Sorites paradox

The Sorites paradox refers to the questioning of whether one thing stops becoming "something" after a certain amount of small, incremental, often unnoticeable changes:

• If a culture has continuously borrowed from others, when did its authenticity end?
• If a red shirt gets one drop of blue paint every day, on which day does it become a blue shirt?
• If you remove a grain of sand from a heap of sand, when does it stop becoming a heap of sand?
• If you continue to make changes to the code of some software or website, at what point does it become "yours" and not the original author's?

The idea that something "is" something breaks down when we talk of incremental changes to it; that things behave more like waves than particles, or spectrum-like phenomena!

Related concepts

• Ship of Theseus
  • how much of a ship (or building) would you have to renovate before it becomes a new ship (or building) altogether?
• "Song of Theseus"
  • if a song gets remixed so heavily, does it become a new song altogether?
    • Sigur Rós' "Ég fæ jólagjöf" is ultimately based on José Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" but sounds hardly like it: