You Tell Me (in Off-topic)

Let's say you have an ax. The kind that you could use, in a pinch, to hack a man's head off...

And let's say that very situation comes up and for some very solid reasons you behead a man.

On the follow-through, though, the handle of the ax snaps in half in a spray of splinters.

So the next day you take it to the ax store down the block and get a new handle, fabricating a story for the guy behind the counter and explaining away the reddish dark stains as barbeque sauce.

Now, that next spring you find in your garage a creature that looks like a cross-bred badger and anaconda. A badgerconda.

And so you grab your trusty ax and chop off one of the beast's heads, but in the process the blade of the ax strikes the concrete floor and shatters.

This means another trip to McMillan & Son's Ax Mart. As soon as you get home with your newly-headed ax, though, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year.

He's also got a new head attached and it's wearing that unique expression of "you're the man who killed me last Spring" resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.

You brandish your ax. He takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, "that's the same ax that slayed me!"

...Is he right?

Did you know that Jack dies at the end?

And what about John?

And then you wake up and realize your on Earth and not in Talland.

He would be quite wrong.

I think it all depends on who that new head belongs to...McMillan and Son may have sold you a used ax.

If I saw a badgerconda I'd eat it.

DO NOT SHOW THIS TO THE HATCHETMAN. He might try it out. :P Well, at least he carries around an ax that can be used for this type of testing. (No idea if he still carries it around tho)

BTW: I think he is wrong. If something is replaced completely, it is not the same thing. Similar to how your body replaces itself every so often, and you are not the same you some time back.

An interesting take on the Ship of Theseus. My philosophical musings lead me to believe that it is changing every moment in its existence. However, for the sake of simple communication, it is _called_ the same ax so we don't have to differentiate between "the ax in this one instant" versus "the ax in this other instant".

So if we're talking metaphysically, then no, it is a different ax. However if we are taking a linguistic stance, then it is in fact the same one.

w00t, ph34r my philosophy major. /joke

this feels like a buildup for a pun involving the "head" of the axe.

depends on what he means by same

same company that made axe? sure it is.

same exact axe that beheaded him? no, its not.

From a component repair standpoint it IS the same axe, it was repaired twice but it is still the same axe. But it is only the same axe in the way that creating a completely new car from spare parts would still be an assembled mass of spare parts

No way man, the third axe has different colours.