RE: Perspectives on Evolution
September 30, 2017 at 7:02 pm
(This post was last modified: September 30, 2017 at 7:11 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(September 30, 2017 at 11:00 am)bennyboy Wrote:(September 30, 2017 at 7:26 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: Yes. You don’t “age”. Your cells get replaced by a new set of cells which are more decrepit. In fact you don’t even exist as a person, but a statistical phenomenon. That which was you is mostly gone. A whole new set of cells in poorer condition now make up a new bag of mostly water that had stolen your identity.Now you're getting somewhere!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
Pertinent passage, for my money:
Quote:Ted Sider and others have proposed that considering objects to extend across time as four-dimensional causal series of three-dimensional "time-slices" could solve the ship of Theseus problem because, in taking such an approach, all four dimensional objects remain numerically identical to themselves while allowing individual time-slices to differ from each other. The aforementioned river, therefore, comprises different three-dimensional time-slices of itself while remaining numerically identical to itself across time; one can never step into the same river-time-slice twice, but one can step into the same (four-dimensional) river twice.
Obviously doesn't pertain directly to an abstract such as evolution, but could be fairly applied to the species model, passing through time.