Talmudic Norms Approach to Mixtures with a Solution to the Paradox of the Heap: A Position Paper

This paper offers a Talmudic norms solution to the paradox of the heap. The claim is that the paradox arises because philosophers use the wrong language to discuss it. We need a language about objects which is capable of expressing not only the declarative properties of the object (such as being a heap) but also how the object/heap was constructed. Such a view of objects comes from the Talmudic theory of mixtures.

To this we add a first attempt at modelling the Talmudic normative theory of mixing (Talmudic calculus of Sorites). We seek a correlation between Talmudic positions on mixtures and philosophical positions on Sorites. The Talmud is very practical and cannot allow for any theoretically unresolved paradox to get in the way, and so it has a lot to offer to philosophy in general and to the heap paradox in particular.