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  1. Does ontic indeterminacy in boundaries entail ontic indeterminacy in identity?Harold W. Noonan - 2008 - Analysis 68 (2):174-176.
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  • Composition.Daniel Z. Korman & Chad Carmichael - 2016 - Oxford Handbooks Online.
    When some objects are the parts of another object, they compose that object and that object is composite. This article is intended as an introduction to the central questions about composition and a highly selective overview of various answers to those questions. In §1, we review some formal features of parthood that are important for understanding the nature of composition. In §2, we consider some answers to the question: which pluralities of objects together compose something? As we will see, the (...)
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  • A defense of indeterminate distinctness.Ken Akiba - 2014 - Synthese 191 (15):3557-3573.
    On the one hand, philosophers have presented numerous apparent examples of indeterminate individuation, i.e., examples in which two things are neither determinately identical nor determinately distinct. On the other hand, some have argued against even the coherence of the very idea of indeterminate individuation. This paper defends the possibility of indeterminate individuation against Evans’s argument and some other arguments. The Determinacy of Identity—the thesis that identical things are determinately identical—is distinguished from the Determinacy of Distinctness—the thesis that distinct things are (...)
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  • Ordinary objects.Daniel Z. Korman - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    An encyclopedia entry which covers various revisionary conceptions of which macroscopic objects there are, and the puzzles and arguments that motivate these conceptions: sorites arguments, the argument from vagueness, the puzzles of material constitution, arguments against indeterminate identity, arguments from arbitrariness, debunking arguments, the overdetermination argument, and the problem of the many.
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  • Putting a Stake in Stakeholder Theory.Eric W. Orts & Alan Strudler - 2009 - Journal of Business Ethics 88 (S4):605 - 615.
    The primary appeal of stakeholder theory in business ethics derives from its promise to help solve two large and often morally difficult problems: (1) how to manage people fairly and efficiently and (2) how to determine the extent of a firm's moral responsibilities beyond its obligations to enhance its profits and economic value. This article investigates a variety of conceptual quandaries that stakeholder theory faces in addressing these two general problems. It argues that these quandaries pose intractable obstacles for stakeholder (...)
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  • The Argument from Vagueness.Daniel Z. Korman - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (10):891-901.
    A presentation of the Lewis-Sider argument from vagueness for unrestricted composition and possible responses.
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  • Vague Composition Without Vague Existence.Chad Carmichael - 2011 - Noûs 45 (2):315-327.
    David Lewis (1986) criticizes moderate views of composition on the grounds that a restriction on composition must be vague, and vague composition leads, via a precisificational theory of vagueness, to an absurd vagueness of existence. I show how to resist this argument. Unlike the usual resistance, however, I do not jettison precisificational views of vagueness. Instead, I blur the connection between composition and existence that Lewis assumes. On the resulting view, in troublesome cases of vague composition, there is an object, (...)
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  • Vague parts and vague identity.Elizabeth Barnes & J. R. G. Williams - 2009 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2):176-187.
    We discuss arguments against the thesis that the world itself can be vague. The first section of the paper distinguishes dialectically effective from ineffective arguments against metaphysical vagueness. The second section constructs an argument against metaphysical vagueness that promises to be of the dialectically effective sort: an argument against objects with vague parts. Firstly, cases of vague parthood commit one to cases of vague identity. But we argue that Evans' famous argument against will not on its own enable one to (...)
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  • Borderline Simple or Extremely Simple.Katherine Hawley - 2004 - The Monist 87 (3):385-404.
    In his Material Beings, Peter van Inwagen distinguishes two questions about parthood. What are the conditions necessary and sufficient for some things jointly to compose a whole? What are the conditions necessary and sufficient for a thing to have proper parts? The first of these, the Special Composition Question (SCQ), has been widely discussed, and David Lewis has argued that an important constraint on any answer to the SCQ is that it should not permit borderline cases of composition. This is (...)
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  • Ontic vagueness and metaphysical indeterminacy.J. Robert G. Williams - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (4):763-788.
    Might it be that world itself, independently of what we know about it or how we represent it, is metaphysically indeterminate? This article tackles in turn a series of questions: In what sorts of cases might we posit metaphysical indeterminacy? What is it for a given case of indefiniteness to be 'metaphysical'? How does the phenomenon relate to 'ontic vagueness', the existence of 'vague objects', 'de re indeterminacy' and the like? How might the logic work? Are there reasons for postulating (...)
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  • Multiple actualities and ontically vague identity.Robert Williams - 2008 - Philosophical Quarterly 58 (230):134-154.
    Although the Evans argument against vague identity has been much discussed, proposah for blocking it have not so far satisfied general conditions which any solution ought to meet. Moreover, the relation between ontically vague identity and ontic vagueness more generally has not yet been satisfactorily addressed. I advocate a way of resisting the Evans argument which satisfies the conditions. To show how this approach can vindicate particular cases of ontically vague identity, I develop a framework for describing ontic vagueness in (...)
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  • Is 'everything' precise?Dan López de Sa - 2006 - Dialectica 60 (4):397–409.
    There are certain metaphysically interesting arguments ‘from vagueness’, for unrestricted mereological composition and for four-dimensionalism, which involve a claim to the effect that idioms for unrestricted quantification are precise. An elaboration of Lewis’ argument for this claim, which assumes the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, is presented. It is argued that the argument also works according to other views on the nature of vagueness, which also require for an expression to be vague that there are different admissible alternatives of (...)
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  • The Argument from Determinate Vagueness.Jaime Castillo-Gamboa - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics.
    The Lewis-Sider argument from vagueness is one of the most powerful objections against restricted composition. Many have resisted the argument by rejecting its key premise, namely that existence is not vague. In this paper, I argue that this strategy is ineffective as a response to vagueness-based objections against restricted composition. To that end, I formulate a new argument against restricted composition: the argument from determinate vagueness. Unlike the Lewis-Sider argument, my argument doesn’t require accepting that existence is not vague, but (...)
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  • Derivative Indeterminacy.Kevin Richardson - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-17.
    Indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) if it has its source in the way the world is (rather than how it is represented or known). There are two questions we could ask about indeterminacy. First: does it exist? Second: is indeterminacy derivative? I focus on the second question. Specifically, I argue that (at least some) metaphysical indeterminacy can be derivative, where this roughly means that facts about indeterminacy are metaphysically grounded in facts about what is determinate.
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  • Exclusion and Erasure: Two Types of Ontological Opression.Kevin Richardson - 2022 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 9.
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  • Social construction and indeterminacy.Kevin Richardson - 2024 - Analytic Philosophy 65 (1):37-52.
    An increasing number of philosophers argue that indeterminacy is metaphysical (or worldly) in the sense that indeterminacy has its source in the world itself (rather than how the world is represented or known). The standard arguments for metaphysical indeterminacy are centered around the sorites paradox. In this essay, I present a novel argument for metaphysical indeterminacy. I argue that metaphysical indeterminacy follows from the existence of constitutive social construction; there is indeterminacy in the social world because there is indeterminacy in (...)
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  • Quantifier Variance, Vague Existence, and Metaphysical Vagueness.Rohan Sud - 2023 - Journal of Philosophy 120 (4):173-219.
    This paper asks: Is the quantifier variantist committed to metaphysical vagueness? My investigation of this question goes via a study of vague existence. I’ll argue that the quantifier variantist is committed to vague existence and that the vague existence posited by the variantist requires a puzzling sort of metaphysical vagueness. Specifically, I distinguish between (what I call) positive and negative metaphysical vagueness. Positive metaphysical vagueness is (roughly) the claim that there is vagueness in the world; negative metaphysical vagueness is (roughly) (...)
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  • The Metaphysics of gender is (Relatively) substantial.Kevin Richardson - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1):192-207.
    According to Sider, a question is metaphysically substantive just in case it has a single most natural answer. Recently, Barnes and Mikkola have argued that, given this notion of substantivity, many of the central questions in the metaphysics of gender are nonsubstantive. Specifically, it is plausible that gender pluralism—the view that there are multiple, equally natural gender kinds—is true, but this view seems incompatible with the substantivity of gender. The goal of this paper is to argue that the notion of (...)
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  • Creating abstract objects.David Friedell - 2021 - Philosophy Compass 16 (10):e12783.
    Beach's Gaelic Symphony is plausibly an abstract object that Beach created. The view that people create some abstract objects is called abstract creationism. There are abstract creationists about many kinds of objects, including musical works, fictional characters, arguments, words, internet memes, installation artworks, bitcoins, and restaurants. Alternative theories include materialism and Platonism. This paper discusses some of the most serious objections against abstract creationism. Arguably, these objections have ramifications for questions in metaphysics pertaining to the abstract/concrete distinction, time, causation, vague (...)
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  • Causal Exclusion and Ontic Vagueness.Kenneth Silver - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (1):56-69.
    The Causal Exclusion Problem is raised in many domains, including in the metaphysics of macroscopic objects. If there is a complete explanation of macroscopic effects in terms of the microscopic entities that compose macroscopic objects, then the efficacy of the macroscopic will be threatened with exclusion. I argue that we can avoid the problem if we accept that macroscopic objects are ontically vague. Then, it is indeterminate which collection of microscopic entities compose them, and so information about microscopic entities is (...)
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  • Against philosophical proofs against common sense.Louis Doulas & Evan Welchance - 2021 - Analysis 81 (2):207–215.
    Many philosophers think that common sense knowledge survives sophisticated philosophical proofs against it. Recently, however, Bryan Frances (forthcoming) has advanced a philosophical proof that he thinks common sense can’t survive. Exploiting philosophical paradoxes like the Sorites, Frances attempts to show how common sense leads to paradox and therefore that common sense methodology is unstable. In this paper, we show how Frances’s proof fails and then present Frances with a dilemma.
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  • Vague Objects and Vague Identity: New Essays on Ontic Vagueness.Ken Akiba & Ali Abasnezhad (eds.) - 2014 - Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer.
    This unique anthology of new, contributed essays offers a range of perspectives on various aspects of ontic vagueness. It seeks to answer core questions pertaining to onticism, the view that vagueness exists in the world itself. The questions to be addressed include whether vague objects must have vague identity, and whether ontic vagueness has a distinctive logic, one that is not shared by semantic or epistemic vagueness. The essays in this volume explain the motivations behind onticism, such as the plausibility (...)
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  • Applications and Extensions of Counterpart Theory.Peterson Bridgette - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
    An exploration of the details of counterpart theory, and some applications of the view. In Chapter 1, I set out the view and clarify the most important features: that the counterpart relation is a context dependent similarity relation, and that individuals are world-bound entities. I then set out what I take to be the most promising methods of filling in important details. Chapter 2 is a discussion of an alternative view, lump theory. I attempt to distinguish lump theory from counterpart (...)
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  • Music and Vague Existence.David Friedell - 2017 - Res Philosophica 94 (4):437-449.
    I explain a tension between musical creationism (the view that musical works are abstract artifacts) and the view that there is no vague existence. I then suggest ways to reconcile these views. My central conclusion is that, although some versions of musical creationism imply vague existence, others do not. I discuss versions of musical creationism held by Jerrold Levinson, Simon Evnine, and Kit Fine. I also present two new versions. I close by considering whether the tension is merely an instance (...)
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  • Castles Built on Clouds: Vague Identity and Vague Objects.Benjamin L. Curtis & Harold W. Noonan - 2014 - In Ken Akiba & Ali Abasnezhad (eds.), Vague Objects and Vague Identity: New Essays on Ontic Vagueness. Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer. pp. 305-326.
    Can identity itself be vague? Can there be vague objects? Does a positive answer to either question entail a positive answer to the other? In this paper we answer these questions as follows: No, No, and Yes. First, we discuss Evans’s famous 1978 argument and argue that the main lesson that it imparts is that identity itself cannot be vague. We defend the argument from objections and endorse this conclusion. We acknowledge, however, that the argument does not by itself establish (...)
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  • Don't Ask, Look! Linguistic Corpora as a Tool for Conceptual Analysis.Roland Bluhm - 2013 - In Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V. DuEPublico. pp. 7-15.
    Ordinary Language Philosophy has largely fallen out of favour, and with it the belief in the primary importance of analyses of ordinary language for philosophical purposes. Still, in their various endeavours, philosophers not only from analytic but also from other backgrounds refer to the use and meaning of terms of interest in ordinary parlance. In doing so, they most commonly appeal to their own linguistic intuitions. Often, the appeal to individual intuitions is supplemented by reference to dictionaries. In recent times, (...)
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  • Nonexistence, Vague Existence, Merely Possible Existence.Iris Einheuser - 2012 - Disputatio 4 (33):427-443.
    This paper explores a new non-deflationary approach to the puzzle of nonexistence and its cousins. On this approach, we can, under a plausible assumption, express true de re propositions about certain objects that don’t exist, exist indeterminately or exist merely possibly. The defense involves two steps: First, to argue that if we can actually designate what individuates a nonexistent target object with respect to possible worlds in which that object does exist, then we can express a de re proposition about (...)
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  • Arguments Against Metaphysical Indeterminacy and Vagueness.Elizabeth Barnes - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (11):953-964.
    In this article, I survey some of the major arguments against metaphysical indeterminacy and vagueness and outline potential responses.
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  • Mereological vagueness and existential vagueness.Maureen Donnelly - 2009 - Synthese 168 (1):53 - 79.
    It is often assumed that indeterminacy in mereological relations—in particular, indeterminacy in which collections of objects have fusions—leads immediately to indeterminacy in what objects there are in the world. This assumption is generally taken as a reason for rejecting mereological vagueness. The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between mereological vagueness and existential vagueness. I hope to show that the connection between the two forms of vagueness is not nearly so clear-cut as has been supposed.
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  • Vague fictional objects.Elisa Paganini - 2020 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (2):158-184.
    ABSTRACTI propose a different account of fictional objects from the ones already present in the literature. According to my account, fictional objects are culturally created abstract objects dependent for their existence on the pretence attitude adopted by a group of people towards a single fictional content. My work is divided into three parts: in the first one, I present how fictional objects come into existence according to my proposal; in the second part, I illustrate how the existence of fictional objects (...)
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  • In Defence of the Sensible Theory of Indeterminacy.Harold W. Noonan - 2013 - Metaphysica 14 (2):239-252.
    Can the world itself _be_ vague, so that rather than vagueness be a deficiency in our mode of describing the world, it is a necessary feature of any true description of it? Gareth Evans famously poses this question in his paper ‘Can There Be Vague Objects’ (Analysis 38(4):208, 1978 ). In his recent paper ‘Indeterminacy and Vagueness: Logic and Metaphysics’, Peter van Inwagen ( 2009 ) elaborates the account of vagueness and, in particular, in the case of sentences, consequent indeterminacy (...)
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  • Boundary.Achille C. Varzi - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    We think of a boundary whenever we think of an entity demarcated from its surroundings. There is a boundary (a line) separating Maryland and Pennsylvania. There is a boundary (a circle) isolating the interior of a disc from its exterior. There is a boundary (a surface) enclosing the bulk of this apple. Sometimes the exact location of a boundary is unclear or otherwise controversial (as when you try to trace out the margins of Mount Everest, or even the boundary of (...)
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  • Against the status response to the argument from Vagueness.David Mark Kovacs - 2022 - Synthese 200 (6):1-20.
    The Argument from Vagueness for Universalism contends that any non-arbitrary restriction on composition must be vague, but that vague composition leads to unacceptable count indeterminacy. One common response to the argument is that borderline cases of composition don’t necessarily lead to count indeterminacy because a determinately existing thing may be a borderline case of a presently existing concrete composite object. We can collectively refer to such views as versions of the Status Response. This paper argues that the Status Response cannot (...)
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  • Vague size predicates.Thomas Bittner - 2011 - Applied ontology 6 (4):317-343.
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  • (1 other version)Two Problems with the Socio-Relational Critique of Distributive Egalitarianism.Christian Seidel - 2013 - In Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley & Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was dürfen wir glauben? Was sollen wir tun? Sektionsbeiträge des achten internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie e.V. DuEPublico. pp. 525-535.
    Distributive egalitarians believe that distributive justice is to be explained by the idea of distributive equality (DE) and that DE is of intrinsic value. The socio-relational critique argues that distributive egalitarianism does not account for the “true” value of equality, which rather lies in the idea of “equality as a substantive social value” (ESV). This paper examines the socio-relational critique and argues that it fails because – contrary to what the critique presupposes –, first, ESV is not conceptually distinct from (...)
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  • Vagueness, Persistence and Indeterminate Identity.Kristie Miller - 2006 - Erkenntnis 64 (2):223-230.
    I argue that for those who follow Evans in finding indeterminacy of de re identity statements problematic, ontic vagueness within a three-dimensionalist metaphysics will raise some problems that are not faced by the four-dimensionalist. For the types of strategies used to avoid de re indeterminacy within the context of ontic vagueness at-at-time, that is, spatial vagueness, are problematic within a three-dimensionalist framework when put to use within the context of ontic vagueness across-time, that is temporal vagueness.
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  • Supersubstantivalism and vague location.Matt Leonard - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (11):3473-3488.
    One well-known objection to supersubstantivalism is that it is inconsistent with the contingency of location. This paper presents a new objection to supersubstantivalism: it is inconsistent with the vagueness of location. Though contingency and vagueness are formally similar, there are important philosophical differences between the two. As a result, the objection from vague location will be structurally different than the objection from contingent location. The paper explores these differences and then defends the argument that supersubstantivalism is inconsistent with the plausible (...)
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  • Vagueness, phenomenal concepts and mind-brain identity.Jose Luis Bermudez - 2004 - Analysis 64 (2):134-139.
    In Thinking about Consciousness David Papineau develops a position that combines the following four theses: A) Phenomenal properties exist. B) Any phenomenal property is identical to some material property. C) Phenomenal concepts refer to material properties that are identical to phenomenal properties. D) Phenomenal concepts are vague. The overall position is intended to do justice to materialism (in virtue of (B) and (C)), while at the same time accommodating the concerns both of those impressed by the Knowledge Argument and related (...)
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  • Indeterminate Comprehension.Jonathan A. Simon - 2014 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 3 (1):39-48.
    Can we solve the Problem of the Many, and give a general account of the indeterminacy in definite descriptions that give rise to it, by appealing to metaphysically indeterminate entities? I argue that we cannot. I identify a feature common to the relevant class of definite descriptions, and derive a contradiction from the claim that each such description is satisfied by a metaphysically indeterminate entity.
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