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If you feel helpless reading the title, bear with me. I’ll explain it all in a moment. If you do know what the “Ship of Theseus” refers to, you might still be wondering what’s the connection between the Ship of Theseus and qualia. That’s what this post attempts to ponder on.

First things first, especially for those who are not familiar with either the Ship of Theseus or qualia. That is, first let’s see some brief definitions – at this point I only offer the definitions; analysis will follow right after.

The Ship of Theseus is the name given to a thought experiment known since the 5th century BCE. It’s related to the metaphysics of identity.

Qualia is the name given to individual instances of subjective experience. When you see a red flower, the “redness of red”, the way you, specifically perceive it, is qualia.

The Ship of Theseus and Qualia: Expanded Definitions

Before we see how (if?) these two concepts, the Ship of Theseus and qualia, can be combined, we need to talk a bit more about each one of them. Let’s start with the Ship of Theseus.

The Ship that Was not the Ship

The basic idea behind this thought experiment is to which extent the components of something, when put together, are identical to that “something”.

And so, let’s assume that Theseus’s ship is docked in the harbor. Years pass, and time has an effect on the wood. The Athenians, in order to preserve the ship, periodically replace its components.

First they replace the oars. Then, a couple of years later, they replace some of the planks of the hull with new ones. Years continue to pass, and several portions of the ship are replaced – old, rotten wood is thrown away, and new takes its place. Several decades later, not a single plank of the original ship remains, only groups from different restoration phases.

The question posed by the thought experiment is this: Is the “restored” ship the same as the original one?

To make matters even more complicated, let’s assume the ancient Athenians decided to keep the parts they removed with each restoration phase. Let’s say that at some later stage they treated the rotten wood and decided to put all the parts together again, in another part of the harbor, creating a “replica”. The only thing is, which one is the replica and which is the original?

There have been various attempts at explaining the predicament. Referring to them in detail is outside the scope of the present post, but the main divide lies in the way we approach identity. Is “a ship” (replace with anything) more than a mere sum of its parts?

Qualia; or Subjective Experience

And after Theseus and his ship, let’s also take a look at qualia – then we can attempt to combine them and see what pops out.

Qualia, or subjective experience, is something I have referred to before. In my post on what I termed “The Happiness Illusion Paradox“, I had mentioned the following:

We can all agree that these words are written in red. But let me ask you this: Are you sure that what you see and what I see are one the same thing? How can you know whether what you have learned to call “red” isn’t actually what every other person on the planet calls “blue” – see what I did there 😉 ?

A surprising number of people don’t realize the repercussions of this – if even the core issue. This is not mere linguistic (or visual) trickery. What the problem of subjective experience, qualia, reveals is an inability to quantify (in lieu of better word) an aspect of a quantifiable system.

In other words, physics can give you a remarkably detailed analysis of what red is, determining the wavelength and frequency intervals that make red differ from, say, blue.

However, what neither physics nor anyone else can give you is what seeing red is.

The Ship of Theseus and Qualia: More than a Sum of Its Parts

The reason I decided to see if we could somehow bring together the Ship of Theseus and qualia is their conceptual status as more than a sum of their individual parts.

Effectively, both the Ship of Theseus and qualia underline the presence of non-physical, non-quantifiable aspects that are somehow integral to the concept of “being-ness”. Theseus’s ship is not the planks, the oars, and the sails. It contains all of them, but it is something above and beyond them.

Similarly, it is impossible to truly describe what “seeing-red-ness” is without including the observer. Obviously enough, this is a patently problematic element in trying to objectively describe the world.

Ultimately, Are there Answers?

A character in my unpublished work Self Versus Self says: “There are no answers. But there are questions, there are always questions”.

There have been many attempts to answer the paradoxes/problems posed by the Ship of Theseus and qualia. Some are more successful, others less so. But what they all have in common is that they are not objective replies, only arguments.

Think about it. You can say 3+3=6 and it’s a true proposition in all possible worlds. On the other hand, it’s far less easy to make such an absolute statement regarding what “seeing-red-ness” is. And who can determine whether Theseus’s ship is the original, the replica, both, or neither?

There are no answers. But there are always questions.