First of all, it's great to see a different take on it (linguistics/phil. of language)! The thing i love about philosophical problems like this is anyone can have a crack at it from any perspective. If you were a mathematician you could think about translations in space and time. If you were a chemist or a botanist you might think about the structure of the wood. If you were a boat enthusiast you might think about what the boat means to a person. The list really does go on.
Don't take my short reply/lack of quoting to mean i didn't read it, in fact i agree with a lot of it and feel i understood it quite well which is precisely why it wasn't quoted.
Both ships would warrant the label Theseus, because the label is inherent to the idea we form in our mind of Theseus but merely superimposed onto the physical object.
So, basically what you're saying is we have an idea or "check" of what is an object in our mind. We analyse things and if it meets that criteria, to us, it is that object.
If i had the ability to transform into a table and sat in my living room, people would think im a table. This is because i meet all their mental criteria for "table-ness". We have examples of this regarding art in the aesthetic section but it might be useful to think of changing parts of things as well. Say i broke into your house while you're on holiday and replaced everything with identical items, you wouldn't say anything is different at all. Likewise, if i broke into your car and rebuilt it over night using identical parts, you wouldn't say (or even know its any different).
I would reply to everyone else but i've ran out of steam!
This problem is in-fact also called the Ship of Theseus just like the book.
Wikipedia has some suggestions. Most of the things said cover all that the book mentioned so in this particular case, i wont write up what the book has said. We can continue discussing the old (Theseus) problem and the new one for an extra day or two if need be to wrap up any lose ends but then to avoid being chaotic i think we should totally move on.
Now, the next problem as chosen by
DJALogical by random numbers...
2. Buridan’s an ass (Logic)If its too small i can make up a new one.
The main question here is how should we choose between two equally as rational and evidenced choices.This is a relatively easy problem, i think it is easier than the last one. On the surface, it may seem simple and boring. I'll add my own interpretation to beef it up. This problem, in a sneaky way, really asks us just how rational do we have to be. Do all our choices have to be "rational"? Should be look down upon choices that aren't "rational? What if we have two equally as rational options, what do we do then? One particular philosopher, in the case of religious options suggested that if the cases for two beliefs were similar, we can simply choose to believe the one we like better, its debatable whether this is a good method of resolving the deadlock. If many of our choices are outside the frame of rationality, what does this say about us or any of our beliefs?
It partially results from a quote by Jean Buridan (who the problem was named after and often distributed to):
Should two courses be judged equal, then the will cannot break the deadlock, all it can do is to suspend judgment until the circumstances change, and the right course of action is clear.
In this case suspending judgment obviously leads us to starve to death, in that way, we are almost forced to act outside rationality (or starve and remain "rational"?).
That's my own layers of interpretation on top of it, feel free to derive what other questions (beyond the obvious) you can from it.