When is a heap not a heap?

Question

Also known as Sorite's argument it follows as such:
10000 grains is a heap
If 10000 is a heap, so is 9999
If 9999 is a heap so is 9998
If 9998 is a heap...and so on
At what point does it cease to be a heap?
Think hard bout this one....

Answer 1

I think the main point we can get out of a Sorities Series is that there really isn't a defining line where we can say this is X, and after one more increment is it no longer an X, but a Y. It is better viewed as a continuum.

Answer 2

A heap is a heap. If you're one short of a heap, it's not a heap, it's almost a heap, a near heap, but it's not a heap.



now, maybe in your world 9998 is a heap, but if that is true, then only you can decide or determine at what number/amount a heap is no longer a heap

Answer 3

The theory of relativey...If 10000 grains is a heap, then 9999 woud most defintely not be a heap unless you are chaning your definition of the word. If you throw a baseball that is clocked in at 70 mph on a radar gun in a plane that is going 700 mph that is flying in a planet that is spinning at 50,000 mph and is flying through space at 100,000 mph, how fast is it going?

Answer 4

When you're talking about my bank account XD



But in all seriousness; it touches on the deficiencies of human perception to adequately describe the world around us. We invent catch holder phrases for efficiency of language. As Carl Sagan once said, we are nothing more than star stuff contemplating other star stuff, but we can deconstruct this even further and say that we are a pile of quarks and leptons wondering about the movements of other piles of quarks and leptons.



Another field in which this problem manifests itself is evolution. The plain truth is that every single animal is a transitionary animal; every single animal is different from each other, and we invent words like "species" for purposes of cataloging them. So while a chicken is a ontological illusion (what makes one chicken more of a chicken than an other chicken? At what point in avian evolution do we get chickens, and at what point will we say that they are no longer chickens?), it is a metaphysical reality.



What Sorite's argument touches on are the rough edges of our system of language efficiency. We will probably never come up with a completely logically consistent system of language, but on a grand scale, it's probably just not necessary.

Answer 5

To an ant, one would be a heap, to an elephant anything less than 10 percent of a heap would make the heap not a heap.

Answer 6

The collection of papers on my desk is a heap to everyone except me. They look and see chaos, while I see an eccentric filing system.



ANSWER: A heap is NOT a heap when it's MY heap.

Answer 7

It is all relative. When you determine it is no longer a heap. A heaping spoon of sugar to me may not be the same to you.

Answer 8

a heap is NOUMENA. Whereas a finite number of grains of sand is an example of a heap in the three dimensional world...PHENOMENA



the definition of heap doesn't include numbers so why do you have numbers in your question?

Answer 9

This is the same thing as how many hairs make a beard?

There is no argument about what exists. It is only semantics of what to call what there is.