Published 2018-05-01
Keywords
- Vagueness,
- Philosophy of Language,
- Instrumentalism
- Vaguedad,
- FilosofÃa del lenguaje,
- Instrumentalismo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
It is notoriously difficult to model the range of application of vague predicates relative to a suitable sorites series. In this paper I offer some critical remarks against an interesting view that has received little attention in the literature. According to it, the sharp cut-offs we find in our semantic models are just artifacts of the theory, and, as such, they are harmless. At the end I discuss a contextualist view that, at a cost, may be able to get around the problems related to sharp cut-offs incurred in by other theories of vagueness.
References
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Williamson, T. (1994), Vagueness, London, Routledge.
Wright, C. (1987), “Further Reections on the Sorites Paradox”, Philosophical Topics, 15 (1), pp. 227-290.
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Zardini, E. (2013), “Higher-Order Sorites Paradox”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 42 (1), pp. 25-48.
Beall, J. C. (ed.) (2003), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on the Semantics of Paradox, Oxford, Clarendon Press.
Bobzien, S. (2013), “Higher-Order Vagueness and Borderline Nestings: A Persistent Confusion”, Analytic Philosophy, 54 (1), pp. 1-43.
Bobzien, S. (2015), “Columnar Higher-Order Vagueness, or Vagueness is Higher-Order Vagueness”, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 89, pp. 61-87.
Cobreros, P. (2011), “Supervaluationism and Fara’s Argument concerning Higher-Order Vagueness” in Vagueness and language use, London, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 207-221.
Cook, R. T. (2002), “Vagueness and Mathematical Precision”, Mind, 111 (442), pp. 225-248.
Edgington, D. (1997), “Vagueness by Degrees”, in Keefe, R. and Smith, P. (eds.), Vagueness: A Reader, Cambridge, The MIT Press, pp. 294-316.
Fara, D. G. (2003), “Gap Principles, Penumbral Consequence, and Infinitely Higher-Order Vagueness”, in Beall, J. C. (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on the Semantics of Paradox, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 195-221.
Fara, D. G. (2010), Truth in a Region: Vagueness and Language Use, Oxford, Palgrave Macmillan.
Fine, K. (1975), “Vagueness, Truth and Logic”, Synthese, 30 (3), pp. 265-300.
Fine, K. (2008), “The Impossibility of Vagueness”, Philosophical Perspectives, 22 (1), pp. 111-136.
Gómez-Torrente, M. (2002), “Vagueness and Margin for Error Principles”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 64 (1), pp. 107-125.
Gómez-Torrente, M. (2010), “The Sorites, Linguistic Preconceptions, and the Dual Picture of Vagueness” in Dietz, R. and Moruzzi, S. (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, Its Nature and Its Logic, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 228-253.
Gómez-Torrente, M. (2017), “The Sorites, Context Fixing, and the Roots of Paradox” in On the Sorites Paradox, Springer (Forthcoming).
Heck, R. (2003), “Semantic Accounts of Vagueness” in Beall, J. C. (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on the Semantics of Paradox, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 106-127.
Keefe, R. (2012), “Modelling Vagueness: What Can We Ignore?”, Philosophical Studies, 161 (3), pp. 453-470.
Machina, K. F. (1976), “Truth, Belief, and Vagueness”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 5 (1), pp. 47-78.
Manor, R. (2006), “Solving the Heap”, Synthese, 153 (2), pp. 171-186.
Pagin, P. (2010), “Vagueness and Central Gaps” in Dietz, R. and Moruzzi, S. (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, Its Nature and Its Logic, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 254-272.
Priest, G. (2003), “A site for Sorites”, in Beall, J. C. (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on the Semantics of Paradox, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 9-23.
Raffman, D. (2014), Unruly Words: A Study of Vague Language, New York, Oxford University Press.
Rayo, A. (2008), “Vague Representation”, Mind, 117 (466), pp. 329-373.
Sainsbury, R. M. (1996), “Concepts without Boundaries” in Keefe, R. and Smith, P. (eds.), Vagueness: A Reader, Cambridge, The MIT Press, pp. 251-264.
Smith, N. J. (2008), Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Soames, S. (2003), “Higher-Order Vagueness for Partially Defined Predicates” in Beall, J. C. (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on the Semantics of Paradox, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 128-150.
Sorensen, R. (2001), Vagueness and contradiction, Oxford University Press.
Stalnaker, R. (1991), “The problem of logical omniscience, I”, Synthese, 89 (3), pp. 425-440.
Tye, M. (1994), “Sorites Paradoxes and the Semantics of Vagueness”, Philosophical Perspectives, 8, pp. 189-206.
Weatherson, B. (2010), “Vagueness as indeterminacy” in Dietz, R. and Moruzzi, S. (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, Its Nature and Its Logic, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 77-90.
Williamson, T. (1994), Vagueness, London, Routledge.
Wright, C. (1987), “Further Reections on the Sorites Paradox”, Philosophical Topics, 15 (1), pp. 227-290.
Wright, C. (2010). “The Illusion of Higher-Order Vagueness” in Dietz, R. and Moruzzi, S. (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vagueness, Its Nature and Its Logic, New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 523-549.
Zardini, E. (2013), “Higher-Order Sorites Paradox”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 42 (1), pp. 25-48.