Actually I think that would be a measure of how the theory refinement is done, not that it has been refined. — Srap Tasmaner

Agreed. One is more of an act of theoretical reason while the other is more of an act of practical reason. Either we are seeking to disclose affordances of the natural world, or we are seeking to produce new technical and/or social affordances (or we are engaging in some combinations of both theoretical and practical endeavors).

(On edit: I'm still talking about our general activity of defining and/or instituting and/or discovering sortal concepts.)

Maybe meaning is use implies interaction between subjects. What if the subjects are themselves spoken by a mechanical language?

I guess there's a difference between talking about the bronze a statue is made of and the particular collection of bronze bits it's made of. The first is just the mass noun "bronze" and it's the status of the latter that's confusing. (Mass nouns just don't always come to you in discrete hunks. Air doesn't, for instance.)

So the question really is how do mass nouns behave when you qualify them in some way -- the bronze this statue is made of, the snow in the mountains, the water in that glass. Does such a qualifier make an object?

So the question really is how do mass nouns behave when you qualify them in some way -- the bronze this statue is made of, the snow in the mountains, the water in that glass. Does such a qualifier make an object? — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not sure whether I understand your question. Are you asking under what conditions some bit of material becomes a concrete object?

As Pierre-Normand already said, it all depends on what one means by 'objects' and what is our purpose in talking about this or that particular sort of thing.

I'm thinking that for a given theory, some ways of refining or extending it will be natural and some will be ad hoc. So naturalness is also theory-relative.

Right, you could say that.

Are you asking under what conditions some bit of material becomes an independent object? — Fafner

The sorites arises when you try to treat a mass noun collection as an object in its own right. You can say that makes it a vaguely defined object or you could just not think of it as an object at all.

I'm thinking that for a given theory, some ways of refining or extending it will be natural and some will be ad hoc. So naturalness is also theory-relative. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree. Natural scientists aim at carving "nature" at its joints. But the natural joints just are the joints that show up in empirical inquiry when the inquirer privileges matter over form, and intrinsic properties over relational properties. Since forms and relations aren't any less real than material and intrinsic properties are, this all amounts to an arbitrary restriction of the definitions of "nature". Such a restriction of the concept of nature may reflect a "fundamentalist" tendency (as when one speaks of physics being a more fundamental science than biology is, say) or a reductionistic tendency.

I don't think there's a general answer to your question. One has to look on a case by case basis.

There's a sense of 'object' on which a heap of send would not be considered an object, but you can perhaps invent a story where it would be natural to call it an object.

There's a sense of 'object' on which a heap of sand would not be considered an object, but you can perhaps invent a story where it would be natural to call it an object. — Fafner

I think vagueness issues are orthogonal to the question of the mass noun versus count noun distinction. Hence one might ask if a mountain that has two identifiable peaks really is just one mountain or two mountains. That is a separate question from the question whether mountains are material objects or rather are a sort of stuff. They clearly are the former as a matter of ordinary linguistic practice (since "mountain" is conventionally used as a count noun) but we could imagine a reformed language that would identify "mountain-stuff" as the presence of abnormal elevation along the surface a continuous terrain. We'd say: "there is much mountain-stuff over there..."

Likewise, I think heaps are discrete entities, but saying so just is a grammatical remark. It's not due to anything intrinsic to the structure of actual heaps (although regarding the vagueness issue about heaps, Timothy Williamson has strange ideas about them).

Exactly, you've put what I had in mind better then I could. The sorites problem and the topic of material constitution seem to me like two quite different topics.

I suppose there's sorites on the one hand, and the ship of Theseus on the other; you can ask if you still have a heap after taking away a grain, and if you still have the same heap. (People's intuition about the latter might very dramatically.) An external constraint -- this blob is the bronze, meaning all of it, that used to be the statue -- blocks the latter but not the former. If you've lost any, you have to say this is some of the bronze.

(I feel like I'm making less sense with each post -- maybe because I'm at work now.)

On second thought, I think that there's something to what you say.

Actually I'm not quite sure what is supposed to be the actual paradox in the ship of Theseus story. I think it can be formulated as either a question about identity through time (how something with different parts can remain the same object), or as a problem with vagueness (at what point exactly something ceases to be the same object) - and in the latter case I think it is indeed an analogous problem to the sorites paradox.

However, there is another distinct problem concerning material constitution, which I think clearly is not the same as the sorites paradox, and this is the story about the cat Tibbles that loses its tail, while remaining the same cat (and the problem is that this claim seem to violate Leibniz's law). So it seems to me that you can think about the ship of Theseus as either a variation on the sorites paradox or the cat's paradox.

I had this same thought because our example is a statue and one of the most famous statues of all time is missing her arms. (Great song by Television.)

I suppose there's sorites on the one hand, and the ship of Theseus on the other; you can ask if you still have a heap after taking away a grain, and if you still have the same heap. (People's intuition about the latter might very dramatically.) An external constraint -- this blob is the bronze, meaning all of it, that used to be the statue -- blocks the latter but not the former. If you've lost any, you have to say this is some of the bronze. — Srap Tasmaner

One could stash a heap of sand on the deck of the Ship of Theseus and that may make things more interesting ;-)

One issue with blobs, heaps and chunks is that they are modifiers that turn mass nouns into count nouns. A bag of flour (count noun) isn't quite the same as the flour (mass noun) that's in the bag. The amount of flour that's in the bag can be more or less, but the bag of flour is one. There is an issue, of course, if one buys a bag of flour: how much flour can be missing before it doesn't count as a full bag of flour anymore? And that may depend on what's written on the bag (10kg, say). This is where a specific issue of vagueness arises.

Back to the statue. If one chips away at the bronze statue of Hermes with a scissor, then there will come a point where what remains isn't a statue of Hermes anymore. Likewise if you would hammer it flat. There will come a point where it's not recognizably a statue of Hermes anymore. And the issue of vagueness also arises in this case. It may not be possible to say exactly after how many blows of the hammer the statue doesn't exist anymore, as opposed to its merely being a badly damaged statue (or its having turned into a statue of D.J.T., possibly.)

So, when a sortal concept such as statue provides criteria of persistence and individuation, those criteria can specify (in accordance with common understanding) how much stuff can be taken away, or replaced, or how much the form can be altered, etc., before the statue is deemed not to exist anymore. And issues of vagueness may arise in all cases. Sometimes, such issues are settled in court.

Actually I'm not quite sure what is supposed to be the actual paradox in the ship of Theseus story. — Fafner

The usual way it's told in a paradoxical manner is when the old damaged planks that are being replaced over time are being collected somewhere and eventually reassembled in the same form as the old ship. But there are now two ships in existence. One of them is continuous with the original and the other one matches the original both in form and material constitution (though it's not historically continuous, unless you view it as having remained in existence in disassembled form). But if both ships have a title to be deemed numerically identical with the original, that violates Leibniz's law of indiscernibility of identicals.

My favorite resolution of this paradox is of course Simons's.

On issue with blobs, heaps and chunks is that they are modifiers that turn mass nouns into count nouns. A bag of flour isn't quite the same as the flour that's in the bag. — Pierre-Normand

But my suspicion is that this is just not true, that it's always the amount of flour we're interested in and the bag is just the obvious way of referring to how much. If bags of flour did not have weights printed on them, a grocer who emptied some of the flour from each bag would still be a cheat. "It's still a bag of flour" wouldn't be much of a defense.

Actually that last bit -- it's still a bag of flour -- is curious because it's literally true but cancels the implicature that it's a full bag of flour, or the usual bag of flour, etc.

But my suspicion is that this is just not true, that it's always the amount of flour we're interested in and the bag is just the obvious way of referring to how much. If bags of flour did not have weights printed on them, a grocer who emptied some of the flour from each bag would still be a cheat. "It's still a bag of flour" wouldn't be much of a defense. — Srap Tasmaner

Likewise if you would buy a statue of Hermes and it's damaged during transport. And then the seller tells you: "But it's still a statue! Now it has become a statue of Donald J. Trump." But what you bought was a statue of Hermes and that statue doesn't exist anymore.

So, statue is a sortal concept that may be modified by the qualifier of Hermes in order to further specify its conditions of persistence and identity. If it is damaged to the point that it doesn't recognizably depict Hermes anymore, then it may still be a statue, but it is a (numerically) different statue.

And likewise with a 10kg bag of flour. If one kilogram is taken out, then it's still a bag of flour. But it's no longer a 10kg bag of flour for purpose of sale. However, I must concede that it's still the same bag of flour, for purpose of consumption (as it's being progressively used up in your own home, say). So, you most definitely have a point.

And I'm wrong to say it's always the amount. A piece of the true cross counts no matter how small.

I'm wondering now if every theory can be forced into an ad hoc refinement.

I'm wondering now if every theory can be forced into an ad hoc refinement — Srap Tasmaner

Are you thinking of substance-sortals, event-types or concepts of natural kinds as reflecting theories? Or are you thinking about something else? Surely, all scientific theories reflect some specific focus of our interests since when some empirical domain is being investigated, some features of its objects are being considered while others are abstracted away or ignored as irrelevant. As our focus changes, sometimes in response to unforeseen discoveries, then this may yield progressive refinements of our concepts. However, such refinements need not be ad hoc except in the sense that our new focus is always responsive to our present theoretical or practical interests.

Just thinking out loud. We entertained the possibility that there was a general pattern of forced theory refinement, and that there's a kind of refinement congenial to a theory and a kind not -- the kind that might make you start looking for a new theory -- so it seemed natural to wonder if the uncongenial kind could be reliably forced.