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Sorting Out Sorites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter March
Peter March*
Affiliation:
Saint Mary's University
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Extract

Let Hn stand for an assembly of n grains of salt. Then the paradox of Sorites may be presented this way:

  1. H10,000 is a heap. p

  2. If H10,000 is a heap then H10,000-1 is a heap. p

  3. H9,999 is a heap. MP

  4. H9,999 is a heap then H9,999-1 is a heap. P

    19998. If H2 is a heap then H2-1 is a heap. P

    19999. H1 is a heap. MP

    20000. H1 is not a heap. P

    20001. H1 is and is not a heap. Con

A more significant example of the argument results where Ht stands for a human being (h.b.) at time t (in seconds) where t=O is the present and the human being is one year old.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 445 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1984

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References

1 Unger, Peter ‘Why There Are No People,’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 4 (1979) 177–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Quine, W.V. ‘What Price Bivalence?,’ The Journal of Philosophy, 78 (1981) 90-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wright, C. ‘On the Coherence of Vague Predicates,’ Synthese, 30 (1975) 326-65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 I wish to thank Robert Martin of Dalhousie for this suggestion.