Joie de Vivre
These pages are just for fun. But some may make you think. Read and enjoy.

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§        Father Michael, preaching this last Trinity Sunday, told the story of the two-year-old child who was lost in a crowd. She went around asking: “Have you seen a lady without me?” It was his starting point for introducing the relationships in the Trinity. But I’d never heard the story before, and thought that some of you might enjoy it.


§        A philosophical brain teaser. Fred built himself a wooden dinghy. But being something of a perfectionist he would occasionally replace a worn plank with a new one. Over a number of years he had replaced every single part of his original boat.
Now the question is: is it the same boat or has it changed its identity? And, if it has, at what point did this happen? Was it with the first replacement?; or halfway through?; or with the last replacement?
This problem goes back to the Greeks, and is not trivial. It raises the question of what we mean by “identity”.
When (or if) you have solved that, consider the next stage.
His friend Bill decides that he wants a dinghy too. Fred saves him some trouble by telling him that he has never thrown the worn bits of his boat away, and that Bill is free to have them. Bill takes up the offer and builds his dinghy. Because of the shape and the length of the planks, he has to use them in exactly the same position as they had been in before.
Now the question is: do they have two dinghies which share one identity? If not, which of the two has the identity of the original dinghy?

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