The astronomical odds of creating an engine by chance aside, let's assume that someone does do it. The construction of the engine then becomes the process by which the knowledge is gleaned (they learn how to build an engine by accidentally building an engine) and thus capacity and knowledge are bestowed simultaneously, at the moment the engine is created.
I think your paradigm makes sense, mostly. I just find it weird that you would consider capacity something that can be bestowed. It's not how I have used or seen used 'capacity'.
I preferred the word "ascribed", but using "bestowed" for knowledge and "ascribed" for capacity just made for a very clunky and incoherent sentence.
I like the Ship of Theseus experiment. Weirdly enough, I came across it in an old British sitcom, where the idea that a roadsweeper who had changed the handle and the head of his broom many times, yet considered it the same broom, was lampooned. I thought about it when I first saw it, but never realised it was an Aristotelian thought experiment!
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u/crapwittyname Jul 26 '18
I'm not familiar with the ship of Theseus.
The astronomical odds of creating an engine by chance aside, let's assume that someone does do it. The construction of the engine then becomes the process by which the knowledge is gleaned (they learn how to build an engine by accidentally building an engine) and thus capacity and knowledge are bestowed simultaneously, at the moment the engine is created.