The Sorites Paradox
A Nominalist View

Jud Evans

The Sorites Paradox would have scared Heidegger out of his wits, for he steered a cowardly course well clear of nominalism for obvious reasons. Heidegger deliberately avoids and passes over the Aristotelian “Form-Series” (ei}dovei}dovei}dovei}dov) of “one”, “same”, “equal”, and “similar.” This is because Heidegger distorts “matter” in the Aristotelian sense not as “stuff” but characterises it as the puerile vagueness of 'possibility.'

My position regarding the so-called sorites paradox, or better still the questions it poses, are part of my nominalist mereological position, whereby I cognise of abstractions like 'collections' and 'heaps' and 'piles' and 'clouds,' etc., as non-existent, in that it is the individuate particles that exist, and it is only their existential location of contiguity which we humans [conveniently] ignore and denote with a collective noun.

I must make it clear once again that arguments such as: 'It is more convenient to call such collections with single names rather than to attempt to name or distinguish each separate particle, etc...'  are not my concern. The limitations, sociology or conventions of human communication is not what is being discussed here at all — what is being discussed is the ontological facts of the matter. Which exists, the actual grains of sand that can be seen by the fingers and felt upon the epidermal sensors and sensed by the human holism — or a significatum or label which signals a collection of such entities? Of course this all ties up with the concept of signification in general, and extends to the way in which we denote the individual grains of sand themselves.

What is involved [and treasured by Platonists] is the notion of vagueness [so beloved of transcendentalists] and this denominational vagueness is to a large extent accepted by the PITS [people in the street] unquestionably. It is only when the 'little by little' example or experience of the incremental growth of collections comes into play, i.e., identifying the precise moment at which a certain number of individuate grains become a 'heap' that the concept of abstraction suddenly seems to be illuminated in our minds. The nouns employed such as cloud, heap, pile, stack, rick, collection, aggregation, accumulation, etc., can also be universally applied to a myriad of different entities, which further complicates the ontology of collectives. This consideration of piles of sand may seem very much an esoteric waste of time comparable with examining one's own bellybutton - BUT IT IS NOT! The ramifications for philosophy are tremendous, for universalisms and properties and essences, etc., are the very underpinning upon which religion and transcendentalist beliefs are founded.

The way I see it language doesn't exist — only the human lingual holism exists. There is no gradually accumulating: 'heap' of language, but rather a developing holism able to develop more elaborate more sophisticated  neurological networks and systems to create more and more complex meaningful noises in the laryngeal area, and to exist in states of neurophysical purposefulness, with which it attributes specific noises as indicating certain entities in its environment, and other noises which help in commenting upon or describing the activity of passivity of those entities with which we share our world..

In other words the abstraction 'language' is one of the ways [very important ways] in which humans exist, and as human beings develop and change the ways in which they exist the meaningful noises they make change [in their significance and complexity] too. So IMO the sorites paradox [which to a nominalist is not a paradox at all, but simply an illustration of ontological error] doesn't apply in relation to the question of at what point proto-communication can be described as a language, for what is taking place is not some incremental addition to a 'heap' of language, but changes in the human holism in the way it exists.

This general nominalist observation can be extended to the whole cosmos in relation to the primitive human concepts of beginnings and ends. Just as language doesn't 'begin' at some particular stage in human development, when it is deemed that sufficient words have 'accumulated' in the 'heap' to allow latter-day anthropologists to judge the collection worthy of the sobriquet; 'language' — so in a similar way, that which exists in what we call 'the cosmos' had no beginning, and will have no end, for what is happening is individuate entitic CHANGE - not cosmic accrual or depletion [when sufficient 'matter' is calculated or 'heaped' to be called a 'cosmos'] neither does the cosmos have an 'end' where the material decreases to such a stage is reached that it no longer 'qualifies' according to the judgement of the human brain, which pronounces 'material insufficiency,' Of course I too have veered off into the wild blue yonder of metaphysics for patently no such humans would be around to do anything at all when the last stages of cosmic implosion and explosive renewal were immanent.

Of course like all things abstractional it is far EASIER to speak of 'cosmic change' — but the sociology of convenient human behaviour is NOT what I am discussing - I am attempting to address what EXISTS and what DOESN'T EXIST. The fact that humans think in these old-fashioned ways is understandable, for since we became thinking beings we have observed an unceasing process of APPARENT beginnings and ends. Day dawns and the day begins — night falls and day ends. A child is born and begins its life — the man dies and ends it. It is only natural that amongst primitives it will appear that there is a beginning and an end to everything — within the parameters of their own insignificant lives [which TO THEM are extremely significant] what is missed is the obvious fact of the matter — beginnings and ends are an illusion — what is in fact happening is a constant CHANGE in the ways that entities exist and the mereological entitic communities that form and disperse.

Because one of the conditions of organic change is the eventual degradation of the constitutive community as far as humans are concerned it results in a termination of any awareness of the environment [a state which humans call 'death'] Now this event [whilst very dramatic for humans] is just another instance of the CHANGE which is the engine of the way that which exists exists. So what is the engine of CHANGE? IMO the engine of change in is the dissipation of energy [loss of power] and the renewal of energy [power-gain] and that these changing existential states are in someway connected with the nature of the mereological combinations in which they exist as they join and leave these communities. I think that the process of accumulation of parts which Gary mentions - parts that can produce life until there is something one can call life is an example of this mereological barn-dance of coming together and splitting up. Design is not necessary and these processes can be explained as entities coming together in the 'easiest ways possible' meaning those ways which result in the most minimum energy loss or conversely associating in those ways which result in the most energy gain [nuclear explosions, etc.] A Deus ex Machina would only f---- up a perfectly natural process. Creation ex Nihilo? Forget it! Nothingness is impossible - Heideggerian juvenilia. Mereological complexity exists, has always existed and will always exist. There was never any 'job' for 'God' to do — no 'job vacancy' exists for any of the 'Gods' of the humans. Gods are just useless unemployed lazy layabouts - not dead like Nietszche claims - just brain-dead and useless.

I conceive of 'life' as simply an existential modality of the mereological conglomerate that we call the human holism. The perfectly natural processes of action and interaction which take place between the members of this community. For me the existential state which we call life is an inevitable result of the energetic relationships that take place within certain mereologies in a given physical environment [optimal distance from the sun, etc.] For me the fact that human organisms have developed to such a stage where they exist in lingual states and modes which allow inter-human communication is no more awe-inspiring that the mechanisms of the smallest particle of which the human is the macro-mereological manifestation.

The thought has just occurred to me that the individuate members of the human race may be thought of as parts in a mereological swarm. How many humans does it need to make a 'crowd', etc.?

I have my nominalist agenda you see and I admit it — but having an agenda — or way-stations on my road to my version of an understanding of the world before I leave it — is the way I work — my modus vivendi. I have always NEEDED a position — it hurts my bottom to sit on a philosophical fence.