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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology
It might seem trivial when debating silly topics, but when you get to the actual structure of reality, debating where one thing ends and another begins is really interesting.
I’m fine with their first consideration: > A salad must be a mixture of greens. The only additional realization you need is that things like “fruit salad” and “chicken salad” are using the word “salad” figuratively . There’s no reason to expect our definition of “salad” to cover figurative usage. After all, do you really expect to cover, for instance, “word salad”?
But taking it seriously, a word like "salad" is best understood, IMO, as a family resemblance [0]: a group of inconsistently overlapping properties. Or, you could understand it functionally/pragmatically (a salad is what I order when I want a salad), where the meaning is not derived from an internal property but from the social system that produced it.
For salad or sandwich, it's all rather unimportant, naturally. But I do think taking this step back and questioning what it even means for an utterance to have meaning can help dissolve some serious and otherwise contentious philosophical issues. ("Intelligence" seems to be a rather relevant example.)
Mathematical definition is enchanting to those of us with an inclination towards abstraction. But just because it's a noun doesn't mean it's a thing --- or at least, not a thing independently of the speaker and their community of speakers.
With this in mind it's more clear to me what a salad is. First you have to understand that we are talking about food preparations. A salad is not just raw ingredients on a plate. It is explicitly a preparation. Most preparations are cooked, but a salad is merely salted, or sauced, which itself contains salt.
I don't think actual salt is necessarily required, but you do need something to "bring together" the ingredients into a salad. A balsamic glaze is a good option if you are avoiding salt.
I’m fine with their first consideration: > A salad must be a mixture of greens. The only additional realization you need is that things like “fruit salad” and “chicken salad” are using the word “salad” figuratively . There’s no reason to expect our definition of “salad” to cover figurative usage. After all, do you really expect to cover, for instance, “word salad”?
So I ask first to properly have Soup Theory before using it in relation of describing things like salads.
An untossed salad is an object which is like a salad, but that is not tossed. This means a salad must be tossed.
If a salad can become soup depending on how much dressing you add, where do you think the actual boundary is?
When does a soup become a smoothie (or vice versa)?