Q&A: The Heap Paradox
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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
The Heap Paradox
Question
I heard a lecture of yours in which, among other things, you mentioned the heap paradox and said that it is an example of a vague reality. I didn’t understand why, because reality itself is not vague; rather, it’s the concept of a “heap,” which is a concept people invented in order to define a certain state of accumulation. That is not similar to two sisters, where there is a certain halakhic reality.
Answer
Every concept in reality is vague. We are not talking only about a heap, but about any other everyday concept. You can say that only our definitions are vague, because all concepts are our definitions. That is of course possible. But the concept of a married woman is also our definition.