The Ship of Theseus

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At what point in time does something cease to be? Is it when it dies, or when it is no longer remembered? If this is the case, then when does an inanimate object cease to be? This dilemma is directly confronted in the case of the ship of Theseus. This ship sailed around the Aegean Sea thousands of years ago, and now it has been restored over the years and no original parts can be found on the ship. Appearance wise, this ship is the same, it looks the same, weight is similar, and could function the same, but is this ship the same ship, as in of the same parts, not different. This is where the conflict comes in to play. Both in essence and the physical body this ship is similar, but not congruent, to the original ship of Theseus, therefore it is not the same ship. A big issue with this idea of the ship being the same is how it deals with life and death. First of all, the ship is not, and never was, alive, therefore it has no soul or essence which some could claim to be the same. A living creature is assumed to have a soul which even after death will retain the essence of the being it belonged to. Because the ship was not ever living, it could not have “that posit spiritual existence before and after physical existence to have some device to allow for identity through the different phases of [it’s] existence.” () This proves that the ship, although it appears to be the same, is not the same ship due to the fact that there is no way to retain the essence of the previous ship. When confronted with the issue of physical make up causing the ship to be the same, one can pull from the regeneration of cells in our body to realize how it is not the same ship. Our cells are constantly being shed and reproduced through the cycle called mitosis, and through this process each cell is an exact genetic copy of one another. This is the exact opposite when compared to the ships

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