Poll: The Escapist Debates; The Computer of Theseus

Paragon Fury

The Loud Shadow
Jan 23, 2009
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So I've had this comic for a while in my collection of Saved Things (TM).


It made me think of something; the story of the Ship of Theseus. TL;DR version:

A ship that has been in service for so long that through repairs, replacements and upgrades no longer consists of any of the original pieces. Is it still the same ship?

So I thought; is this the same with PCs? Is your computer still your computer, despite the fact that all of the parts that you started with are no longer part of your computer, or that your computer is now by all definitions "new" even if it has a couple of it's older parts leftover?
 

Saelune

Trump put kids in cages!
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Yes because the new bits become the old bits anyways, so by the time everything is replaced, you have an old part that is yours anyways that was once one of the new replacement pieces.
 

Recusant

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Well, it's still my computer, until such time as it comes to belong to someone else, but I think you mean to ask whether it's the same[/] computer. It depends on your definitions. Does an object exist in its own right, or is it composed solely of its component parts? Further, is an object's existence an inherent property, or derived from its functionality?

Let's consider a parallel case: suppose you're involved in an accident, and lose your left arm. Are you still a human being? Nearly everyone would say yes; you're a human being who happens to be short one piece. But suppose you lose all your extremities and some organs; you're reduced to the minimum possible fraction of a body necessary to sustain life. You're no longer capable of doing most of the things a human can; you're pretty much a vegetable. And yet, most people would still say yes; you may be a broken person, but you're still a person- the "vegetable" isn't mean literally. Now suppose we go a step further and replace all your missing parts with cybernetic equivalents. You've essentially become RoboCop (well, more likely RoboCostomerServiceAgent or RoboOfficeWorker, but stick with me). Your legs run faster, your arms lift more, your eyes see more sharply and the mathematical centers of your brain process faster and more accurately. Are you still human? Here, at last, we begin to encounter real dissidence. A thing is, at least in part, defined by its limits, and there's a notable difference between overcoming those limits and not having them to begin with (as those of you who become RoboProgrammer will undoubtedly tell you). But even those who don't regard you as (or regard you only partially as) human will still see you as a person. But this is because we look at human beings differently than we do machines (not that I'm condemning that!). So you need to answer the question: is a computer- is any object- what it does? Is it what it's made up of? Something else? If so, what?

It gets even murkier when we go beyond mere physical objects: the Catholic church doesn't have a single member or physical object that dates from the beginning of its 2,000 year history, is it still the same organization? It does have a few rituals, prayers, and ideas that date from Jesus' time, but nothing physical save a few locations. Further, some of its ideas have changed over time. Was it still the same church after Vatican 2? After any given Council that proclaimed an idea heretical or acceptable? Heck, was it the same church before Rome and Constantinople split away from each other (people will tell you the Schism took place in 1054, but that was just formalizing changes that'd been in progress for centuries, so you really can't say only one group was branching away from a continuous tradition)? When the Romans and Byzantines split from each other (people will tell you that the Byzantines were Roman, but if you buy that, I've got a bridge to sell you)?

Needless to say, these are broad questions that philosophers have been debating since time out of mind. But do we teach our teenagers of Kant and Wittgenstein? Do we bring up the ponderings on the great questions of existence, make their own lives less miserable as they realize that not everyone over thirty is an idiot, and at the same time make their own actions less insufferable, as they realize they're not trapped in a world entirely devoid of reason? No. We teach them polynomials.
 

Pirate Of PC Master race

Rambles about half of the time
Jun 14, 2013
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Well, that is a pointless question. It is what it is. You could call it old, or new. It does not change composition of its parts.. it just IS.
 

Souplex

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Jul 29, 2008
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My answer to almost any philosophical question: Does it matter?
It's a computer it computes for you. Who cares if it's the same as another computer?
And a missing component of the Ship of Theseus is that as parts got taken out of service, they got put together in a museum, so there's 2 ships with equal claim to being the ship.
 

Phasmal

Sailor Jupiter Woman
Jun 10, 2011
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If my computer didn't want me to have that internal debate, it shouldn't have caught on fucking fire.

But yeah I suppose I consider it the same computer despite having to build it pretty much from the start again. Or rather my brother in law had to build it from the start again, as I neither know nor care how to put a computer together.
 

Saelune

Trump put kids in cages!
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Souplex said:
My answer to almost any philosophical question: Does it matter?
It's a computer it computes for you. Who cares if it's the same as another computer?
And a missing component of the Ship of Theseus is that as parts got taken out of service, they got put together in a museum, so there's 2 ships with equal claim to being the ship.
Well, to be fair, "who cares?" is the antithesis to philosophy's very point. If you don't ask "why?", you are less likely to find out.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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Since this is a serious question, I'll answer seriously about it.

The answer is yes. It retains the spirit of the thing even if you have removed and replaced every widget in the thing over time. Why? Because you didn't do it all at once like just buying a new computer. You replaced something worn out and allowed the new part to become part of the whole. If I were to gradually replace every organ in my body over time, then get a complete blood transfusion, then go cybernetic and replace my limbs, armor my ribcage, and convert my normal fleshy brain into a cyberbrain - basically emptying the old brain into the new, like your computer's OS and programs - like in Ghost in the Shell...am I still FalloutJack? Hell yeah.
 

bauke67

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Apr 8, 2011
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I think the important thing to remember here is another ancient Greek thought experiment(ofsorts), the one Heracleitos was famous for. You can never step into the same river twice. By the second time, the water will have moved, and it will be a slightly different river you step into. By the same reasoning, you never use the same computer twice, since some of it's atoms will decay, it's age will increase, it's distance to the sun will change etc.
The world is constantly changing, and so identity too, is constantly in flux. We just apply the same word to things that seem similar over time. Your computer is objectively speaking definitely not the same one as you had before, since they hardly share a single characteristic besides being computers and being yours. On the other hand, if your intuition is that Theseus ship remains the same ship, then in some sense, it is still the same computer, although in cases where each part has been replaced it's ofter hard to maintain even that intuition.
Maybe we should distinguish objective identity, which simply lists all the properties of a thing, and if another thing has exactly the same ones, they are objectively identical. Of course no two things have exactly the same properties due to difference in spaciotemporal location etc, so any thing is only objectively identical with itself at the very same moment.
On the other hand is our intuitive notion of identity, which wants to maintain that something remains the same in Theseus' ship, and most certainly in our bodies. I'm not sure how this idea has taken shape within us, or whether it can be characterized exactly in words.
 

Thaluikhain

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There's no good answer to this one. At some point, it stops being teh same computer, but everyone would tend to have a fuzzy idea on when that point is.
 

Angelous Wang

Lord of I Don't Care
Oct 18, 2011
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Thaluikhain said:
There's no good answer to this one. At some point, it stops being teh same computer, but everyone would tend to have a fuzzy idea on when that point is.
When you change the primary HDD, then it becomes a new computer. The primary HDD (more specifically the OS installation) is the equivalent of the computers consciousness.

It's like cyborgs, you can swap out as much as you like, but the brain is irreplaceable. If you change out the brain it's a new person in someone else's body.
 

Wrex Brogan

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Yes and no. Yes as in 'it's my computer', no as in 'I've literally swapped out every component over the last 15 years and it's seriously gone from running Windows 4.8 to Windows 10 in that time period'.
 

Souplex

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Jul 29, 2008
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Saelune said:
Souplex said:
My answer to almost any philosophical question: Does it matter?
It's a computer it computes for you. Who cares if it's the same as another computer?
And a missing component of the Ship of Theseus is that as parts got taken out of service, they got put together in a museum, so there's 2 ships with equal claim to being the ship.
Well, to be fair, "who cares?" is the antithesis to philosophy's very point. If you don't ask "why?", you are less likely to find out.
To be fair I didn't simply say "Who cares?" I had a line of reasoning that went as follows:
Does it matter? -> No. -> Then who cares?
Philosophy only matters when it's asking questions of substance.
 

Thaluikhain

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Souplex said:
Philosophy only matters when it's asking questions of substance.
Hmmm...that's a subject of debate in of itself. Even putting aside arguing over what counts as substance.
 

JUMBO PALACE

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Angelous Wang said:
Thaluikhain said:
There's no good answer to this one. At some point, it stops being teh same computer, but everyone would tend to have a fuzzy idea on when that point is.
When you change the primary HDD, then it becomes a new computer. The primary HDD (more specifically the OS installation) is the equivalent of the computers consciousness.

It's like cyborgs, you can swap out as much as you like, but the brain is irreplaceable. If you change out the brain it's a new person in someone else's body.
I cloned my HDD and OS to an SSD and now run both in my PC. Is it the same PC or different?

Ot: To me, changing parts doesn't alter the spirit of the thing that you started with. It's the same way I look at modifying cars. Sure things change and parts that are either new or from other vehicles find their way onto it, but at the end of the day this machine and I are on a journey together.
 

SupahEwok

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There's philosophical points to be made, but as everybody else is making them, I'm not getting into it.

Frankly I consider my PC a new computer whenever I change out the motherboard and processor. Those are the body and brains, everything else is mutable and ancillary. Except for the PSU I guess but PSU's aren't sexy like a CPU.
 

Guitarmasterx7

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Mar 16, 2009
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Ehh with a computer I would say no, if you really are replacing all its parts. With something like a ship it's a little different, because there's a certain consistency of architecture to a ship. If a piece of a ship is destroyed, repairing it is almost like healing a wound. With a computer there are more cut-and-dry parts that get outright replaced and once they're all replaced it becomes an outright different thing entirely