Where's the ship?

As far as the passengers are concerned, it's the same ship all along.

A ship has no home. The one who sails it has (IMO).

I'd say that's a different ship.

And what if you compare a ship to a car? A car can be sold several times, which would probably mean it will "change homes". Which means that's it's not the car itself, but the owner who decides what's the car's "home". Same goes for the ship. It's the owner who will decide what's the ship's home.

it's the same ship.

It's the same ship.

Ships usually are repaired, something always is removed and replaced.

(And, Rick, of course a ship has a home: that's part of it's idenfication.)

But Walter, isn't that home identical to where the owner's from?

Maybe I should have said when the ship returns to where it started from instead of home.
Try not to worry about home,that isn't the question.

Legally, socially, etc., its the same ship, and it has returned home.

Physically, objectively, scientifically: it is a different thing than the thing that embarked on the voyage. No two separate things in the world are truly "identical." The "identical" parts it was replaced with were not truly "identical," but were "interchangeable parts." Physically, its a different ship. Unless we're discussing a ship in the mind (where things could theoretically be identical), and not a ship in the physical world.

Physically, objectively, and scientifically, it is not a ship. It is a collection of atoms. To even think of it as a ship we have to think about it socially, and so it doesn't make sense to answer the question of whether it is the same ship from an objective rather than social viewpoint.

If that's the case, it seems pretty simple. Its the same ship.
I guess I was trying to answer it from the viewpoint of: is it the sameobject that left the port.

Yes, I agree with rufio.

rick : i believe "in the good, old days" (to which walter no doubt was referring), the ship's actual homeport was what you would find painted on the stern of the ship, but i think you are right in that nowadays it's quite often some port that the ship may never have entered . ships are now registered quite often in some obscure country where the taxes are low or non-existent; and they often sail under a "flag of convenience". hbg

WHERE"S THE SHIP ?
here are two sites dealing with "flags of convenience' - i would say that's what is now called "shipping jobs overseas". ... www.flagsofconvenience.com ... flag of convenience 2 ..... sailors (at least in the olden days) always had "a home". many of the sailors' songs from hamburg and other ports often had the refrain " seine heimat ist der ozean " (is home is the ocean). perhaps walter will tell us where his "home" was when he was sailing the "seven seas". hbg ... wouldn't surprise me if there aren't some dutch sailors' songs with that theme.

Re: Where's the ship?


The perception of the ship which left the original port seems to have returned home. But the precise collection of atoms which set sail originally only existed for a fleeting moment; too short a time to have ever left home, much less returned.

By the way, you can ask the same question about almost anything, and also people, because we change most of our cells every few hundred days, and all of the molecules. But we have conciousness, so the story is a little different. Anyway, "sameness" is defined by language, so each language can have a diifernt conception of it.

Thanks for the sites hamburger, I didn't know about these so-called 'flags of convenience'. I'm learning here something every day