Consider Everest and some precisely defined hunk of rock, ice and snow, Rock, of which it is indeterminate whether its boundaries coincide with those of Everest.
One cannot infer the existence of an individual who is indeterminately identical to Sue from the fact that it is indeterminate whether Sue (or rather Morgan) is Harry's best friend.
Analogously, one cannot infer the existence of an individual that is indeterminately identical to the mended ship from the fact that it is indeterminate whether Theseus II is the mended ship.[29] The prima facie problem with this response is that there do not seem to be multiple objects such that it's indeterminate which one 'Theseus II' picks out.
This lets us keep the intuition that it is indeterminate whether these outlying water droplets are members of the cloud without accepting that there are millions of clouds.
This argument differs from the standard version of Evans's argument by not depending upon identity-involving properties (e.g. being such that it is indeterminate whether she is Omega) to establish distinctness, and this removes some sources of controversy.
(A numerical sentence is a first-order sentence asserting the existence of some objects. For example, the numerical sentence that there exist at least two objects is: ∃x∃y(x ≠ y).) If van Inwagen is correct, it is indeterminate whether or not the relevant numerical sentence is true, in which case one of the constituent expressions—'∃', 'x', 'y', '~', '=' must be vague.
The nature of the structure is such that the identity statement "The building in which Smith is located is the building in which Jones is located" is neither true nor false because it is indeterminate whether Alpha Hall and Beta Hall count as two distinct buildings or merely as two parts of one and the same building.
The proto-hammer definitely exists, but it is a borderline case of composition: it is indeterminate whether the handle and head compose the proto-hammer or whether they instead compose nothing at all (in which case the proto-hammer has no parts).[20] Alternatively, one might resist C2 by pinning the vagueness on the quantifiers in the numerical sentence.
In the case of the cat paradox, matters are so arranged that a cat being dead or alive corresponds to the differing states of M. Thus, it seems, the act of observing the cat precipitates it from a strange zombie-like state in which it is indeterminate whether it is dead or alive to a state in which it is merely uncertain whether it is dead or alive.
