Who are you Week 15 Abdul Muhamin

Who are you? I know this is a very banal rhetorical question, but philosophically entertaining.

The main premise of this blog will be a common philosophical tale, commonly known as the ship of theseus. " The ship on which Theseus sailed with the youths, ​ They took away the old timbers from time to time, and put new

and sound ones in their placeand eventually the entire ship was replaced, now is the new ship still the ship of

theseus (Epicurus of Albion). What if you take up all the old parts of the ship and make it into an old copy of the

ship, which one is the ship of theseus now. Now imagine this argument regarding your body and your mind.

In a matter of time all of the cells in your body are replaced, well except some cells in the central vaga of the

nervous system. Those cases can be solved by looking at all the atoms in your body, even more all gluons are

constantly destroyed and created again using the heuristic models from quantum mechanics. 




Who are you? Are you a collection of all your memories, what would you do if you saw a version of yourself with

the same memories, who is the original version of yourself. How do you know you are the original version of you?

What questions would you ask to find an original version of you, what if you get them wrong? What if it gets them

right? What if you don't remember anything, what if it remembers everything, is it a better version of you, what

would you do to convince your friends that you are the real version of you. This isn't some ghost of the future,

A.I may come to take your life in a different manner.


Who are you? Are you what you are because of your environment, how do you know your environment is real?

A common theory by the name of  Thursdayism states that the universe was created last Thursday and all evidence

of its creation was destroyed. How do you know this theory is not true, the truth is that you can not truly know,

and that is where the beauty of life comes from. You can never know everything, you can’t even know anything

about life, and that means you can always live life learning, so learn, and live, and one day you may learn whoyou are.




Comments

  1. Michelle LiApril 9, 2025 at 7:27 PM

    Hi Abdul! I love how your blog shows how crucial our memories are to our identity. Without them, not only do we forget crucial information about ourselves, but also the memories that shaped us. Because of how much our sense of self depends on this, concepts like Thursdayism are particularly interesting. Some may argue that because we’ll never truly know the validity of our memories, nothing is real. I like your perspective on learning more to solve this mystery; it feels more positive than those nihilistic claims.

    The ship of Theseus is a very interesting way to begin this blog. My personal take on this dilemma is that it is still the same ship, despite these constant replacements. Identity is frequently defined by others’ perceptions of us. Applying this same logic to the ship, as long as Theseus and his crewmates recognize it as their ship, it is still the ship of Theseus, even if its wooden planks haven’t sailed the same seas as the original ones.

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