Building Ships and Arguments
The New York Times recently published an article titled: “The 1,300-Year Search for the Loch Ness Monster,” timing the article with a new “search” effort from Facebook group Lock Ness Exploration. A smart business move on their part. As social media does its thing and stirs up interest, people will want a nice concise timeline of what’s happened so far. And that’s what the New York Times has done, construct a nice concise timeline. But, the operative word is not nice nor concise, it’s construct.
The Greek philosopher, Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus puts forth a paradox based on what happened to the ship of the founder of Athens—Theseus. According to legend, the ship, being important to the Athenians, was preserved and used for a ritual pilgrimage. When a plank or part decayed it was replaced. Several centuries later, after much maintenance, and all parts replaced, was it the same ship?
The New York Times article (as well as the Wikipedia entry) state that the first sighting of Nessie, the monster of Loch Ness, was in 565 by Irish missionary St. Columba during his travels in Scotland. Ironically, neither retelling leaves out the statements that St. Columba saw first the burial of a man who had been killed by a water monster, later the monster was in the River Ness, and that Columba drove the monster away—though not necessarily for good.
Taking all context into account, from the dubious nature of hagiographies, the cultural context of “water-beast” folklore in the area, and that Nessie, apparently, decided not to cause any more trouble for almost 1200 years, the best we can call this is a creature in the Ness area. A far shot from the Loch Ness monster.
Thomas Hobbs, of Leviathan fame, extended Plutarch’s thought experiment. He proposed, along with the Athenians maintaining the ship by replacing its parts, another group carefully and diligently collected the discarded parts. Those parts were used to build another ship. Now there were two ships: an “older” ship which had had all its parts replaced and a “newer” ship build from the old parts. Absurdly, there would be two ships of Theseus.
Hobbs skips the paradox and just says that there are two different definitions of identity. If the form of something is more important to identity you want the ship with all the parts replaced. But if the matter of something is more important to identity you want the ship composed of the parts it started with.
In the 12th century (and this account is very brief in the New York Times article), a minor cleric spots something on the River Ness and later draws a bear-like creature with fire shooting out of its eyes. From the blog of the British Library a little more context can be had.
Our minor cleric, named Walter of Bingham, is unimpressive except his Journey Through Scotland where his account on the river appears. And while the Journey is not easily accessible in a digital format, those who have studied it state that Bingham is Scotland’s Marco Polo. Not exactly the best praise for his ability to accurately relate what happened and tell the Truth.
But Bingham is not the only one adjusting the story to be just a little more exciting than reality. Take the title of the New York Times article, “The 1,300 Year Search…” As stated previously, even giving concession that Columba and Walter saw their river monsters, there is still over 400 years between them, and another 700 before Nessie really starts showing up again. But that title is far more marketable than say: 6th Century man wandering around Scotland sees creature, 400 years later another wanderer might have seen another creature in the same area.
Later accounts of Nessie run into another problem. While there are accounts of her in the late 19th Century, many of them weren’t published until 1933—a very important year when it comes to monsters in Loch Ness. Suddenly, they were everywhere, shaped this way and that, crawling on land or stuck in the waters, smooth and rubbery or thick with hair. But always blurry, always just enough context missing to make whatever statement needed about whatever account it was.
Plutarch and Hobbs ensured that the people in their thought experiments acted in good faith. Plutarch’s Athenians diligently replace each part with an expertly exact replica. Hobbs’ recreationists only ever collect those pieces which are the originals. But, what if an Athenian thought he could make a purposeful adjustment, what if a recreationist accidentally grabbed the wrong piece off the shipyard floor? What if over time, one by one, each and every piece of the ship had been purposefully adjusted and accidentally misplaced? For an omniscient observer, at what point would the boats cease to be what they had been before?
All the component parts of the Nessie folktale have undergone this process—a purposeful adjustment here, and an accidental mistelling there. And the final nail in the coffin, is that a statement that implies humans have been dealing with a monster in Loch Ness for 1,300 years is acceptable without a doubt. It’s not something anyone needs to consider, it simply is.
Now, Nessie is mostly harmless. Inverness plays up the legend to draw in visitors, and has incorporated the monster and searches for her into its identity. But other article titles, that sit right alongside Nessie on the New York Times homepage and many other websites, are destructive.
When climate change deniers have their lies adjusted to inaccuracies or misunderstandings (articles which on principle I refuse to cite), those lies and the people spouting them become more acceptable. They now need to be included in the conversation, because when those with misunderstandings get to join in the conversation, they correct themselves because the Truth is always the strongest idea. That, like Plutarch and Hobbs, assumes good faith.
When the wording of articles on trans or nonbinary people could equally refer to Grendel, or, to steal a symbol from Hobbs, Leviathan, then the ship no longer is what it claims to be. This is not good faith. The adjustments are made, not in the pristine vacuum of a thought experiment, but in reality where context is key. Where climate change deniers misunderstand nothing, and transphobes aren’t just inaccurate, but purposefully making adjustments (or letting others do it for them) so they must be included in the conversation, and can steer the argument wherever they like.
Rhetoric has a term for this: stasis. Arguments fit into one of a certain number of levels, and in order to resolve, two sides should be of the same level. The levels are also progressive, meaning that unless an agreement has been reached at a lower level, the discourse (or overall conversation) cannot move up to the next. It doesn’t mean that the conversation can’t be tried, but there generally will be an impasse1.
It is that impasse that is key to what’s going on here with these rhetorical ships of Theseus. If enough adjustments are made, slowly and subtly, an argument can appear as if it means something else, it can feel acceptable and worthy of consideration. And, with the removal of good faith, someone labelled as misunderstanding can hold up a conversation indefinitely by keeping the argument on a particular level of stasis. If their misunderstanding has to keep being corrected, we’ll never discuss anything further.
The ultimate goal then, is not to hope on good faith that the Truth will be able to correct all misunderstandings, but to accurately call things as they are. To describe a lie as a lie, to describe dehumanization as such. There are consequences to doing so, but we cannot be cowards. By extending good faith to a person who has none of it for others, we ultimately lose—and realize we’ve ended up with ships that are nothing like what we thought we had.
The greatest example of this impasse is the American discourse around abortion. The two main perspectives: pro-life and pro-choice, are not arguing on the same level. Pro-life is often arguing about definition or sometimes quality, while pro-choice centres more around policy or even fact. This explains the quite strange terminology used for the two perspectives—how both can be pro-something, because anti-life and anti-choice, neither sound good, nor accurately describe their respective groups.