The reason you think its pedantry is because you probably haven't actually given it proper thought.
How do you define the difference between a process, and a subprocesses. If you don't differentiate between a process and another process. Simply because they are the same larger process, then you are applying nihilistic concepts to answer questions
"The question doesn't matter, because in the end the ship is a linguistic trick and the collective parts that make up the ships never actually existed as a single entity but only as a process. Therefore it doesn't matter how much is replaced"
Well how about if you took the exact ship, and pulled it apart and used all the parts of the ship to create an entirely different ship, but contained all of the different parts and gave it a different name. Would said ship then still be called "The ship of Theseus"? what if you only used half of the planks, or what if you added all those parts in to another ship as replacement parts. Would it still be the same process?
How would your "view" differentiate between the process of our planet as a whole, and the individual human?
Its incredibly simple to expand your "definition" to say its just a part of the whole, and therefore there is no reason to engage because its obvious.. Well that uses the underlying qualities of nihilism to rebuke the fundamentals of the question "I don't think anything have intrinsic value, only what we subscribe to it" is the same thing as saying "I don't think the question have merit because its easy to answer, the boat was never a thing, it was always only the concept"
Euclidean_Ideas t1_iwtaxi4 wrote
Reply to comment by buddypalamigo19 in When does an individual's death occur if the biological brain is gradually replaced by synthetic neurons? by NefariousNaz
The reason you think its pedantry is because you probably haven't actually given it proper thought.
How do you define the difference between a process, and a subprocesses. If you don't differentiate between a process and another process. Simply because they are the same larger process, then you are applying nihilistic concepts to answer questions
"The question doesn't matter, because in the end the ship is a linguistic trick and the collective parts that make up the ships never actually existed as a single entity but only as a process. Therefore it doesn't matter how much is replaced"
Well how about if you took the exact ship, and pulled it apart and used all the parts of the ship to create an entirely different ship, but contained all of the different parts and gave it a different name. Would said ship then still be called "The ship of Theseus"? what if you only used half of the planks, or what if you added all those parts in to another ship as replacement parts. Would it still be the same process?
How would your "view" differentiate between the process of our planet as a whole, and the individual human?
Its incredibly simple to expand your "definition" to say its just a part of the whole, and therefore there is no reason to engage because its obvious.. Well that uses the underlying qualities of nihilism to rebuke the fundamentals of the question "I don't think anything have intrinsic value, only what we subscribe to it" is the same thing as saying "I don't think the question have merit because its easy to answer, the boat was never a thing, it was always only the concept"