Concepts
The Ship of Theseus
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The Ship of Theseus is a paradox of identity and persistence: if a ship has every one of its original planks replaced over time through repair, is the resulting vessel still the same ship? Recorded in Plutarch's Life of Theseus, where the Athenians preserved the ship by continually replacing decayed timber, the puzzle bears on the modern philosophical problems of personal identity and the relationship between material composition and identity over time.
Facts
Disputed
Origin Year75 CE marks Plutarch's Life of Theseus, the earliest surviving text to record the puzzle; the underlying question of identity through change is older than Plutarch's own account of it, and no earlier attested source names it explicitly. Cross-Tradition Connections
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