A Summary of the Statements Contained in A Solution to the Sorites

and Further Details on the Solution

I. M.R.Pinheiro
I.R., Mathematics
PO BOX 12396, A'Beckett st, Melbourne, VIC, AU, 3000
mrpprofessional@yahoo.com

Abstract:

In this paper, we produce a list of statements, yet not clearly unveiled, which formed our

inner mind reasoning when writing [1].

Key-words:

Sorites, paradox, solution, errata, logic, human, Logic, Language, discourse, dictionary,

linguists, problem.

1.Introduction:

In [1], we have presented our basic reasoning trend regarding the issues raised by the so

called Sorites Paradox. Once Philosophy has allowed it to hold a standing equivalent to a

philosophical problem, we have also dared stating that we solved one of the oldest

philosophical problems of human kind for good.

Here, we present a summary of statements either implied by our writing in [1] or forming

our mental foundations when writing [1].

This paper has been born from a declared need of at least one well known philosopher,

one of the most active researchers in the World in what comes to the Sorites problem. It is

probably more useful to those who have been producing summaries of all solutions on the

Sorites presented so far, once it will help quickly identifying where our solution is placed

amongst those, what it has in common with the previously proposed solutions and where
its main differences lie.

We go through a simple sequence of steps:

• Statements implied by our writing in [1] or forming our inner mind reasoning when

writing it;

• Conclusion;

• References.

2. SUMMARY OF STATEMENTS AND RESPECTIVE DISCUSSION ON THEM:

3) Logic does apply to the reduced scope of human actions where the Sorites problem

lies.

1.1 Discussion:

Amateurs might think that everything in this World may be passive of logical reasoning.

However, for the philosopher, there is a clear difference between what is part of the

human imagination, perfect as entertainment, at most allurement, and what is of truly

scientific nature and, therefore, may become part of the contents of a scientific paper in

Philosophy.

An event of nature, for instance, such as a leaf falling from a tree, may be continuously

argued over, in what regards the scientific causes for the fall of the leaf, or what makes it

fall this or that way, or etc. Notwithstanding, such material will only become scientific

upon tests of physical nature, therefore being a matter only suitable to Physics journals in

what comes to Science properly referred to.

Thus, the nature of the event is philosophical, once it allows for philosophical theses, and

is also logical, for there are clear scientific reasons for all which is involved in it to take

place. Notwithstanding, the study of the event, per se, and the precise determination of

any of its subtleties, may only be of physical nature.

Human oral expression, when seen from a non-human perspective, that is, words by

themselves, for instance, in a paper, detached from the individual (without a special

subject reading or presenting them), is fully logical. Only for this reason, such a matter

may be the topic of a philosophical journal article.

If the Sorites solution had demanded an anarchic sort of acceptance, say all individuals in

society agreeing with it, the problem could never be suitable to logical analysis.

But the Sorites seems to equate all democratic sort of questioning and, therefore, a simple

accumulation of scientific processes and methods, implying actions which are well

established as scientific solutions to similar problems, will do.

Of course there will be always at least a number, a non-zero number, of individuals on

Earth who will disagree with the most basic methods of Science.

For instance, a retard will have unpredictable reasoning and judgment, and may refuse to

accept even that one coin of one dollar together with another amounts to two dollars. In

anarchy, there is obviously not a single chance for peace and growth, groups of different

thinkers always killing others or injuring others somehow in the fight for the same items,

say the writing of a dictionary for a certain language, for instance.

It obviously is the case that only in democracy there is chance for order and progress of
true nature to take place. Therefore, Science has to be about democratic solutions,

instead, or logical ones (the vast majority of human beings agrees with them, or accepts,

but a few may disagree, an irrelevant figure when compared to the number of those who

agree with them, or accept them).

The Sorites is proposed to an audience of a number of human beings each time it is

proposed, this number being allowed to be only one human being (minimum number of

people present is two, always: proposer and audience). For each group, there will be an

agreement over the solution. Not very difficult to infer then that if one were able to find

similar enough already existing problems and accepted solutions, with the same sort of

possible presentation, and variety of group results, one would have found a scientific

solution to it.

All previous paragraphs considered, we do believe to have found such a solution.

4) The apparent mathematical implication, or Classical Logic implication, which

appears in the Sorites problem, is actually far more than that: It is a language

conjunction.

2.1 Discussion:

We all know how long human kind took to reach the most objective lingo on Earth, that

in which everyone would be able to build, read, and understand statements without any

sort of conflict. Basically, Mathematics, allied to Classical Logic, is probably the only

truly universal language: The language in which everyone, not mattering their nationality,

will always understand, with no mistake, the message intended by the writer of a text,
provided both the writer and the reader are experts in its application.

This way, not mattering who reads, for instance, x + y = 2, x = 3 => y = -1, as long as

they satisfy the conditions pointed by us in the previous paragraph (expert in the

application of the language considered), they will be mentally saying to themselves: If

two integers summed give us two, and one of them is three, then the second integer has to

be negative one.

There is no other possible reading for someone who has been adequately introduced to

both Mathematics and Classical Logic connectors, not mattering their native discourse

language.

Communication between human beings would never be an object of scientific discussion

if it involved, like in Classical Logic allied to Mathematics, noise zero, that is, the

receptor, who had been adequately introduced to the language, reading the text of

someone else, say in English, would always get precisely the message intended by the

writer, with absolutely no mistake, of any order, added to it (unwanted inferences,

distorted assertions, or others).

However, what is not missing is noise in what can only be referred to, in a scientific

level, as a trial of communication between different human beings.

Unfortunately, the usual noise contained in human communication trials, of any nature, is

so huge as to allow a word to be infinitely worse, in terms of possible misinterpretations,

than an entire text. In our paper on Contextualism, we write about the word ‘fire’ and an

oral emission by a person X to the closest human being to her, in all regards, intimacy
being maximum as possible: Person X is married for long and addresses her loving

husband in our piece.

How many words needed to be added to ‘fire’ so that the message intended by the

speaker would reach the listener, as intended, in due time in our proposed life situation? 3

and what could be seen as an entire acting scene of a play performed by the speaker!

‘Then’, which is the original word forming the Sorites, even though ‘therefore’ would

have been the closest Classical Logic term to the intended meaning, is not different from

any other English word from the lexicon… .

Whilst ‘then’, from Classical Logic, bears noise zero, absolute zero, ‘then’, from the

English language lexicon, bears a noise which may go from zero to infinity ( all

depending on the instantaneous spiritual closeness, as we could put it, between the

speaker and the listener, or the closeness between the writer and the reader ).

As an application of the word with noise zero, the own mathematical example will do. As

an application of the word with noise infinity, consider for instance: ‘I hold no money, I

hold no love, then I will kill myself', when uttered by the most balanced person alive, in

all regards, as from external logical observation.

Noise is infinity, first of all, because a balanced person would not commit suicide on any

stupid circumstances, so that one would tend not to believe the assertion.

Notwithstanding, human beings are so fantastically passive of ‘magical’ modification in

their mental patterns, or any sort of pre-observed patterns, that it is quite possible that the

speaker actually meant it. The difference between a joke and an actual advertised suicide
trial is as bad as the difference between laughing, enjoying, with nothing evil implied,

and being arrested as a co-author in non-guilty homicide, as for the listener. Therefore, it

is the difference between having a better day because of the assertion and ending up in

jail for, perhaps, maximum time, or, in some countries, getting killed.

To belong to the group of assertions accepted as mathematical (we use mathematical to

shorten up, in language, but we actually mean the association between Mathematics and

Classical Logic), the assertion must have all its elements living inside of the `world of

Mathematics' (once more, here we mean Classical Logic allied to Mathematics).

However, `color’ and `heap`, for instance, when not associated to accurate and complete

machine classification, but to human sight classification, has to be part of the

complementary set of words to that of the mathematical words. The 'then' in the Sorites

Problem is also not the mathematical one because if it were, all elements of the assertion

in which it takes part would belong to the world of Mathematics. It is as if that limited

'then' (limited in its scope of meaning) is an alternative 'personality' to the usual then

from language, which will only 'manifest itself' if and only if the context in which it is

applied belongs entirely to the world of Mathematics.

5) Human normal expressed reasoning is never fully logical.

3.1 Discussion:

Of course there is a primordial difference between ‘fully logical’, in the computers sense,

and ‘fully logical’ in the philosophical sense. Just like what we previously wrote about

‘then’, ‘fully logical’ is exemplified with ‘then’ from the English language lexicon when

it regards Philosophy and with ‘then’ from the highly specialized Classical Logic lingo
when it regards Computer Science, in terms of the difference between dimensions of the

sets of possible meanings or World references.

Notwithstanding, our statement, the third, actually encompasses both choices just

mentioned, in terms of possible meanings: Human normal expressed reasoning, or

reasoning in a human who is seen as normal, in all senses, is neither fully computational

nor fully philosophical. Human normal expressed reasoning is never fully computational

due to discrepancies between what humans feel and what they express to others, as well

as due to absence of both awareness and knowledge of themselves in human beings in

general. If the own being is not sure about how they feel at least on occasions, they

cannot judge their own thoughts objectively all the time, therefore the expression of those

thoughts can only be infinitely less logical, in the computers sense, than the original

thoughts were. Human normal expressed reasoning cannot be fully logical in the

philosophical sense all the time because every human being experiences private meanings

associated to the human language, for instance, sometimes instinctive, what will make it

impossible that people who have been adequately introduced to Philosophy believe that

other people's reasoning is fully logical, in the philosophical sense, once it obviously is

not. We write about expression of reasoning because that is the object of Philosophy, so

that our discourse may only be useful if targeting such an expression, rather than the own

reasoning. The expressed appreciation, or contemplation, of the human reasoning,

however, might be fully philosophical, or computational, depending on the observer of

such.

4) The ‘Sorites’ is not about fully logical contemplation of the human expressed

reasoning.
4.1 Discussion:

Just for starters, even if all mental images, of each person on Earth, could be made

machine-detectable and we were 'safe' as to what the 'message conveyer' meant logically,

there is still the observer's side of the story and the impossibility of having a purely

logical contemplation of what is 'communicated' by the conveyer of the message. Such a

'noise' is a human feature, and it is what makes of us the most interesting beings on Earth.

So, if it were ever possible to grasp the conveyer's communications in a first go, it is

assumed that only a machine placed inside of the head of each individual would make it

possible for the computer to actually ‘tell’, with no mistake, what the message intended

by the conveyer is. And because each individual will definitely have their own ‘thing’, for

no two individuals are alike, not even two retards, unless the entire human kind is found

slaved with a biotech in their heads, there is no chance for any logical system, of the

computer sort, to perfectly describe the message contained in a randomly chosen

individual’s utterance of some type. This is obviously the roughest, or grossest, reasoning

of all, regarding such a set of issues. On the other hand, the person who 'contemplates'

would need another biotech to eliminate any human emotion, instinctive reaction, or

'noise' of any sort from their contemplation so that one may say they have experienced,

finally, a fully logical contemplation of the conveyer's message. Therefore, we may

assert, with no possible mistake, that Human Normal expressed Reasoning (HNR) will

never be fully logical in the computers sense, minimum condition for a single human

being’s reasoning to be fully logical, in the computers sense, being a biotech implanted in

their brains. In this case, we assume we do not have a human being anymore, therefore

item 4 is always verified by voidance.

In not being fully logical in the computers sense, HNR could still be fully logical in the

philosophical sense. However, if the inner thinking holds actually a good chance of not

matching the discourse, of any type, of an individual, HNR cannot, ever, possibly, be told

to be fully logical in the philosophical sense either, for the most basic pre-requisite for

anything to be placed under the umbrella of Philosophy is coherence and consistency.

The point is that the individual’s translation of their perceptions (using body senses) into

words is obviously part of the HNR, not of the machines world or the philosophical

world and such a translation is never fully logical in any sense.

Thus, to reinforce the point just made, if we push it quite a lot and decide to state that

HNR is solely what is thought of by the brains, then there is no chance for it to be

philosophical at all, for Philosophy does imply expression of reasoning, for nobody can

talk with the brains of the person, ignoring the complexity of the individual, and still

assert that communication between human beings has taken place. If such an atrocity ever

happens in human kind, that is, people are actually reduced to their brains, then we do not

have a human being anymore, we have a piece of one. Therefore, we have escaped the

proposed issue and left the scope of Science, trivially.

As a conclusion for this item we have:

The Sorites is not about fully logical contemplation of the human expressed reasoning

because nobody is aware, in full, of the human reasoning involved in the human

expression taking place in each reception of any soritical sequence by the audience. The

Sorites Problem, as it stands, is also not a philosophical problem. In order for it to

become a philosophical problem, one needs to split what belongs to both Science and
itself at the same time from what does not, as we explain in [4]. After adequate scientific

refinment, reached by applying the theory of [4] to the Sorites Problem, the Sorites

Problem finally becomes a philosophical problem, is contained in the logical scope of the

Language, therefore is passive of addressing via Philosophy, but cannot be placed under

Computer Science or under any other reduction of Philosophy. Analysis is the key-word

to locate the Bloom’s taxonomy level where the Sorites Problem, after due scientific re-

writing, rests.

The Sorites Problem solution must then be reached through expressed logical

analysis of the human expression, which happens by means of writing, in what

regards observation of entities, as to specific predicates, and universal judgment.

5) Bloom's taxonomy may be used to prove that the Sorites cannot, ever, be

confounded with either Mathematics or Classical Logic.

5.1 Discussion:

Mathematics would definitely refer both to the solution and the proposal of problems.

The reasoning leading to any of those, however, is actually located in the highest levels of

the Bloom’s taxonomy: In Philosophy, not in Mathematics.

Classical Logic is only a tool to express univocally, and universally, the mathematical

reasoning. Just like in the previous paragraph, the reasoning leading to all its contents is

definitely placed in the highest levels of the Bloom’s taxonomy, but the actual ‘entity’,

Classical Logic, as well as Mathematics, is definitely placed in the lowest levels instead

(application).
To understand how things go, in what regards the entire process of human interaction

with the World and with other humans, we need to rank, by complexity order, all

elements involved in such a process. We believe there are no doubts as to the most

complex piece of it being what goes on inside of a person’s mind.

The second most complex piece of such a process would obviously be what is actually

intended to be passed onwards from an individual to a number of other individuals, this

number being allowed to be anything between one and the total number of human beings

on the Planet, therefore what actually goes on at the translation interface between the

brains and what comes out of the individual in terms of trial of communication or

expression.

On the other hand, the matters will only be suitable for philosophical discussions, of any

order, if there is something written by human beings, or expressed via language, or

expressed somehow, that is, it is necessary an expression, seen as such by at least another

person in society, for us to even start thinking of discussing issues inside of Philosophy.

Thus, the third most complex piece of the process of interaction is the actual expression

of the human reasoning.

Written language is definitely suitable for philosophical debate.

Notwithstanding, with it, one may ALSO express reasoning of highest order, that is:

analysis and synthesis. Once it is possible that a human being is able to accurately

describe the own analysis and the own synthesis processes of theirs, language cannot,

ever, be entirely reduced to the lowest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, where both Classical

Logic and Mathematics lie.

If it happens to be the case that the Sorites solution can only be found inside of the part of

language which escapes both Classical Logic and Mathematics, no expressed reasoning

belonging to any of them will be suitable to addressing its issues. Therefore, it suffices

proving that the Sorites solution lies on the level of analysis or synthesis of the Bloom's

taxonomy for us to being able to convince others that nothing up to the Classical Logic,

or the Mathematics, level may mean 'solution to the Sorites Problem'.

6) The Sorites is formed from a few elements of discourse: The adjective, possibly a

color, is one of the possible elements, and so is the substantive ‘heap`, for instance.

Such elements, however, the ‘names’ to possibly be applied to the real world objects,

are not of mathematical or computational nature, what then places the Sorites

Problem automatically outside of those areas and also its solution.

6.1 Discussion:

There has been a lot of study on what language terms could be used in Mathematics, the

most objective lingo which exists on Earth. As stated previously, the intentions were

obviously having noise zero in any trial of mathematical communication, result which

seems to have been achieved with perfection.

Colors, however, cannot be communicated with noise zero from one person to another

unless there is at least a graphical display to them.

In this case, noise zero may only be achieved if the colors are made passive of

computational treatment, that is, made passive of insertion in a computer as data

(graphical displays, of any sort, would be passive of insertion in computers as data).

The same way, ‘heap’ cannot be communicated with noise zero from one person to

another unless there is at least a graphical display of some sort attached to the trial of

communication, therefore something which may be fed into a computer as data.

That seems to be precisely the point of the Sorites: The search for a computational sort of

treatment of the word ‘heap’, of any of the colors of the color spectrum, or of any other

terms which may be used in a soritical sequence.

Notwithstanding, this far, such a complete computational treatment of the soritical terms

(considering those terms which have already been seen associated to soritical sequences

in the scientific literature) does not exist and one can see that there is no limit for the

creation of new lexicon words which may suit a soritical sequence.

Thus, even if it were ever possible to ‘force’ ‘beautiful’ language words, applied at the

discretion of the communicator, into a confined scope of pointed World objects, one

could never have all of them locked in in that place at the same time due to the dynamics

of vocabulary creation in human societies.

Once everything, both in Mathematics and Computer Science, has to bear no mistake,

one may easily assert, with one hundred percent certainty, that the soritical terms are

definitely not of mathematical or computational nature, for asserting the opposite would

trivially imply that all soritical terms hold either mathematical or computational nature,

that is, no soritical term is exception to that rule, what we have already proved to be

equivocated reasoning in the last paragraph.

With all the stated above, we reach the conclusion that the adjectives, as well as the other
soritical terms, belong both to the human discourse and to the human mind: They may be

the object of logical reasoning but cannot, ever, be the end of the problem ( to tell what

red is for everyone in the World, for instance ). What may belong to Science is a decision

theory, at most, in those regards, then, once the words must remain acceptable for human

communication with any intention, therefore lose in their scope of application.

Computer Science works with logical systems. The main characteristic of any system is

the predictability of the response. If a response cannot be predicted, there is no possible

logical system which can deal with it.

A human being considered normal will always be an unpredictable system, so that it is

impossible to state that everyone on Earth will call a certain color ‘red’ if we all decide,

today, that ‘red’ will mean x degrees of brightness, y degrees of definition, and etc.

Nobody can, thanks God so far, shut up a human being whenever they wish, if that

human being is not making a violence against the rights of another person in society or

against the law. Therefore, if anyone on Earth believes the impossible to be believed, that

a ‘normal’ person would never apply red to a color which has got (x-1) degrees of

brightness instead of x, assuming that x is what the lexicon brings for red, and would

claim their rights of having applied the term correctly, then imagine a retard did it, or

someone who cannot read!

Basically, who can stop any human being from applying any lexicon word in any

situation they wish? As simplest real life scenario, anyone can simply open the dictionary

and read at random ‘red’. The word is being applied, there cannot be mistake in its

application, for it was simply red, yet it is not referring to the expected objects containing
those degrees of brightness and etc.

Obviously the case that the problem is an allurement only, never an actual problem.

‘If I add one grain to the previous thing we have all agreed to name ‘non-heap’, will it

become a ‘heap’, finally?'

In other terms, how many grains of sand form a ‘heap’?

Besides, all the argumentation we have already presented here against such a sort of

query being taken seriously by scientists, there is still the possibility that once someone

states that it is, for instance, 100 grains, the person asking the question creates another

problem with ‘what sort of sand, how much refined the particle has to be?’, and etc.

First of all, it might not be a heap for that auditorium of people, but it might be a heap for

another, so that it is ridiculous even thinking of doing such with any term of language.

The beauty and peculiarity of both the non-mathematical and the non-computational

terms (considering them mathematical or computational only when the entire class of

them is, once a few shades of color may always be inserted in a computer, we just cannot

insert all of them at the moment) of language is obviously how ‘vague’ they might be in

their application and the person applying them still be told to be ‘normal’.

With the mathematical or computational terms, however, the person would be told to be

insane if the intentions were debating over something with a group of mathematicians, or

computer scientists, when applying those specific terms, of their pre-determined lingo, to

something else. Say, for instance, a person attending a talk in Mathematics interrupts the
presenter of a theory to state that he has lied because 5 on the board should be called

seven instead!? And they then want to start a discussion on where five ends and seven

starts in Mathematics… : Oh, easy to see people would be kicking the element out of the

room quite quickly… !

‘Idiot! A 5 is a five, this is not Philosophy or some sort of trip, out!’

The thing about computational items, Mathematics containing a few of such items and

only 'them', is that all their parts would have to be absolute, that is, none of their parts

should allow for doubts, any person with adequate instruction in computer affairs

identifying their only reference in the real world with no mistake. Whoever works with

computers knows: The thing is never wasting time and whatever may be done for

yesterday is already done.

Thus, simply raising such a discussion would irritate people from the area profoundly.

Why? Because they do not have a problem with that. If they ever have the need of using a

color in a computer program, they will certainly find a way of expressing that color in

computational terms (univocal matching process with a World object).

Obviously the case that such a discussion only fits Philosophy of Language, for it refers

to the possible applications of a lexicon word, which is usually lose in its application, that

is, which is left at the discretion of the perception and judgment powers of the person

applying it.

The trial of refining meaning of a word can only be seen as the same work performed by

the linguist, if we are ever looking for a universal sort of definition, accepted by the entire
World, for that is how, and why, the lexicons are formed. Obviously the case that before

the first lexicon was written on Earth, at least one person had the same doubts as those of

the Sorites presenter: Where does ‘heap’ start existing in this dynamic sand accumulation

scenery? Where does ‘red’ start existing in this dynamic shade changing scenery? When

can I use it so that you will understand that is what I mean? Do you agree I can use it in

this situation as much as in the other one?

The situation we face here is the same splitting mathematicians and their work from

engineers and theirs: Basically, when a builder has a doubt as to whether they will take

0.9 of the ruler or 0.99, they go neither to the mathematician nor to the computer scientist

to ask what figure they will write on their notes, they go for the engineer. The engineer

gives them a recipe for approximation of results, which should be the same used all over

the World in construction. Such a recipe, for both the mathematician and the computer

scientist, will be almost of no use, already for starters. Not for the statistician, however,

who will consider their rules for approximation and declare there will be a mistake of x %

at most in each computed result. The same sort of situation, in terms of possible dramas,

could be easily transferred, also in terms of paradigms, to our Sorites case. Whilst the

linguist would be occupying the place of the engineer, philosophers should be occupying

the place of the statistician, and both computer scientists and mathematicians should be

watching until they all finish, for they obviously are there to apply their specialized

learning solely to where it may be applied.

Of course several mathematicians, as well as computer scientists, of these days, will

calculate the mistake of the ruler, as for the builder, but it is obviously the case that they

will not be able to decide in place of the builder if the ruler shows 0.9 or 0.99, or even
0.989 instead. The same way the builder will be the ultimate decision maker and poor, or

lucky, of the people depending on the construction to live in it, the ultimate decision

maker, in lexicon words, will be the linguist and poor, or lucky, of us, who will have to

live with the result… .

As a less scientific line of argumentation, imagine a poet being told that they have

applied the word ‘love’, in a situation x, with 3% of mistake in what regards the ‘revised

version of the lexicon containing computational research’ and etc. Then, we would have

the scientific evaluation of precision of the poem amounting to 10% of distance,

approximately, from the meaning determined by the computer scientists based on the

lexicon from 1999 by now, for instance.

If there is anyone on Earth who does not think this is ridiculous, please raise your hands

(sorry, we cannot see at the moment, so we may as well just keep on going!).

As a more objective line of argumentation, of course what is solved for everyone on

Earth, and is working, should not be questioned or changed. Even the dumbest soccer

player has learned: Team who is winning, we do not change.

Linguists do a great job, we all trust them, and nobody is really interested in changing the

way words go in the dictionary. If we ever were, we would probably be joining the own

linguists, that is, becoming one of them, so why bothering being from another area?

Yes, Philosophy would include lexicon theories, but our point is that the Sorites needs

one to address its issues, not that Philosophy cannot bother about lexicon theories.

7) Machines do not equate human beings and, with luck, will never be able to.
7.1 Discussion:

Were there any chance a machine equated a human being, everyone would be happy with

the proposal of the Sorites: Hey, you are one grain mistaken, it is not a ‘heap’!

However, unless they get to impair and slave, or modify genetically, or kill human beings,

such a phenomenon will not happen in the human language. There is no doubt people

love Arts and nobody wants someone telling ‘Caetano Veloso’ he cannot sing ‘nao me

amarra dinheiro nao’ because nobody is getting the meaning he has intended when

writing that song by the time they listen to it, that it is probably better that he sings ‘nao

diz que eu tenho preco’ instead. Sincerely… .

And if the entire World agrees that Arts should be preserved with the freedom it currently

has got, which produces impairment of creativity sometimes, as in these days, with lots of

things repeating, instead of being created, then we really do not want that push towards

human communication.

What should tell the extraordinary difference between human beings, who are normal,

and machines is obviously the amount of possible original reasoning deriving from them.

In principle, a machine would always be programmed with possible World situations,

therefore working mostly on the reaction side of things, while the human being would be

mostly on the action side of them.

Just for starters, the human being will always be necessary to program a machine, unless

evolution in them is stopped. Of course the creator would always be above the creation at

least in what regards machines, for it is necessary at least a human being to insert data in
the machine. Who determines the data to be inserted is obviously the logical reasoning of

that same human being. Therefore, it is necessary to reason at least one level above the

creation in order to be able to create it.

One could think that the day the self-learning machine is created, machines will equate

humans.

Notwithstanding, for that end, the human being has to fully understand their own mental

processes lying above the machine level, that is, in the highest levels of the Bloom’s

taxonomy.

Such an understanding has not been reached by human beings yet and will obviously

never be, once new human beings are always being born and there is no way we can tell

who has got the best mental analysis processes, for instance, in the World, or we can state

that in time x evolution will be stopped and no more blessed human beings than those

already computed will be born. This way, the chance for the machines reasoning to

overcome human beings’ reasoning, or even equate, even if one ever finds out how to

make machines hold all levels of reasoning in the Bloom’s taxonomy, is close to zero, in

what regards even the most objective share of human beings: Their knowledge processes,

their decision processes, and etc.

Emotions are definitely connected to what we could easily name ‘soul’, being us people

of faith or not. A machine cannot, possibly, hold soul. Therefore, even if willing to defend

the thesis that machines may, one day, replace human beings in terms of processes which

are passive of abstract representation, we cannot defend the thesis that machines may

replace human beings in their full complexity, therefore they cannot replace human
beings, full stop!

The other point is that the machine to generate all other machines would have to be

created by a human being, therefore would be limited to that human being’s logical

system, and there is no way a human being could know, at the same level of knowledge

that God has got, the variety of humans on Earth, which is attributed to God's creation, in

terms of their brains processes, even, and the brains processes are infinitely more

mechanizeable than the rest of the human functions (such as emotions). That is obviously

enough argumentation to knock down the hypothesis that machines will, some day, be the

same as human beings. They may get close to that, but will never be the same, and that is

very simple to prove logically, as just done. Of course we reason under the hypothesis

that at least a number of human beings, superior or equal to one, is not slaved, or made

abnormal, or made more limited, artificially, that is, in the hypothesis that there are

normal human beings left in human kind and, therefore, there is still allowance for the

genetic ‘surprise’, or spiritual surprise, in the kind to happen.

If every human being is inserted a biotech and is criminally impaired, or modified, in

their scope of possibilities on Earth, then machines may, finally, equate them.

Notwithstanding, as seen many times as opposition to claims of having solved the

Sorites, that would modify the original problem, therefore just make a solution to it

actually impossible, this way bringing an actual regression, in terms of a search for a

solution, instead of progress (the problem under analysis being whether machines may

equate human beings or not).

All the above statements confirm, once more, that there is more to HNR than what is
involved in Computer ‘Science’ or Mathematics. Thus, it has to be the case that a Pure

Philosophy of Language exists: A part of the Philosophy of Language which does not

involve any computer/mathematical logic.

8) The Sorites Problem is above both the machine and the mathematical logic levels

(not reasoning, but expression of reasoning). If a single part of the problem cannot be

perfectly translated into the lingo of Mathematics then it simply cannot have its

solution entirely inside of it, so that there is really no point in insisting that the Sorites

were ever a Classical Logic problem. It might hold a reduced part of it - the final

decision, at most - in the Classical (or passive of expression via such) Logic, once all

human reasoning demanded by it is for deciding between NO and YES, classical

options. It is then obvious that ‘all we need is an adequate interface of translation

between human reasoning/judgment and the response to the query of the presenter of

the Sorites`.

8.1 Discussion:

We assume that we have already proved that the Sorites is located above the level of both

Mathematics and Classical Logic. Therefore, our discussion here should focus on the

necessity of a translation interface between human reasoning/judgment and the Classical

Logic possible outputs.

The presenter of the Sorites has been nicknamed ‘Cartesian Inquisitor’ by us precisely

because his questions are always of the sort ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (do we still have a heap? Is it

still red?). Of course we write about their expectation of answer, what does not

necessarily imply the audience will make him happy with their behavior, that is, someone
in the audience may simply say ‘I don’t care, go to hell!’, for instance. Can they say so?

Obviously they can. Is that acceptable as part of the game? Yes, it is, as argued before,

people may say whatever they like in this World, thanks God, as long as the society is a

democratic one. However, the Inquisitor ALSO has got the right to expect a ‘yes’ or ‘no’,

and will get frustrated if not getting them from the audience. In such a case, once their

mental setup is only for ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the presenter will need a strategy to collect only

‘yes’ or ‘no’ from every person producing utterances in the audience or stating even

nothing. The scientific question contained in the language game is obviously this: How

can we translate even silence into ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a democratic society? Would that not be

dictatorship instead? This is the basic problem with any translation interface so far: They

seem to suffer from absence of universal acceptance of their decision theory with people

apparently believing they are unnatural impositions rather than democratic tools. Some

are believed to hold gaps in the translation time, others are believed to hold gluts, and

others are believed to be vague about the criteria they make use of during the translation.

We here, however, defend that the problem actually resumes to finding a translation

interface between the human expression and the expected sort of answers by the presenter

(‘yes’ or ‘no`) and this point seems to now be settled. Notice that such a decision theory

is above the machine level, lies in the top of the Bloom’s taxonomy pyramid, and is

definitely what one needs to solve the Sorites Problem, reinforcing the fact that the

solution cannot lie inside of any computer sort of logic, what will include Mathematics.

9) The Sorites solution can only be written by someone working on the same mental

level as the linguists. Ultimately, the own Inquisitor has to play the role of the linguists.

9.1 Discussion:
The answer demanded by the person proposing the Sorites Problem is one of the sort

‘yes’ or ‘no’, which are answers from the Classical Logic system. Therefore, there must

be a ‘forced’ sort of translation from one system, which is purely human, into another,

which is purely mechanized, as mentioned before in this very paper.

The issues of the Sorites then resume to those faced by every lexicon expert: How to

make the most perfect correspondence between speech and thought so that the perfect

function created this way may be universally accepted.

Therefore, with the Sorites, one must proceed like the linguist would and simply apply

their techniques. The same way the dictionary writers do, we should do in order to make

something very large, different for each person, be refined into something everyone will

accept as true. Notice that the elements forming the Sorites are precisely the same ones

involved in the lexicon creation (human beings’ expression, human beings’ mental

reference, and forced judgment, imposed by the lexicon writer, over the symbolic pieces

of the language).

The issues raised by the Cartesian Inquisitor are actually about the own definition of the

predicate terms involved (where they start/where they end, bounds of definition, or scope

of the definitions, or even limits of the object (Russell)). Besides, from an audience

member’s perspective, there is no problem: They say or do whatever they wish, the

Inquisitor being the one with an actual problem, obviously belonging to their own mental

processes.

Obviously the case that the Inquisitor is in the same position as any linguist and would

have the same options to choose from when determining whether that particular audience
has ‘allowed` them to apply ‘red’ for instance, not considering them an illogical person,

or non-scientific, to object X, or not. Notice that the problem extrapolates Science: It is

actually about whether the audience agrees with the own Inquisitor’s possible

classification of X as ‘red’ or ‘not’, once the Inquisitor is imposing classical options

which confine the human world to the absolute, that is, to right or wrong. Of course, as

written before, any person may use ‘red’ at their own discretion and that has to be ‘right’,

not mattering what they do with it, even pointing to black and stating ‘red’… , but the

inquisitor is after a scientific statement, or universal, over the suitability of the

application of the adjective 'red' to a particular object.

The fact that the Inquisitor has got such a proposal places them on the level of ‘freaks’ or

the level of abnormal scientific beings already, by default, for they themselves can do

whatever they like with ‘red’ or even with ‘heap’. Notwithstanding, in supposing they are

interested in a democratic voting to, for instance, check their sanity, or scientific level,

they would have to know how the linguists work (for Science must advance, not regress)

to then do as they do, otherwise becoming a linguist themselves and producing changes

to the decision theories already in place (that is, their doubt is nonsensical, for the

linguists already hold such theories to judge the application of the words to real World

objects). As most basic item, and scientific requirement, for the proposal of words to

integrate the lexicon, in doubt the linguist shall not accept ‘red’ to include that nuance, or

‘heap’ to mean that amount of grains. Therefore, if the linguist interprets the outcome

produced by the audience to mean they are in doubt, it is a ‘no’, doubts meaning

everything which is not any of the expected answers, as for the part of the Inquisitor.

3. Conclusion
This paper brings a summary of statements either implied or clearly read from [1].

The scientific progress reported in this piece regards settlement of our solution to the

Sorites Problem via addressing of some queries made to us along the years by researchers

from the concerned sub-areas to Philosophy.

We also further prove that we hold both a definite solution to the Sorites and a situation

of absence of possible vagueness-sort-of-discussions in terms of that solution.

5. References

[1] Pinheiro, M.R. A Solution to the Sorites Paradox. Semiotica, 160 (1/4), 2006.

[2] Read, S. Thinking about Logic: an introduction to the philosophy of logic. Oxford
University Press. 1995. Oxford.

[3] Pinheiro, M. R. Errata to A Solution to the Sorites Paradox. Submitted, 2009

(written in 2004).

[4] Pinheiro, M. R. Well-posedness in Philosophy and the Sorites Problem.

Submitted, 2009 (written in 2006). Available online at www.scribd.com/illmrpinheiro2.