Group consensus
Workshop mit Boy Vereecken
One can establish the meaning of the word “heap” by appealing to group consensus. This approach claims that a collection of grains is as much a “heap” as the proportion of people in a group who believe it to be so. In other words, the probability that any collection is considered a heap is the expected value of the distribution of the group’s views.
A group may decide that: • One grain of sand on its own is not a heap. • A large collection of grains of sand is a heap.
Between the two extremes, individual members of the group may disagree with each other over whether any particular collection can be labelled a “heap”. The collection can then not be definitively claimed to be a “heap” or “not a heap”. This can be considered an appeal to descriptive linguistics rather than prescriptive linguistics, as it resolves the issue of definition based on how the population uses natural language. Indeed, if a precise prescriptive definition of “heap” is available then the group consensus will always be unanimous and the paradox does not arise.
![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-pygso9fe.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-ku2rjv0d.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-lwrbgu5d.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-wv1divtx.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-dibel6io.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-sgjanijo.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-veuhut4g.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-cuz0uoms.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-wtkzx9jk.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-95yvlrow.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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![Group consensus](/site/assets/files/5766/zhdk-vvk-smb9uucr.3200x0.jpeg 3200w,
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