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Full Idea
Some would say that annihilating grains of stone from the statue of David (playing the 'Sorites Game') could never make its identity vague, because metaphysical vagueness is simply unintelligible.
Clarification
The 'Sorites Game' tests identity by gradually removing parts
Gist of Idea
A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent
Source
Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.II)
Book Ref
Merricks,Trenton: 'Objects and Persons' [OUP 2003], p.33
A Reaction
He cites Russell, Dummett and Lewis in support. But Russell is a logical atomist, and Lewis says identity is composition. It strikes me as obvious that identity can be vague; the alternative is the absurdities of the Sorites paradox.
| 13187 | In actual things nothing is indefinite [Leibniz] |
| 21628 | To say reality itself is vague is not properly intelligible [Dummett] |
| 6978 | Baldness is just hair distribution, but the former is indeterminate, unlike the latter [Jackson] |
| 7987 | Nothing is true, but everything is exact [Baudrillard] |
| 16129 | Evans argues (falsely!) that a contradiction follows from treating objects as vague [Evans, by Lowe] |
| 16459 | Is it coherent that reality is vague, identities can be vague, and objects can have fuzzy boundaries? [Evans] |
| 16460 | Evans assumes there can be vague identity statements, and that his proof cannot be right [Evans, by Lewis] |
| 16457 | There clearly are vague identity statements, and Evans's argument has a false conclusion [Evans, by Lewis] |
| 8983 | If 'red' is vague, then membership of the set of red things is vague, so there is no set of red things [Sainsbury] |
| 9064 | Objects such as a cloud or Mount Everest seem to have fuzzy boundaries in nature [Keefe/Smith] |
| 9599 | There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson] |
| 21629 | Equally fuzzy objects can be identical, so fuzziness doesn't entail vagueness [Williamson] |
| 16219 | Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley] |
| 16223 | Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley] |
| 6135 | A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks] |