Ethan Week 3: The Ship of Theseus Paradox

Imagine a ship sailing across the sea for hundreds of years. As it faces nature's elements, the wood starts decaying, so one by one, they are replaced with new wood planks. Eventually, every single original wood plank on the ship has been replaced by a new one. Now the question is: Is it the same ship? This mind-boggling ancient thought experiment, known as The Ship of Theseus, was first introduced by Greek biographer Plutarch. Over a dozen centuries later, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes makes his own contributions to the original paradox of the ship of Theseus. Hobbes proposed that if a second ship was built from all the original planks, how do we decide which one is the real Ship of Theseus? However, this paradox really has nothing to do with ships. Rather, Plutarch and Hobbes aimed to confront one simple dilemma: what constitutes identity?

Human identities are complicated because we change constantly. Our cells are constantly dying and being replaced. Our brains make hundreds of trillion connections each second. Our beliefs and understanding of the word develops every day. The things that you loved when you were 13 could now disgust you 5 years later. The point is, a person’s identity can only be defined over time. To judge a person purely based on who they are now or who they were before is ignorant of the importance of continuity. 

Although The Ship of Theseus has many approaches to solving it, one of the most prominent explanations suggests that identity does not necessarily depend upon possessing the exact same material composition. Instead, identity emerges from something developing over time as the continuity of its existence is maintained even if components change. Thus, the ship built out of completely new planks can be considered to be the identity of the original Ship of Theseus. Applying this concept to ourselves reveals that identity is not about staying the same. Just because you liked eating hotdogs with ketchup before, doesn’t mean that your identity is different now that you like hotdogs with mustard (You still like hotdogs!). Likewise, the child, the teenager, and the adult versions of you may look like completely different ships. One could be a small fishing boat while the other could be a USS destroyer. However, that doesn’t make two distinct identities. Maybe identity is the story of how we became different while remaining connected to who we were. For those of you philosophical thinkers, which ship do you think is real and what does that say about identity? 

Image: Chatterton, E. Keble (Edward Keble), 1878–1944

Comments

  1. Tejesh KothakotaSeptember 30, 2026 at 5:26 PM

    Hi Ethan, I think I’ve heard of this paradox once a while back. I originally thought that as long as the ship retains its structural integrity, it’s the same ship. I came to this conclusion because of how we as humans evolve. Although our opinions and thoughts on life are constantly changing, we still look (somewhat) like who we were yesterday.

    Reading your blog made me revisit this thought. Perhaps it’s about the belief that the ship is still the same one as before, just in a completely new body? Ah! Then again, how can it be the same ship? It is a completely different boat, containing none of the same parts as before. Perchance the new ship that is built is the old boat, since it is built upon (literally) the experiences of the original boat. Maybe I’m thinking too much, but I still am unsure of how to approach this: it’s like having an insane itch inside of your head that you can’t quite reach.

    I still stand with what I initially thought. If you were to take away a human’s body and their soul, then can you even call them the same person? I think that this idea can be applied to the paradox. A ship with a completely new body is one with a completely new identity.

    In fact, I would go as far as to say that someone who has an entirely new mindset is an entirely new person, despite them having a similar-looking body.

    I hope you can see the sheer amount of mental effort and struggle that it took for me to approach this conclusion. There is most definitely no single right answer.

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  2. Miroua RaymondSeptember 30, 2026 at 8:38 PM

    Hi Ethan, your blog was super interesting! I like how you broke down the Ship of Theseus paradox and its history. I had only known about the first part (where every plank of the ship is replaced) and had no idea about Hobbes’ contribution to the paradox. It adds a new layer to the paradox.

    I enjoyed how you connected the well-known paradox to identity; it is not a connection that I made before. I also liked the various examples you gave about how we change throughout our lives, and how our physical bodies change as well as our personalities. It’s really cool how our cells are also dying and being replaced, just like the planks on the ship. I found the analogy between children and adults to fishing boats and USS destroyers quite funny and interesting!

    Personally, I think that the ship that has all its planks replaced is the real ship. Every plank was replaced with the idea of keeping that specific ship intact and the same. Even though its composition is completely different, the concept of the ship stays the same; whereas, the other ship (built with the original planks) was made with the idea of cloning the Ship of Theseus. To me, because the ship was made with the intention of strictly copying the Ship of Theseus as much as possible, it makes the ship almost “less” of a ship.

    So ultimately, I agree with your statement that just because our identities change, it does not mean that we are completely different people. We still have the same “concept” of our individual selves and the unique experiences that have shaped our identities in different ways.

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  3. Htin LynnSeptember 30, 2026 at 9:26 PM

    The hotdog example made this click for me so fast you would have no clue. It’s because it shows how small and ordinary the changes in a person usually are. Nobody wakes up one day as a completely different human. They swap out one plank at a time, like a new hobby, a new friend group, or a changed opinion. It only looks dramatic when you compare the two ends.

    To answer your question at the end, I think the ship that kept sailing is the real one because the rebuilt one is like a museum piece. For me, identity is less about what you’re made of and more about the paths you’ve taken and the mistakes you’ve learnt from. Identity is a story, and I am still the author. The person I was at 13 is part of my story, but he doesn’t get to decide how it ends.

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