Mark Cohen (philosopher) - Unknown

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23 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 7 Jul

Mark Cohen (philosopher) - Unknown’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Revisionist History: The Staten Island Problem · Revenge of "A Good Walk Spoiled" · 7 Jul 2026 podcast

Here's an argument that favors the spatiotemporal continuity theory, the idea that what makes the ship persist through time as one and the same is that it moves smoothly through space-time.

One plank is removed and thrown overboard, and a replacement plank is installed, taken from the cargo the ship has on board.

So when it arrives, it doesn't have a single part that is identical to any of the parts it started out with.

And so there's no point at which you can say, aha, now we have a new ship, a different, a numerically different ship.

So if you have that sort of argument in mind, you think, okay, the spatio-temporal continuity criterion is the correct one.

Forget about requiring that all the parts are the same.

The museum example goes like this.

Suppose the ship is in a museum of ancient ships, and a gang of crooks is trying to steal this ancient ship, and it realizes it can't just haul it out in one piece.

They would easily be spotted.

So they come up with a clever scheme.

By the time they're finished, on day number N, they have all N parts of the ship removed.

Now they reassemble them and put it on the black market.

They're selling Theseus's ancient ship for a pretty price, and they've left a replica behind in the museum.

I contend that in this case, when you describe it in this way, it seems as if Theseus' ship has been stolen piecemeal from the museum.

The problem as it stands is irresolvable and you only come to a conclusion that makes any sense to you if you place it in a context in which there is something sort of extra metaphysical, something pragmatic.

that helps, that tilts you in one direction or the other.

It is something like that.

Where the identity of the object confers, for example, a right or a title...

And if it's considered to be held intact and in full by whoever holds it at any one time, then basically that removes change altogether from the realm of what matters as far as ownership is concerned.

Yes.

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