If you replace every plank, is it the same ship?

Shape: What everyone gets wrong
Plates: dropcap · quiz · fold · pullquote
Why: A philosophical concept collapses into a definition argument the moment the reader is told the answer. So make them commit first with `quiz` — an opinion they have already given is one they will defend, and defending it is the thinking. `fold` is the plate for this shape, because the two readings must be held at once rather than resolved: the point is that both survive scrutiny.

A ship sits in a harbour for three hundred years. Each year the worst plank is pulled out and a new one put in. After three centuries not one original piece remains. The city still calls it by its name, and still says it is the ship that won the war.

Answer before reading on

Is the ship in the harbour today the same ship?

Both answers survive every argument made against them. That is not a failure of the question — it is the discovery that 'the same' has been doing two jobs at once.

Identity is continuity. Nothing ever happened to this ship that does not happen to you every seven years, and nobody says you are a replica of yourself.

Identity is material. Gather the discarded planks, rebuild them in a field, and you have a ship with a far better claim to the name than the one in the harbour.

The question is not which answer is right. It is why we ever thought there was one word here.

This is a sample. To author the same thing about your own subject, just name it. Your assistant can read this template, and will write you the same document about what you know.

Using the Ario tools, make me the "Philosophical concept"
template for what we mean by consent.
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