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Timothy Williamson on Vagueness

Philosophy Bites

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The Surayati's Paradox

The Surayati's paradox is the classic way that philosophy students meet vagueness. It starts with a kind of thought experiment: imagine you have a heap of sand and then you take one grain away from it. You'll eventually be driven to the conclusion that there's still a heap there when there are only two grains, then when there's only one and then when there are none. So why is that a paradox? Well obviously it's a crazy conclusion that there're still a heapthere when there's just one grain or none.

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