we live in hell

Full Version: two ships of Theseus
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I assume you know the Ship of Theseus thought experiment: if you replace the parts of a ship, one at a time, until all parts have been replaced... is it the same ship?
What if you do this but someone else takes the discarded parts and rebuilds the ship entirely out of those?
Which one is the real Ship of Theseus?
Are both? Neither?
This is not a very smart thought experiment, I am mostly being silly.
saw someone's take on this which included a building. I think it was the Golden Palace or something. But it's been knocked over, burned down, multiple times and they rebuilt it exactly the same.  It's the Golden Palace. It always has been and always WILL be because both the palace and the ship are an IDEA. not the parts that make it up.
I guess you could call it nominative tautology. A thing is what we say it is... because we say it is.