{"id":806,"date":"2025-11-12T16:20:37","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T16:20:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/?p=806"},"modified":"2025-11-12T19:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T19:59:08","slug":"thesuss-ship-or-triggers-broom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/uncategorized\/thesuss-ship-or-triggers-broom\/","title":{"rendered":"Theseus’s ship … or Trigger’s Broom"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article, https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/c2ebbbf7-09bd-493e-b021-e7bad04f8fa7<\/a>, is a brief review of this book: https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/What-Intelligence-Evolution-Computing-Antikythera\/dp\/0262049953<\/a><\/p>\n

The reviewer asks a question that I assume is planted in the book as a conundrum to deal with the questions : \u201cWho am I\u201d? or \u201cWhere is my intelligence located?\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens when all the components of Theseus\u2019s ship are gradually replaced over time? Is the rebuilt boat, containing none of its original parts, still the ship of Theseus?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The issue with this conundrum, and its answers, is that it never factors in time<\/strong>. There seems to me to be a major difference between the gradual replacement of parts of an object, or in the main test case, the replacement of our body\u2019s constituent elements as we grow and metabolise, and a sudden or all-at-once replacement<\/p>\n

The difference lies in the gradual replacement of parts versus the replacement of the whole. For the former, adaption is possible, for the latter less so. (A further dimension may be the complexity and scale of the entity or organism being replaced.)<\/p>\n

I am still the \u2018same\u2019 person today as I was at 20 years old because while my physical body has replaced itself at the cellular level this has been gradual, piecemeal, not catastrophic. In the case,too, of a conscious, feeling entity this replacement is adaptive.<\/p>\n

But I cannot survive a catastrophic replacement \u2013 if I am blown up, or in some dramatic way may body ceases to function, \u2018I\u2019 cannot adapt to the change.<\/p>\n

This is not a conundrum but common sense.<\/p>\n

Take the contrasting example of Trigger\u2019s Broom, used for comedic effect in \u2018Only Fools and Horses\u2019<\/a>. Trigger, a road sweeper, is rewarded with a medal by his local council for still having the same broom after 20 years service. The medal is because he has helped save the council money by only using one broom. His incredulous friends ask how this is possible.  \u201cIt\u2019s not the same broom!\u201d his friends incredulously reply. \u201cBut I look after it well \u2026\u201d replies Trigger, \u201cthis broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles.\u201d  <\/p>\n

The absurdity of this \u2018entity replacement\u2019 joke is that of course with only two components it is simple to see that it is not the same<\/em> broom that Trigger started out with. It has the same shape, the same form, but the parts are ostensibly<\/em> not original. The broom has the same form<\/em> but its parts are not the original ones.<\/p>\n

But as the complexity of an entity grows so we can confidently argue that it is the same entity even as parts are replaced. Even Theseus\u2019s ship is too complex for us to say which components render it original and which render it a replacement. And the same goes for the human body, and with it the mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article, https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/c2ebbbf7-09bd-493e-b021-e7bad04f8fa7, is a brief review of this book: https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/What-Intelligence-Evolution-Computing-Antikythera\/dp\/0262049953 The reviewer asks a question that I assume is planted in the book as a conundrum to deal with the questions : \u201cWho am I\u201d? or \u201cWhere is my intelligence located?\u201d: \u201cWhat happens when all the components of Theseus\u2019s ship are gradually replaced over … Continue reading “Theseus’s ship … or Trigger’s Broom”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":813,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806\/revisions\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}