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  1. Indiscernibility and the Grounds of Identity.Samuel Z. Elgin - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-23.
    I provide a theory of the metaphysical foundations of identity: an account what grounds facts of the form a=b. In particular, I defend the claim that indiscernibility grounds identity. This is typically rejected because it is viciously circular; plausible assumptions about the logic of ground entail that the fact that a=b partially grounds itself. The theory I defend is immune to this circularity.
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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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  • Classical Opacity.Michael Caie, Jeremy Goodman & Harvey Lederman - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (3):524-566.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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  • More on 'A Liar Paradox'.Richard G. Heck - 2012 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 1 (4):270-280.
    A reply to two responses to an earlier paper, "A Liar Paradox".
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  • Vagueness and the Philosophy of Perception.Ryan Perkins - 2012 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    This dissertation explores several illuminating points of intersection between the philosophy of perception and the philosophy of vagueness. Among other things, I argue: (i) that it is entirely unhelpful to theorize about perception or consciousness using Nagelian "what it's like" talk; (ii) that a popular recent account of perceptual phenomenology (representationalism) conflicts with our best theory of vagueness (supervaluationism); (iii) that there are no vague properties, for Evans-esque reasons; (iv) that it is impossible to insert "determinacy" operators into representationalism in (...)
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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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  • A Logic for Frege's Theorem.Richard Heck - 1999 - In Richard G. Heck (ed.), Frege’s Theorem: An Introduction. The Harvard Review of Philosophy.
    It has been known for a few years that no more than Pi-1-1 comprehension is needed for the proof of "Frege's Theorem". One can at least imagine a view that would regard Pi-1-1 comprehension axioms as logical truths but deny that status to any that are more complex—a view that would, in particular, deny that full second-order logic deserves the name. Such a view would serve the purposes of neo-logicists. It is, in fact, no part of my view that, say, (...)
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  • Deconstructing Ontological Vagueness.Matti Eklund - 2008 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (1):117-140.
    I will here present a number of problems concerning the idea that there is ontological vagueness, and the related claim that appeal to this idea can help solve some vagueness-related problems. A theme underlying the discussion will be the distinction between vagueness specifically and indeterminacy more generally (and, relatedly, the distinction between ontological vagueness and ontological indeterminacy). Even if the world is somehow ontologically indeterminate it by no means follows that it is, properly speaking, ontologically vague.1..
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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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  • Why sense cannot be made of vague identity.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2008 - Noûs 42 (1):1–16.
    In this paper I present a new argument against vague identity — one that is more fundamental than existing arguments — and I also try to explain why we find the idea of vague identity puzzling, in a way that will dispel the puzzlement. In brief, my argument is this: to make clear sense of something, one must at least model it set-theoretically; but due to the special place of identity in set-theoretic models, any vague relation that one does model (...)
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  • Weakly Classical Theories of Identity.Joshua Schechter - 2011 - Review of Symbolic Logic 4 (4):607-644.
    There are well-known quasi-formal arguments that identity is a "strict" relation in at least the following three senses: (1) There is a single identity relation and a single distinctness relation; (2) There are no contingent cases of identity or distinctness; and (3) There are no vague or indeterminate cases of identity or distinctness. However, the situation is less clear cut than it at first may appear. There is a natural formal theory of identity that is very close to the standard (...)
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  • Vague Objects Without Ontically Indeterminate Identity.Elisa Paganini - 2011 - Erkenntnis 74 (3):351-362.
    The supporter of vague objects has been long challenged by the following ‘Argument from Identity’: 1) if there are vague objects, then there is ontically indeterminate identity; 2) there is no ontically indeterminate identity; therefore, 3) there are no vague objects. Some supporters of vague objects have argued that 1) is false. Noonan (Analysis 68: 174–176, 2008) grants that 1) does not hold in general, but claims that ontically indeterminate identity is indeed implied by the assumption that there are vague (...)
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  • Is indeterminate identity incoherent?Richard Heck - manuscript
    In "Counting and Indeterminate Identity", N. Ángel Pinillos develops an argument that there can be no cases of `Split Indeterminate Identity'. Such a case would be one in which it was indeterminate whether a=b and indeterminate whether a=c, but determinately true that b≠c. The interest of the argument lies, in part, in the fact that it appears to appeal to none of the controversial claims to which similar arguments due to Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon appeal. I argue for two (...)
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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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  • 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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  • Deflationism and Referential Indeterminacy.David E. Taylor - 2016 - Philosophical Review 126 (1):43-79.
    This essay argues that deflationism is incompatible with the phenomenon of referential indeterminacy. This puts the deflationist in the difficult position of having to deny the possibility of what otherwise seems like a manifest and theoretically important phenomenon. Section 1 provides background on deflationism. Section 2 considers an intuitive argument by Stephen Leeds to the effect that deflationism precludes RI; the essay argues that this argument does not succeed. The rest of the essay presents its own, distinct argument for the (...)
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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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  • (1 other version)Semantic Accounts of Vagueness.Richard Heck - 2003 - In J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on Paradox. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 106-27.
    Read as a comment on Crispin Wright's \"Vagueness: A Fifth Column Approach\", this paper defends a form of supervaluationism against Wright's criticisms. Along the way, however, it takes up the question what is really wrong with Epistemicism, how the appeal of the Sorities ought properly to be understood, and why Contextualist accounts of vagueness won't do.
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