ILLUSTRATES Thales Molina
QUESTION Kauê Locatelli, Bento Gonçalves, RS
1) I am the myth
Result of a double relationship between Edra and Aegeus (king of Athens) and Poseidon (god of the seas), Theseus was important in Greek mythology. His best-known feat was defeat the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete, which fed annually on seven Athenian boys and girls, as part of a tribute imposed by the king of Crete.
2) Pierced boat
Parallel Lives, by the Greek thinker Plutarch, proposes the following: Theseus part of ship from point A to point B. But over the course of a 50-year voyage, he replaces every part of the boat as it wears out, until they’ve all been replaced. Here’s the paradox: you can say that the ship What arrived at B is the same as what left A? Or is it another?
+ What is a paradox?
+ What is the Pinocchio paradox?
3) The spirit of the thing
Many philosophers have tried to solve the riddle. Heraclitus compared the ship and its parts to a river: its waters are constantly renewed, but it is always the same. Aristotle established that a thing is defined by four causes: formal, material, final and efficient. In his analysis, between points A and B, the ship it only changed its material cause, so it was still the same.
4) Burning the neurons
Modern philosophers have also guessed. Gottfried Leibniz concluded that it did not, using the logic that “X is the same as Y if and only if X and Y have the same properties and relations and whatever is true of X is also true of Y”. Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, added fuel to the fire: if a second boat assembled from discarded parts, which of the two will be considered theship in Theseus?
+ Who are the titans in Greek mythology?
+ Do Greeks and Egyptians still believe in the gods of their mythologies?
5) Eternal Doubt
The paradox also gained new versions. Philosopher John Locke thought about a sock with holes: if the hole is mended, would it still be the same sock? If one day the teleportation is possible and someone is molecularly “disassembled” at point A and reassembled at point B… will it be the same person? Will he have the same memories and the same personality?
SOURCES site HypeScience; books Compact Mini-Dictionary of Mythologyby Nadia Julien New Essays on Human Understandingby Gottfried Leibniz, de corporeby Thomas Hobbes, and Botequim philosophyby Matt Lawrence