A Boat Race

The issue that emerges after the boat race around the world this year is a question of identity. It is raised by the wording of the rules for the race on the one hand and by the events that took place during the race this year on the other.

The race leaves Los Angeles harbor each year, and the competitors circumnavigate the globe and return to the harbor in Los Angeles. There are two conditions to decide the contest:

1) the same boat must successfully circumnavigate the entire globe;

2) the same boat must be the first to cross the finish line in Los Angeles.

This particular year, the weather conditions were harsh and caused the boats considerable trouble. The crew of the Chameleon was faced with the need to replace part after part during the voyage, and they threw away each of the unusable pieces as they replaced them. By the time the Chameleon reached Los Angeles, every part of the original boat had been replaced. The Chameleon was declared the winner.

Samuel Cavenger had followed along and retrieved each discarded piece from the waters, and by the end of the race he had all the original parts to the boat and reconstructed it. He now claims that he has the real Chameleon and thus the real winner, and this is the issue that the tribunal must decide.

One of the key issues in Greek philosophy concerned the matter of change and its opposite, permanence, and many of the earliest philosophical arguments centered on matters of change, motion, and their relationship

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He also claimed that change and motion were illusions. The doctrine of pluralism that was attacked by Zeno simply stated that "there exist many things." Zeno argued instead that everything is alike, though what he meant by "alike" remains unclear from the fragment of the argument still in existence. The Eleatics (of whom Zeno was one) denied the reality of multiplicity and motion, stating instead that there is one principle, Being, which is conceived of as material and motionless. This effort followed an ancient Greek desire to discover the one principle of the world. The world as it presents itself to our sense, however, is a pluralistic world. The issue is then how to reconcile the one principle with the plurality and change found in the world,. This is the problem of the One and the many. The same problem faces the tribunal in considering the dispute between Cavenger and Theseus. The issue that is central is the meaning of "same boat" in the conditions for the race. Mr. Cavenger sees the issue in terms of the concrete pieces of the boat as they were originally constituted. Having retrieved these pieces, he now possesses the same physical boat that left the dock. Cavenger says he has the real winning boat because he

Category: Philosophy - A