I had a bit of trouble following this part, but I think, thought I may be wrong, it raised an interesting issue, again for physicalists especially. I doubt anyone argued that it was just genital shape and hormones. I think they would have thought that the body in general and the brain (bathed in development with a more male mix of hormones), bones and muscles, shapes of hands, hair and joints, and the gametes, were all involved and also over time, that one had the one’s one had as one grew up, and so far hormones and plastic surgery have trouble fixing all that. But let’s say we come up with technology to replaces the boards in the ship of Thebes. Is it the same ship`? I mean, that’s the whole thing about that Ship. Though perhaps I am assuming you meant Ship of Thebes not Theseus’ ship. It is calling into question identity.
If Sara thinks she is a man, but needs to replace herself with a man, was she a man, or did she decide to replace herself with something else?
Shouldn’t any physicalist be saying: your body is you. If it feels like X, then it feels like X and it is this body with feeling X. You feel like a what you are calling a woman with this obdy. If you start replacing yourself with ever increasing plastic surgery and endocrinology changes - which in turn have effects on many other systems in the body, they you are making something new - you will create someone who will feel like you feel now. That new body or partly new body or whatever will create internal states you do not have now and in different ranges and amplitudes. It will not be you. You are in fact asking to create something you have not experienced, since experience comes through the body and that body’s experience of itself cannot be what you are asking to be changed into. You cannot have the identity you are asked to have created, because your body is not that body. (and yes, this is similar perhaps to what happens when one goes through puberty, but it would be odd to say, for a physicalist, I feel like I have already gone through puberty so I want those hormone changes now even though I am 8[size=100])[/size]. If you feel like you have gone puberty, it is because your current body feels that way, and there’s no need for a change. You cannot radically transform a body to make it so you feel like you do before those changes. (Unless you are a dualist or some other factor is involved that is not involved in physicalism)
But, as said, I may have misunderstood. Still, the above is important to raise, and though I have raised it before, I took it in a slightly different direction and further.
But you are using this Ship of Thebes set of changes with a near opposite aim. To get Mad Man to accept that the final product is really a woman. Even if that is true, in the end, it undermines the entire point of the process, since if now she is a woman, she wasn’t before and was confused about what she was. And a tremendous amount of money went into a misunderstanding.