The Effect Of Theseus’ Ship Paradox

Theseus’ paradox is an ancient Greek legend, which we know by Plutarch, the Ancient Greek historian. The great hero Theseus sailed on his ship to Athens from Crete where he conquered the Minotaur, Athenians saved this ship, but with time they were replacing some pieces and planks of her because of the oldness. So at one moment the whole ship already was fully and only from new parts. The paradox – is this ship still Theseus’ ship, or is it a new one? And if we will take all the old parts to build the same new one, which will be the original? That’s not all the questions. If we suppose that it’s not the same ship already, after all the parts of a ship were fully replaced one by one, then on which exactly replaced plank it stopped to be original one?  How many pieces we allowed to replace, so the originality can be saved?

That was and is a big question for lots of philosophers in all the times, but how do you think it affects us nowadays? Well, it might bring some doubts about our and all things around identity.

When people do restauration on one architectural object many times – is it still original? It looks the same and still has original pieces, but is there a stage on which it loses identity and becoming a copy with no historical memory? Architects are sure that when the structure has at least some original pieces – it is original.

(Credit:Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris pendant les travaux de restauration)

We can ask the same question about ourselves too. Our cells replace themselves all the time, skin cells approximately in every 27 days, all our body cells together regenerate approximately in every 7-10 years, some of them in days, and some of them in months. So a person 10 years ago and a person present are not the same one, despite that, we have the same mind?

Generally, why is originality so important? Art is valuable, because of its author, the item’s replica is not the same as the original, even if it looks the same and has the same quality so we are ready to pay way more for the original just because of the real label. Maybe the answer is in Christian Jarret’s experiment about the Endowment effect.

The 3-6 years old children were presented a “copy machine”, that can copy any item. Children were copying a lot of things like forks and spoons with a lot of fun, but when they were offered to copy a favorite toy, they were afraid and rejected that idea immediately. Fear was that they will not be able to see where is the copy and where is the original and by mistake can take a replica home. What was the difference? The difference was only in emotional connection, which children have with their favorite toy, only with the original one, we believe that “ours” have “soul” which cannot be replaced. When we are buying a label, that might be cosmetics from a favorite model or singer, t-shirts from a favorite blogger, or soccer player – we believe that those items have an essence that replica does not, and it’s worth it. But we are adding that essence to items.

So maybe the solution to the paradox is – during the time when we have an emotional connection with an item, place, or a person, it is original for us with all the possible changes and nothing else matters.

Sources

• Levin, N. (2021, January 18). Ship of Theseus – Philosophical Thought. Pressbooks. https://open.library.okstate.edu/introphilosophy/chapter/ship-of-theseus/
• Libretexts. (2021, March 10). 1.1: Introduction to Philosophy and the Ship of Theseus. Humanities LibreTexts. https://human.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Philosophy/Ancient_Philosophy_Reader_(Levin)/01%3A_The_Start_of_Western_Philosophy_and_the_Pre-Socratics/1.01%3A_Introduction_to_Philosophy_and_the_Ship_of_Theseus
• Heinemann, W. H. (1914). Plutarch, Theseus, chapter 23, section 1. Harvard University Press. London. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=plut.+thes.+23.1
• Jarret, C. J. (n.d.). Why are we so attached to our things? – Christian Jarrett. TED-Ed. https://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-are-we-so-attached-to-our-things-christian-jarrett