the ship of theseus – just moving along like everyone else

a-screams:

beeth0ven:

There’s this philosophical dilemma known as The Ship of Theseus. It goes something like this: there’s a ship made out of wood. One of the planks is rotting, so that plank is replaced with a new one. It’s still the same ship as it was before, right? Just with a new plank. Overtime, more and more of the wooden planks start to rot and are replaced. Eventually, after many years, every piece of wood is replaced. The question is, is the ship the same ship as it was before? How many planks of wood have to be replaced before it is an entirely different ship. One? Two? Half of them? All of them? The point of the thought experiment is to understand how objects survive change. At what point does an object fundamentally, irreversibly changed? Nobody really knows.

Being in a sick body is comparable to Theseus’ ship. First, one thing goes. Then another, and another, and another- until you are no longer the same person. How much hardware can a body hold before it is no longer a body?

At what point, when there is more titanium than bone, more drugs than blood, more scar tissue than skin, more electric impulses than nerves, is a body- and the person within that body- no longer the same? At what point are you more medicine than flesh?

Are you really the same person you were before? Are any of us?

I️ know this is trying to make a point but yes you are still you. That ship is still that ship.

We are more than the sum of our parts just as that ship was. The capitan who ordered a new mast for the ship still sees the ship as their own and as the same ship – changed yes but the same. We are not defined by what we are made of. We are defined by ourselves, that being. That ship is that ship because the captain and he crew and everyone believes it. You are still you because you know it to be true.

Change does not equate distraction, only strength. For every time a plank was replaced that ship got stronger.