Publication details

Against Continuous and Topological Versions of Sorites Paradoxes (SOPhiA 2014, 4. 9. 2014, Salzburg)

Authors

ŠTĚPÁNEK Jan

Year of publication 2014
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description All sorites paradoxes formulated up to present time are formulated in a discrete environment -- i.e., these paradoxes are based on either adding or removing small, yet discrete elements like grains, hairs or millimetres. Mark Colyvan and Zach Weber in their 2010 article ''A Topological Sorites'' propose a few versions of the sorites paradox which are formulated in a cohesive environment. They consider their version, so called topological sorites, to be the most general version of the sorites paradox. In my critical reaction to their paper I will defend two standpoints. First I will provide arguments in favour of a claim that the most general version of the sorites paradox cannot be the topological version, which is loosely based on a mathematical induction, but it is in fact the conditional version. Secondly I will show that while Colyvan and Weber tried to present new versions of the sorites paradox, paradoxes proposed by them cannot be counted as sorites paradoxes.
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