University of Alberta, Canada.
University of British Columbia, Canada.
Cognition. 2019 Nov;192:103999. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.06.011. Epub 2019 Jun 21.
Hobbes' (1672/1913) famous puzzle of the Ship of Theseus - in which a wooden ship's parts are replaced plank by plank, and the old planks are subsequently reassembled to create a second ship - has been the source of debate about the criteria that underlie human judgments of individual artifact persistence. This puzzle has led some philosophers to the paradoxical conclusion that an artifact observed at one time is the same persisting individual as two artifacts seen at a later time. We argue that prior discussions of the puzzle have conflated property persistence (judged in conjunction with a description, like "Theseus' ship") with individual persistence (judged in conjunction with a designator, like "X"). In three studies, we manipulated the linguistic expression (description, designator) used to label the original object in the puzzle. When participants solved the puzzle in conjunction with a description, they gave systematically high ratings to any object (either or both) that could be inferred to match the description. Yet when participants solved the same puzzle in conjunction with a designator, they gave significantly higher ratings to one post-change object (the object made of the reassembled old parts) than to the other post-change object (the object made of replacement parts). The results suggest that individual persistence judgments concerning the puzzle (i.e., those made in conjunction with a designating expression) are not paradoxical but rather are based on the continuity of the object's parts/material.
霍布斯（1672/1913）著名的忒修斯之船悖论——其中木制船的部件一块一块地被替换，然后将旧木板重新组装成第二艘船——引发了关于人类判断人工制品个体持久性的标准的争论。这个悖论使一些哲学家得出了一个悖论性的结论，即一个在某个时间点观察到的人工制品与稍后看到的两个人工制品是同一个持续存在的个体。我们认为，之前对这个悖论的讨论混淆了属性持久性（与描述一起判断，如“忒修斯的船”）和个体持久性（与指示词一起判断，如“X”）。在三项研究中，我们操纵了用于标记谜题中原物体的语言表达（描述、指示词）。当参与者结合描述来解决这个谜题时，他们会对任何可以推断与描述相符的物体（无论是一个还是两个）给予系统的高分。然而，当参与者结合指示词来解决同一个谜题时，他们对一个后变化的物体（由重新组装的旧部件制成的物体）的评分明显高于另一个后变化的物体（由替换部件制成的物体）。结果表明，关于这个谜题的个体持久性判断（即与指示词一起做出的判断）并不是矛盾的，而是基于物体的部分/材料的连续性。
