· The Question: Suppose that you have two buckets of sand, bucket A and bucket B. Bucket A contains a certain volume of pure white sand, and Bucket B contains exactly the same volume of pure black sand. Now suppose you take a teaspoon of sand from bucket A and pour it into bucket B, and stir bucket B thoroughly; then take a teaspoon of sand from bucket B and pour it back into bucket A. After doing this, does bucket A have more black sand, or does bucket B have more white sand? (i.e. which bucket has more impurities in it)?
· Argument I: Both buckets end up with the same volume of sand that they started with, and so the amount of white sand that was transferred from bucket A to bucket B must match the amount of black sand which was transferred from bucket B to bucket A. Thus both buckets contain the same amount of impurities.
· For the countervailing argument, click here.