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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that Rejecting the induction step of the sorites paradox does not dissolve the paradox but merely transforms it into a different problem.

    ?Set your confidence on the premises below to see your aggregate.

    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
    ?
    • 1.The negation of the induction step entails the existence of a sharp threshold for vague predicates such as 'child'.
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    • 2.Positing a sharp threshold for childhood is itself paradoxical or counterintuitive.
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    • 3.A solution that generates an equally problematic consequence has not resolved the original paradox.
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    Reasons Against

    2 perspectives
    Reason against 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Epistemicists like Williamson accept sharp thresholds while locating the paradox in our ignorance of where they fall, not in their existence.
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    • 2.If the 'new problem' (unknowable thresholds) is epistemological rather than semantic, rejecting induction merely relocates the paradox without dissolving it.
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    • 3.A genuine dissolution must eliminate paradox at every level; trading a semantic puzzle for an equally intractable epistemic one constitutes transformation, not resolution.
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    Reason against 2 of 2
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    • 1.Supervaluationism denies the induction step by making 'there exists a last child' neither true nor false, yet still cannot assign a determinate boundary under any admissible precisification.
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    • 2.Fine's supervaluationist framework generates 'higher-order vagueness': vagueness about which precisifications are admissible reintroduces a structurally identical sorites at the metalinguistic level.
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    • 3.When rejecting the induction step produces a regress of higher-order vagueness, as Fara and Williamson argue, the paradox has been transformed into an infinite hierarchy of problems rather than resolved.
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