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> You seem to assume that any process reasoning or thinking has to be scientific to be useful. A very dubious proposition. No, in fact, I clearly said that the

> You seem to assume that any process reasoning or thinking has to be scientific to be useful. A very dubious proposition. No, in fact, I clearly said that they were useful but not scientific. My problem with The Ship of Theseus, is that it prætends to be scientific, whereas it is merely a futile quibble of semantics. > Giving your example, thinking about who is beautiful and who isn't (not "Scientific Study", just thinking) would be pointless is well, and in reality, in practical objective reality of a lot of people, isn't. Indeed it isn't. Now imagine the existence of some thought experiment by a philosopher who tries to use deductive logic to decide what is and isn't beautiful absent any rigorous definition of beauty and thus indeed ends up stuck. I would indeed call that a very futile exercise, so I called The Ship of Theseus.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
> The Ship of Theseus, is that it prætends to be scientific How? Doesn't seem to me that most people think of it that way, but maybe I am not aware of some things. How can it even pretend be scientific when even the basic category in which it's placed is "a thought experiment"?
dragonwriter 6y ago
> My problem with The Ship of Theseus, is that it prætends to be scientific, whereas it is merely a futile quibble of semantics. It doesn't pretend to be scientific (it does not purport to offer or relate to testable empirical hypotheses), it is a philosophical thought exercise illustrating that the concept of identity of a composite of mutable composition (pretty much every concrete thing in the real world) is arbitrary.
- guyomes 6y ago
  The Ship of Theseus is a quite old thought exercise. At that time, science and philosophy were not as separated as today. Actually, after reading the nice comic book Logicomix [0], I learned that the philosophical thought exercise of Wittgenstein, Russel and others, on trying to rationalize the world at the beginning of the 20th century, is actually what lead to a fundamental axiomatic redefinition of mathematics themselves. So it seems far stretch to call philosophical thought experiment not scientific. I agree that it is not scientific in the modern sense, after Karl Popper introduced the concept of falsifiability in 1935 [1], shortly after Hilbert advocated for rigorous proofs in mathematics in 1917 [2]. Although at that point, it is mostly a matter of vocabulary, thought experiments seem necessary for the advance of science. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program
Igelau 6y ago
> it pr(e)tends to be scientific, whereas it is merely a futile quibble of semantics. It doesn't pretend to be scientific. The question predates science. > I... My... I... I... Identity, identity, identity, identity!

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago

> The Ship of Theseus, is that it prætends to be scientific How? Doesn't seem to me that most people think of it that way, but maybe I am not aware of some things. How can it even pretend be scientific when even the basic category in which it's placed is "a thought experiment"?

dragonwriter 6y ago

> My problem with The Ship of Theseus, is that it prætends to be scientific, whereas it is merely a futile quibble of semantics. It doesn't pretend to be scientific (it does not purport to offer or relate to testable empirical hypotheses), it is a philosophical thought exercise illustrating that the concept of identity of a composite of mutable composition (pretty much every concrete thing in the real world) is arbitrary.

guyomes 6y ago
The Ship of Theseus is a quite old thought exercise. At that time, science and philosophy were not as separated as today. Actually, after reading the nice comic book Logicomix [0], I learned that the philosophical thought exercise of Wittgenstein, Russel and others, on trying to rationalize the world at the beginning of the 20th century, is actually what lead to a fundamental axiomatic redefinition of mathematics themselves. So it seems far stretch to call philosophical thought experiment not scientific. I agree that it is not scientific in the modern sense, after Karl Popper introduced the concept of falsifiability in 1935 [1], shortly after Hilbert advocated for rigorous proofs in mathematics in 1917 [2]. Although at that point, it is mostly a matter of vocabulary, thought experiments seem necessary for the advance of science. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicomix [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bold_hypothesis [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_program

Igelau 6y ago

> it pr(e)tends to be scientific, whereas it is merely a futile quibble of semantics. It doesn't pretend to be scientific. The question predates science. > I... My... I... I... Identity, identity, identity, identity!