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Single Idea 6135

[filed under theme 7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / b. Vagueness of reality ]

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.

The 28 ideas from 'Objects and Persons'

14229 Merricks agrees that there are no composite objects, but offers a different semantics [Merricks, by Liggins]
6123 Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks]
6124 I say that most of the objects of folk ontology do not exist [Merricks]
6130 'Composition' says things are their parts; 'constitution' says a whole substance is an object [Merricks]
6125 We can eliminate objects without a commitment to simples [Merricks]
6127 'Unrestricted composition' says any two things can make up a third thing [Merricks]
6128 Objects decompose (it seems) into non-overlapping parts that fill its whole region [Merricks]
6133 If my counterpart is happy, that is irrelevant to whether I 'could' have been happy [Merricks]
6131 Composition as identity is false, as identity is never between a single thing and many things [Merricks]
6132 Composition as identity is false, as it implies that things never change their parts [Merricks]
6134 Is swimming pool water an object, composed of its mass or parts? [Merricks]
6135 A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks]
6136 Eliminativism about objects gives the best understanding of the Sorites paradox [Merricks]
6138 It seems wrong that constitution entails that two objects are wholly co-located [Merricks]
6137 Clay does not 'constitute' a statue, as they have different persistence conditions (flaking, squashing) [Merricks]
6140 Maybe the word 'I' can only refer to persons [Merricks]
6141 There is no visible difference between statues, and atoms arranged statuewise [Merricks]
6143 Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks]
6142 The 'folk' way of carving up the world is not intrinsically better than quite arbitrary ways [Merricks]
6144 You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks]
6145 Intrinsic properties are those an object still has even if only that object exists [Merricks]
6147 The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks]
6146 Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks]
6148 Human organisms can exercise downward causation [Merricks]
6149 Free will and determinism are incompatible, since determinism destroys human choice [Merricks]
6150 The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks]
14472 If atoms 'arranged baseballwise' break a window, that analytically entails that a baseball did it [Merricks, by Thomasson]
14469 Overdetermination: the atoms do all the causing, so the baseball causes no breakage [Merricks]