I first came across this paradox while watching the 2012 multilingual Indian film by Anand Gandhi called, Ship of Theseus.
In the context of the movie, it posed a brilliant spectacle and one could delve into that alone for hours but that discussion merits its own blog-post. What I have set out to do today is share my piece of mind with you on this paradox because in itself it is a historically renowned thought experiment and even after trying to listen to the arguments on both the sides, I particularly lean on one.
This doesn't mean I discredit the rationale that supports any counterarguments or that I discredit the efforts of those who have come before me and tried to offer their own explanations going so far as to either dissolving the paradox or breaking the grounds on which it is built : namely, the transient sense of identity. After all, if a paradox has existed since the times of ancient Greece and is still talked about today, it must be whimsically locked in its components to still be relevant.
For sake of clarity, I am not in a mood to explore these historic arguments or talk about transience of identity. What I'm most swayed by in this analysis is actually a concept, the first edition of which I heard in a classic rom-com/coming-of-age film called Flipped (an adaptation from a young adult fiction of the same name by Wendelin Van Draanen )
It was Aristotle who first said it, "The whole is more than the sum of its parts".
And to build on this I'm going to take the help of Plato and his arguments that favor the existence of immortal souls and to do that, I'm going to begin shortly by explaining the relevance of Platonian forms in our day to day life.
So far, if it's not already obvious, I believe that the old ship of Theseus with the repaired parts is more ship of Theseus, in-fact the only ship of Theseus, than the one with all the scraped parts. And my main basis to arrive at this conclusion is that I believe that the whole is more than the sum of its parts and the difference between the whole and the sum of parts is where the so called Identity (in my understating, a Platonian form) should reside. It's an argument in construction, you can look at as a hypothesis, derived on prevailing arguments, so to say.
Let's start with an example. When you were born, you had x number of cells in your body. Over a period of time, these cells died, regenerated and died again; and the process went on day in and day out without your knowledge, your conscious recollection or memory of it. As a result of it, you grew taller, your appearance changed gradually but you still were and are, identified by the same name and by the same identity.
Now some would argue, what about our emotional maturity? The thoughts that changed, the experiences that cause a drift in our preferences, understanding and the general spectrum of things we identified with. This change essentially was not of physical parts like cells but it was closely entangled with our changing identity.
To that, I would say: brilliant question. But to answer that, I'd take the help of (and so deviate to introduce) the concept of Platonic ideals or forms. These are the so called forms of perfect that don't exist in reality but they're used to make sense of what is actually present in the real world. Things like the perfect circle, beauty, justice, souls, God, etc.
Now you might never be able to locate a perfect circle or draw it, but we all know what it is. We know and believe it so well, that it's hard to imagine that it's imaginary or platonic, so to say. So a slightly better example to convince you of the concept is to discuss the existence of a perfect world, peace, or justice, etc. Now that seems like something obviously familiar to us as an altruistic concept that we're constantly trying to attain but we're well aware that it is not so much in reality, attainable. But this doesn't stop us from believing in justice or pursuing it.
And if I extrapolate this to make you believe in God or immortal souls, now wouldn't that feel like tugging at it a little too much? I will let that discussion be carried forward by philosophers. What's interesting is that numbers are also a platonic concept.
Think about it. They don't physically exist in the world like iron or air. They're concepts, arithmetic constructs, that we've invented to make sense of the world and they're nothing but, perfect: the most beautiful proof of how platonic objects, despite being just concepts, help us rationalize so much of reality.
All this was to describe the nature of ideal platonic concepts and highlight their characteristics; so as to, whatever their exact nature might be, I can assign the concept of Identity to them and proceed with my argument then.
And so now if I say, that a) the whole is more than the sum of its parts and b) that marginal difference between the whole and the sum of its parts is a platonic sense of Identity, the most perfect eternal essence of the whole which is identified in its name and that which doesn't change over the course of time when the parts (that make up the sum) degrade, then will you believe that the first ship of Theseus is actually the only ship of Theseus, there ever could be?
Let's come back to the example of our personal identity and try to fight those counterarguments, shall we? One might be tempted to believe that the abstract quotient of our existence, our intelligence and consciousness is indestructible and they may be right, but it would be incorrect to believe that it is static or intransient.
Our mind and our thoughts, i.e., the abstract quotient of our identity, coherent and continuous at all times, is also subject to change. Our thoughts on an issue change as we get older, our experiences and their derivative memories change based on our temperament and vantage point, our perceptions of reality change with influx of knowledge and experience itself, then it is legitimate to question the static clause of identity as a platonic form.
But in my defense, I'd say this abstract emotional, behavioral and intellectual component of identity is tied to the physical aspects of our body. In my calculation, it is somewhere in one of the parts that add to make up the some. It is not the difference that I called Identity.
And before you label this as a lazy argument, I would highlight that this abstract mind sits in the not-so abstract of a brain; and the brain with all it's grey cells and neurons and synapses, is a physical object. The abstract objects like happiness do overlap with platonic ideal forms but a significant trigger, cause or correlation is with the physical substance, in this case, a hormone release or a muscle movement. When we say we're happy, we are experiencing effects of happiness hormones and facial muscle relaxations. Although I'd like to believe there's more to this happiness than that, but for the sake of this argument, I'd label it as one of the parts in the sum and not the marginal difference called Identity.
To give you another short example, let's take a company XYZ founded by a certain Mr. X. Now he may die and case be that his family members or managers have to take it forward. Over time, employees would change, factories will upgrade, probably their products and services also might change. But if they're true to the purpose and vision with which the company was made, it still has a chance of being called that : XYZ.
I believe whether it's human body, a painting or a ship, like a jigsaw-puzzle; the whole is almost always greater than the sum of its parts because there is a certain platonic form or ideal that characterizes it, which must have the essence of its creator, perpetrator and destructor, stored in it. This essence, I shall call Identity, one which is intransient and indestructible. So even if all parts eventually decay or die, like all deformable physical parts do, the one part associated with that platonic ideal Identity should help hold the essence still close.
PS. In a blog-post that talks so much of identity, did you notice that neither the person who was born with x no. of cells had a name, nor the man who started the variable named company. That's because fundamentally, I am a Shakespeare fan and I'd like to believe:
“What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”
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