical with the original [Wiggins]
16517 Priests prefer the working ship; antiquarians prefer the reconstruction [Wiggins]
17589 If you reject transitivity of vague identity, there is no Ship of Theseus problem [Inwagen]
13381 Thinking of them as 'ships' the repaired ship is the original, but as 'objects' the reassembly is the original [Jubien]
13382 Rearranging the planks as a ship is confusing; we'd say it was the same 'object' with a different arrangement [Jubien]
4592 If you can have the boat without its current planks, and the planks with no boat, the planks aren't the boat [Heil]
4198 If 5% replacement preserves a ship, we can replace 4% and 4% again, and still retain the ship [Lowe]
4199 A renovation or a reconstruction of an original ship would be accepted, as long as the other one didn't exist [Lowe]
4200 If old parts are stored and then appropriated, they are no longer part of the original (which is the renovated ship). [Lowe]
14741 The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider]
12854 An entrepreneur and a museum curator would each be happy with their ship at the end [Simons]
12855 The 'best candidate' theories mistakenly assume there is one answer to 'Which is the real ship?' [Simons]