Replace : to restore to a former place or position
2: to take the place of especially as a substitute or successor
3: to put something new in the place of
If you take something apart and build something new from it, you aren’t replacing anything, you’re building something. You’ve replaced Theseus’s boat with a wagon.
If you take my grandfather’s axe (I replaced the handle twice and the head once) and whittle it down into a cane, you haven’t replaced the handle you’ve made a cane.
I was small, now I’m big and hairy, I’m still a human. I didn’t grow up and turn into a cat.
The point of the thought experiment is, if you take a thing apart and remake it with entirely new parts, is it the same thing? It is not about taking something apart and turning those parts into something else.
The Wagon of Theseus thought experiment is “if you take apart a boat and turn it into a wagon, is it still a boat?”
The question is if you could change little things about yourself over time, would you still be you? This is a question of identity, how much can we change and still remain ourselves?
Think about it this way: if you could use something like CRISPR to slightly alter your genes, maybe grow scales or gills, would those cumulative changes eventually turn you into someone else entirely?
Or consider this: what if you started replacing body parts with prosthetics – an arm, then a heart, and so on, until your whole body was artificial and completely different. At what point would you cross that line from you to something new?
That’s exactly what the comic is about. If we follow the artificial replacement of your body argument, then over time you could change it into an airplane. Would you stop being you at that point?
I point you to the definition of “replace”
If you take something apart and build something new from it, you aren’t replacing anything, you’re building something. You’ve replaced Theseus’s boat with a wagon.
If you take my grandfather’s axe (I replaced the handle twice and the head once) and whittle it down into a cane, you haven’t replaced the handle you’ve made a cane.
So, using your logic, when you grew up and your body changed over time then you’re no longer the same person?
I was small, now I’m big and hairy, I’m still a human. I didn’t grow up and turn into a cat.
The point of the thought experiment is, if you take a thing apart and remake it with entirely new parts, is it the same thing? It is not about taking something apart and turning those parts into something else.
The Wagon of Theseus thought experiment is “if you take apart a boat and turn it into a wagon, is it still a boat?”
The question is if you could change little things about yourself over time, would you still be you? This is a question of identity, how much can we change and still remain ourselves?
Think about it this way: if you could use something like CRISPR to slightly alter your genes, maybe grow scales or gills, would those cumulative changes eventually turn you into someone else entirely?
Or consider this: what if you started replacing body parts with prosthetics – an arm, then a heart, and so on, until your whole body was artificial and completely different. At what point would you cross that line from you to something new?
But that’s not what the comic is about. If we followed the comic, your body would eventually be turned into an airplane.
That’s exactly what the comic is about. If we follow the artificial replacement of your body argument, then over time you could change it into an airplane. Would you stop being you at that point?
If you change a boat into a wagon, is the boat a wagon or is the wagon a boat?
It’s a transition of an entity that used to be a boat into a wagon. This really isn’t that difficult of a concept.
So it’s not Theseus’s ship anymore, which is my point.
It’s a meme