The name
Plutarch tells that the Athenians kept the ship on which Theseus had sailed home from Crete for generations. Whenever a plank rotted, they took it out and put new timber in its place, until the ship became the philosophers' favourite puzzle: one side held that it was still the same ship, the other that it was not.
If every plank is replaced, one by one, is it still the same ship?
The Ship of Theseus
The purpose
Theseus works to close the distance to downloading a human mind and uploading it again. Every step of that work meets the ship's question, asked of a person: when a mind is carried over to a new substrate, is the copy still the one who was copied?
The research line takes the question literally. Not whether a copy can be made, but how much of the person it keeps, and how that can be measured.
Status
Theseus has just begun.
The first results will appear here. To hear when they are published, write to us and we will let you know.
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