The Ship of Theseus, also known as the Paradox of Theseus, was first recorded by Plutarch in "The Life of Theseus". Legend has it that after the Athenian hero Theseus returned from Crete, the Athenians enshrined his ship at the port and repaired it year after year. When the ship's planks rotted, they were replaced with new wood; over time, the entire ship's planks changed hands. So philosophers argued: When each log is replaced, is it still the same ship of Theseus? If the answer is "yes", then how can a ship that has nothing to do with its original material still be the same thing; if the answer is "no", then from which board did it lose its original name?
This question has been repeated over two thousand years. Hobbes used it to discuss "identity" in "Leviathan" and pushed it to the country: Just as the planks of a ship change but the ship remains a ship, the members of a community change from generation to generation, but it remains the same country. John Locke, in "A Theory of Human Understanding", tied "personal identity" to the continuity of consciousness, rather than the persistence of the body. If the ship is measured by this yardstick, the answer no longer depends on the plank, but on whether the "memory" is transferred with the wood. In the 20th century, Derek Parfit used the "fission" thought experiment in "Principle and Man" to extend the paradox to the human body: when a person's consciousness is split into two bodies, where is the original "he"?
Intention: A small philosophical discussion
