Definition Of Being Bald

Our group’s response to the paradox focuses on the perception of what being bald actually means to an individual person. While the problem is set up in a way which attempts to distinctly identify someone who is bald and someone who is not with a sharp borderline between the two, we believe this is the wrong way to think about it. What we argue is that there is a not one distinct definition for someone who is bald and who is not. The concept of being bald is just like the concept of a heap. A ‘heap’ is defined as a collection of things piled up haphazardly. While this definition makes sense, having no qualitative value to ‘heap’ allows for vagueness in definition between individuals. Just like a heap, being bald is vague which allows for people …show more content…
For example, if we set out a line of pictures ranging from someone with no hair to somebody with a million hairs and asked a group to define where the cut off is between bald and not bald, the answers would most likely vary. This variance would happen due to the individual human perception of what being bald actually is through experience. For example, when a child is learning a language and what words mean, they are usually taught through visual experience. If you told a child a cat is a “small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur” they would have no idea what you are talking about until you showed them a picture. Once you show them a picture of a cat, their perception of the cat will be stored in their memory from that picture. Since every child is not shown the same picture, they will have different perceptions on what a cat looks like (shape, color, size). Now thinking about the idea of baldness, an individual does not understand what being bald is until they see a bald person with their own eyes. One child may see a person with some hair on the sides of their head and perceive him as being bald, while another child may see a person with no hair at all and perceive them as bald. This differentiation results in the vagueness …show more content…
Let’s say you try to distinguish that 25 hairs means a person is bald, and 26 hairs means a person is not bald. From the perception of the human eye, there is a no chance an individual can see and count the amount of hair on the head of a human being. This means that they would never be able to distinguish people from being bald or not. If that is the case, than the word would have no meaning to it because in the end the word is derived from human beings and applies mainly to the physical build of the human body. From another angle, if you try to explain the exact number between being bald and not, how do you classify what counts as a human hair? Hair is not all the same length, so it would then also be necessary to quantify the length necessary for it to be considered a hair. Also, it would be necessary to quantify the boundaries at which the hair must be on the body to be considered part of the head. What line do you draw to be considered head hair and neck hair? These are some questions we wanted to bring to focus when defending our argument against people who believe there is a distinct line between being bald and