The bridges are in the same location, but they are not the same bridge.
One references location ('the bridge that crosses the river over there'), the other pertains to the physical composition that makes every thing unique (the bridge made of those specific fibers).
It'd be like claiming the different people that inhabit the same house over the span of 100 years are all the same people, because they're all humans. They're all people, and they all inhabited the house ('the people in that house'), but they in fact possess different unique identity.
This is like the Platonic HN comment. Person hears about an interesting problem in another field (yeah, the ship of Theseus is actually interesting. That's why people still discuss it), asserts the solution after having thought about it for two minutes, then provides a useless analogy. Good work, you solved the problem! All those philosophers can quit their adjunct professorships and go bootstrap some social web companies now.
Yes, but the 'bridge,' in this case, is more akin to the mayor not the mayorship.
It's more like a house blown over in a hurricane. It gets rebuilt, but the land and foundation and some other infrastructure might be re-used --it's still not the 'old house' --it's the re-built house.
>It'd be like claiming the different people that inhabit the same house over the span of 100 years are all the same people, because they're all humans. They're all people, and they all inhabited the house ('the people in that house'), but they in fact possess different unique identity.
If it was the same family or if they shared a few genetic markers that distinguished them from other peoples in the area... then you could say the same people had lived at ________ area.
One references location ('the bridge that crosses the river over there'), the other pertains to the physical composition that makes every thing unique (the bridge made of those specific fibers).
It'd be like claiming the different people that inhabit the same house over the span of 100 years are all the same people, because they're all humans. They're all people, and they all inhabited the house ('the people in that house'), but they in fact possess different unique identity.