Contents
32 found
Order:
  1. Neutralism and the Observational Sorites Paradox.Patrick Greenough - manuscript
    Neutralism is the broad view that philosophical progress can take place when (and sometimes only when) a thoroughly neutral, non-specific theory, treatment, or methodology is adopted. The broad goal here is to articulate a distinct, specific kind of sorites paradox (The Observational Sorites Paradox) and show that it can be effectively treated via Neutralism.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  2. Not much higher-order vagueness in Williamson’s ’logic of clarity’.Nasim Mahoozi & Thomas Mormann - manuscript
    This paper deals with higher-order vagueness in Williamson's 'logic of clarity'. Its aim is to prove that for 'fixed margin models' (W,d,α ,[ ]) the notion of higher-order vagueness collapses to second-order vagueness. First, it is shown that fixed margin models can be reformulated in terms of similarity structures (W,~). The relation ~ is assumed to be reflexive and symmetric, but not necessarily transitive. Then, it is shown that the structures (W,~) come along with naturally defined maps h and s (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3. (1 other version)Williamson’s Epistemicism and Properties Accounts of Predicates.Paul Teller - manuscript
    If the semantic value of predicates are, as Williamson assumes, properties, then epistemicism is immediate. Epistemicism fails, so also this properties view of predicates. I use examination of Williamsons position as a foil, showing that his two positive arguments for bivalence fail, and that his efforts to rescue epistemicism from obvious problems fail to the point of incoherence. In Part II I argue that, despite the properties view’s problems, it has an important role to play in combinatorial semantics. We may (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Vague Disagreements and the Sorites Paradox.Ted Everett - forthcoming - In Bueno Otavio & Abasnezhad Ali (eds.), Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science 33: On the Sorites Paradox. Springer.
    When you and I seriously argue over whether a man of seventy is old enough to count as an "old man", it seems that we are appealing neither to our own separate standards of oldness nor to a common standard that is already fixed in the language. Instead, it seems that both of us implicitly invoke an ideal, shared standard that has yet to be agreed upon: the place where we ought to draw the line. As with other normative standards, (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. Knowing What One Likes: Epistemicist Solution to Faultless Disagreement.Maciej Tarnowski - forthcoming - Acta Analytica.
    In this paper, I argue that the phenomenon of faultless disagreement for predicates of taste may be fruitfully explained by appealing to the vagueness of predicates of taste and the epistemicist reading of vagueness as defended by Timothy Williamson (1994). I begin by arguing that this position is better suited to explain both the “faultless” and “disagreement” intuition. The first is explained here by appealing to the necessary ignorance of the predicate’s boundaries and a plausible account of constitutive norms of (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. The omniscient speaker puzzle.Aleksander Domosławski - 2024 - Synthese 203 (65):1-16.
    The epistemicist theory aims to explain ignorance due to vagueness by semantic plasticity: the shiftiness of intensions across close possible worlds resulting from shiftiness in usage. This explanation is challenged by the Omniscient Speaker Puzzle (Sennet in Philos Stud 161(2):273–285, 2012). Suppose that an omniscient speaker, Barney, who knows all the facts about usage and how these facts determine the intensions of expressions, cooks up a scheme to stabilise the intension of a normally semantically plastic term like ‘rich’. It seems (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Epistemicism without metalinguistic safety.Justin Khoo - 2023 - In Abrol Fairweather & Carlos Montemayor (eds.), Linguistic Luck: Safeguards and Threats to Linguistic Communication. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Epistemicists claim that vague predicates have precise but unknow- able cutoffs. I argue against against the standard, Williamsonian, answer, that appeals to metalinguistic safety: we can know that p even if our true belief that p is metalinguistically lucky. I then propose that epistemicists should be diagonalized epistemicists and show how this alternative formulation of the view avoids the chal- lenge. However, in an M. Night Shyamalan-style twist, I then argue we should not be diagonalized epistemicists either.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. The Varieties of Agnosticism.Filippo Ferrari & Luca Incurvati - 2021 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (2):365-380.
    We provide a framework for understanding agnosticism. The framework accounts for the varieties of agnosticism while vindicating the unity of the phenomenon. This combination of unity and plurality is achieved by taking the varieties of agnosticism to be represented by several agnostic stances, all of which share a common core provided by what we call the minimal agnostic attitude. We illustrate the fruitfulness of the framework by showing how it can be applied to several philosophical debates. In particular, several philosophical (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  9. Vagueness and the Logic of the World.Zack Garrett - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
    In this dissertation, I argue that vagueness is a metaphysical phenomenon---that properties and objects can be vague---and propose a trivalent theory of vagueness meant to account for the vagueness in the world. In the first half, I argue against the theories that preserve classical logic. These theories include epistemicism, contextualism, and semantic nihilism. My objections to these theories are independent of considerations of the possibility that vagueness is a metaphysical phenomenon. However, I also argue that these theories are not capable (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Topological Models of Columnar Vagueness.Thomas Mormann - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (2):693 - 716.
    This paper intends to further the understanding of the formal properties of (higher-order) vagueness by connecting theories of (higher-order) vagueness with more recent work in topology. First, we provide a “translation” of Bobzien's account of columnar higher-order vagueness into the logic of topological spaces. Since columnar vagueness is an essential ingredient of her solution to the Sorites paradox, a central problem of any theory of vagueness comes into contact with the modern mathematical theory of topology. Second, Rumfitt’s recent topological reconstruction (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  11. Theories of vagueness and theories of law.Alex Silk - 2019 - Legal Theory 25 (2):132-152.
    It is common to think that what theory of linguistic vagueness is correct has implications for debates in philosophy of law. I disagree. I argue that the implications of particular theories of vagueness on substantive issues of legal theory and practice are less far-reaching than often thought. I focus on four putative implications discussed in the literature concerning (i) the value of vagueness in the law, (ii) the possibility and value of legal indeterminacy, (iii) the possibility of the rule of (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. Модальности как фундаментальный элемент реальности: обзор книги «Williamson on Modality». [REVIEW]Lev Lamberov - 2018 - ФИЛОСОФИЯ НАУКИ 77:158-171.
    The paper provides a review of the collection of scientific works «Williamson on Modality» and contains a brief summary of the main ideas of the articles published in the book.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. Vagueness & Modality—An Ecumenical Approach.Jon Erling Litland & Juhani Yli-Vakkuri - 2016 - Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1):229-269.
    How does vagueness interact with metaphysical modality and with restrictions of it, such as nomological modality? In particular, how do definiteness, necessity (understood as restricted in some way or not), and actuality interact? This paper proposes a model-theoretic framework for investigating the logic and semantics of that interaction. The framework is put forward in an ecumenical spirit: it is intended to be applicable to all theories of vagueness that express vagueness using a definiteness (or: determinacy) operator. We will show how (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  14. Reply to Yli-Vakkuri.Timothy Williamson - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (4-5):839-851.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  15. Epistemicism and modality.Juhani Yli-Vakkuri - 2016 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (4-5):803-835.
    What kind of semantics should someone who accepts the epistemicist theory of vagueness defended in Timothy Williamson’s Vagueness (1994) give a definiteness operator? To impose some interesting constraints on acceptable answers to this question, I will assume that the object language also contains a metaphysical necessity operator and a metaphysical actuality operator. I will suggest that the answer is to be found by working within a three-dimensional model theory. I will provide sketches of two ways of extracting an epistemicist semantics (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  16. Epistemicism and the Liar.Jamin Asay - 2015 - Synthese 192 (3):679-699.
    One well known approach to the soritical paradoxes is epistemicism, the view that propositions involving vague notions have definite truth values, though it is impossible in principle to know what they are. Recently, Paul Horwich has extended this approach to the liar paradox, arguing that the liar proposition has a truth value, though it is impossible to know which one it is. The main virtue of the epistemicist approach is that it need not reject classical logic, and in particular the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  17. I—Columnar Higher-Order Vagueness, or Vagueness is Higher-Order Vagueness.Susanne Bobzien - 2015 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 89 (1):61-87.
    Most descriptions of higher-order vagueness in terms of traditional modal logic generate so-called higher-order vagueness paradoxes. The one that doesn't is problematic otherwise. Consequently, the present trend is toward more complex, non-standard theories. However, there is no need for this.In this paper I introduce a theory of higher-order vagueness that is paradox-free and can be expressed in the first-order extension of a normal modal system that is complete with respect to single-domain Kripke-frame semantics. This is the system QS4M+BF+FIN. It corresponds (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  18. Vague Objects with Sharp Boundaries.Jiri Benovsky - 2014 - Ratio 28 (1):29-39.
    In this article I shall consider two seemingly contradictory claims: first, the claim that everybody who thinks that there are ordinary objects has to accept that they are vague, and second, the claim that everybody has to accept the existence of sharp boundaries to ordinary objects. The purpose of this article is of course not to defend a contradiction. Indeed, there is no contradiction because the two claims do not concern the same ‘everybody’. The first claim, that all ordinary objects (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  19. Qu'est-ce qu'une montagne ? [What is a mountain?].Olivier Massin - 2014 - In Olivier Massin & Anne Meylan (eds.), Aristote chez les Helvètes: Douze essais de métaphysique helvétique. Ithaque.
    The thesis defended is that at a certain arbitrary level of granularity, mountains have sharp, bona fide boundaries. In reply to arguments advanced by Varzi (2001), Smith & Mark (2001, 2003) I argue that the lower limit of a mountain is neither vague nor fiat. Relying on early works by Cayley (1859), Maxwell (1870) and Jordan (1872), this lower limit consists in the lines of watercourse which are defined as the lines of slope starting at passes. Such lines are metaphysically (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. The Problem with Truthmaker-Gap Epistemicism.Mark Jago - 2012 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 1 (4):320-329.
    Epistemicism about vagueness is the view that vagueness, or indeterminacy, is an epistemic matter. Truthmaker-gap epistemicism is the view that indeterminate truths are indeterminate because their truth is not grounded by any worldly fact. Both epistemicism in general and truthmaker-gap epistemicism originated in Roy Sorensen's work on vagueness. My aim in this paper is to give a characterization of truthmaker-gap epistemicism and argue that the view is incompatible with higher-order vagueness: vagueness in whether some case of the form ‘it is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  21. Vagueness : a statistical epistemicist approach.Jiri Benovsky - 2011 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy (3):97-112.
    There are three main traditional accounts of vagueness : one takes it as a genuinely metaphysical phenomenon, one takes it as a phenomenon of ignorance, and one takes it as a linguistic or conceptual phenomenon. In this paper I first very briefly present these views, especially the epistemicist and supervaluationist strategies, and shortly point to some well-known problems that the views carry. I then examine a 'statistical epistemicist' account of vagueness that is designed to avoid precisely these problems – it (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  22. If It's Clear, Then It's Clear That It's Clear, or is It? Higher-Order Vagueness and the S4 Axiom.Susanne Bobzien - 2011 - In Ben Morison & Katerina Ierodiakonou (eds.), Episteme, etc.: Essays in honour of Jonathan Barnes. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    The purpose of this paper is to challenge some widespread assumptions about the role of the modal axiom 4 in a theory of vagueness. In the context of vagueness, axiom 4 usually appears as the principle ‘If it is clear (determinate, definite) that A, then it is clear (determinate, definite) that it is clear (determinate, definite) that A’, or, more formally, CA → CCA. We show how in the debate over axiom 4 two different notions of clarity are in play (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  23. Truthmakers, paradox and plausibility.Bradley Armour-Garb & James A. Woodbridge - 2010 - Analysis 70 (1):11-23.
    In a series of articles, Dan Lopez De Sa and Elia Zardini argue that several theorists have recently employed instances of paradoxical reasoning, while failing to see its problematic nature because it does not immediately (or obviously) yield inconsistency. In contrast, Lopez De Sa and Zardini claim that resultant inconsistency is not a necessary condition for paradoxicality. It is our contention that, even given their broader understanding of paradox, their arguments fail to undermine the instances of reasoning they attack, either (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  24. Saying More (or Less) than One Thing.Andrea Iacona - 2010 - In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
    In a paper called 'Definiteness and Knowability', Tim Williamson addresses the question whether one must accept that vagueness is an epistemic phenomenon if one adopts classical logic and a disquotational principle for truth. Some have suggested that one must not, hence that classical logic and the disquotational principle may be preserved without endorsing epistemicism. Williamson’s paper, however, finds ‘no plausible way of substantiating that possibility’. Its moral is that ‘either classical logic fails, or the disquotational principle does, or vagueness is (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  25. Vagueness.Varol Akman - 2006 - In A. C. Grayling, Andrew Pyle & Naomi Goulder (eds.), The Continuum encyclopedia of British philosophy. Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum. pp. 3260-3261.
    Vagueness, 'the quality or condition of being vague' (OED), has kept philosophers busy since ancient times. This article gives a concise account of vagueness.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  26. 4. Contradictorial Gradualism Vs. Discontinuism: Two Views On Fuzziness And The Transition Problem.Marcelo VÁsconez - 2006 - Logique Et Analyse 49 (195).
    The dissertation has two parts, each dealing with a problem, namely: 1) What is the most adequate account of fuzziness -the so-called phenomenon of vagueness?, and 2) what is the most plausible solution to the sorites, or heap paradox? I will try to show that fuzzy properties are those which are gradual, amenable to be possessed in a greater or smaller extent. Acknowledgement of degrees in the instantiation of a property allows for a gradual transition from one opposite to the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. Fuzziness and the sorites paradox.Marcelo Vasconez - 2006 - Dissertation, Catholic University of Louvain
    The dissertation has two parts, each dealing with a problem, namely: 1) What is the most adequate account of fuzziness -the so-called phenomenon of vagueness?, and 2) what is the most plausible solution to the sorites, or heap paradox? I will try to show that fuzzy properties are those which are gradual, amenable to be possessed in a greater or smaller extent. Acknowledgement of degrees in the instantiation of a property allows for a gradual transition from one opposite to the (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Vagueness and Normativity.Avram Hiller - 2005 - Dissertation, Duke University
    [Author's note: I am posting this dissertation since it may be of interest to some people working on vagueness and related topics. It does not represent my current views on the topic. I have never attempted to publish any of this work, though I hope some day to return to it.] -/- Philosophers have devoted a lot of attention to vagueness in recent years, but there is still no general consensus about how to resolve the Sorites paradox. Timothy Williamson‘s epistemic (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. (1 other version)Temporal externalism and epistemic theories of vagueness.Henry Jackman - 2004 - Philosophical Studies 117 (1-2):79-94.
    'Epistemic' theories of vagueness notoriously claim that (despite the appearances to the contrary) all of our vague terms have sharp boundaries, it's just that we can't know what they are. Epistemic theories are typically criticized for failing to explain (1) the source of the ignorance postulated, and (2) how our terms could come to have such precise boundaries. Both of these objections will, however, be shown to rest on certain 'presentist' assumptions about the relation between use and meaning, and if (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  30. Epistemicism, parasites, and vague names.Brian Weatherson - 2003 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2):276 – 279.
    John Burgess has recently argued that Timothy Williamson’s attempts to avoid the objection that his theory of vagueness is based on an untenable metaphysics of content are unsuccessful. Burgess’s arguments are important, and largely correct, but there is a mistake in the discussion of one of the key examples. In this note I provide some alternative examples and use them to repair the mistaken section of the argument.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  31. Vagueness and contradiction. [REVIEW]Brian Weatherson - 2003 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2):290 – 292.
    Book Information Vagueness and Contradiction. Vagueness and Contradiction Roy Sorensen Oxford Clarendon Press 2001 208 £25 By Roy Sorensen. Clarendon Press. Oxford. Pp. 208. £25.
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  32. Chrysippus and the epistemic theory of vagueness.Susanne Bobzien - 2002 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1):217-238.
    ABSTRACT: Recently a bold and admirable interpretation of Chrysippus’ position on the Sorites has been presented, suggesting that Chrysippus offered a solution to the Sorites by (i) taking an epistemicist position1 which (ii) made allowances for higher-order vagueness. In this paper I argue (i) that Chrysippus did not take an epistemicist position, but − if any − a non-epistemic one which denies truth-values to some cases in a Sorites-series, and (ii) that it is uncertain whether and how he made allowances (...)
    Remove from this list   Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations