so you're saying it's a different article now?
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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But at what point did it become a different article?
a while ago
That "modern embellishment" is not a great example. It changes the context of the ship's existence from a physical entity to a legal entity. I like the thought experiment but if you keep changing basic definitions it will get you less than nowhere
I think that’s literally the joke
There is a legal answer to the question, and the answer is yes, it would continue to be the same ship, at least according to Lloyds of London.
In philosophical terms, also the same boat. It has continued to exit as something we would recognise as a ship throughout, and has not been modified, merely repaired.
What if I take all of the pieces that were removed, and put them back together? Would that be a different boat?
Yes
It would be a new boat, yes. The component parts are older, but it has existed as something we would consider a boat for a shorter amount of time.
Then, what if we took half the boat completely apart, and then pit it back together? Is it now a new or the old boat?
I remember my dad's car project, where an old Citroën was completely in pieces. That's not the same car, after he put it back together? (Not that he ever did)
Every time the article's bits are replicated to another cloud server, and the old one is decommissioned, does it become a new article?
I really like the modern embellishment, but yes, US law in the 21st century has really demonstrated there's a stark difference between legal philosophy and existential philosophy (or law and morality, or crime and wrongdoing / evil).
We've seen a similar situation with Windows XP, 7 and 8 in which the OS required re-activation (phoning home) if the hardware of the computer system changed too dramatically. The response of the public was to make, distribute and update Windows Loader which voided all necessity for activation ( and gave it a valid, if generated, key). So while capitalist systems might want to rent-seek by asserting the Ship of Theseus is different now, public-serving governments tend to assert that the ship is the same.
There's also the matter that the human body (one of many life forms) changes all its parts over time and its existential identity stays the same even as the personality it hosts changes. We completely depend on the assumption of continuity regarding both our legal and existential selves. (Which means DeepSouth is absolutely an early step towards computer-simulated human brains as a means to create legal immortality for billionaires that don't want to rely on hereditary inheritance of their legacy.)