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  1. 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 (...)
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  • Post-perceptual confidence and supervaluative matching profile.Tony Cheng - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (3):249-277.
    ABSTRACT Issues concerning the putative perception/cognition divide are not only age-old, but also resurface in contemporary discussions in various forms. In this paper, I connect a relatively new debate concerning perceptual confidence to the perception/cognition divide. The term ‘perceptual confidence’ is quite common in the empirical literature, but there is an unsettled question about it, namely: are confidence assignments perceptual or post-perceptual? John Morrison in two recent papers puts forward the claim that confidence arises already at the level of perception. (...)
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  • Probability and nonclassical logic.Robert Williams - 2016 - In Alan Hájek & Christopher Hitchcock (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  • Plurivaluationism, supersententialism and the problem of the many languages.Rohan Sud - 2020 - Synthese 197 (4):1697-1723.
    According to the plurivaluationist, our vague discourse doesn’t have a single meaning. Instead, it has many meanings, each of which is precise—and it is this plurality of meanings that is the source of vagueness. I believe plurivaluationist positions are underdeveloped and for this reason unpopular. This paper attempts to correct this situation by offering a particular development of plurivaluationism that I call supersententialism. The supersententialist leverages lessons from another area of research—the Problem of the Many—in service of the plurivaluationist position. (...)
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  • Russell and Bradley: Rehabilitating the Creation Narrative of Analytic Philosophy.Samuel Lebens - 2017 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (7).
    According to Stewart Candlish, Russell and Moore had misunderstood F. H. Bradley’s monism. According to Jonathan Schaffer, they had misunderstood monism more generally. A key thread of the creation narrative of analytic philosophy, according to which Russell and Moore successfully undermined monism to give rise to a new movement is, therefore, in doubt. In this paper, I defend the standard narrative against those who seek to revise it.
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  • Vagueness and Aggregation in Multiple Sender Channels.Jonathan Lawry & Oliver James - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (5):1123-1160.
    Vagueness is an extremely common feature of natural language, but does it actually play a positive, efficiency enhancing, role in communication? Adopting a probabilistic interpretation of vague terms, we propose that vagueness might act as a source of randomness when deciding what to assert. In this context we investigate the efficacy of multiple sender channels in which senders choose assertions stochastically according to vague definitions of the relevant words, and a receiver then aggregates the different signals. These vague channels are (...)
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  • What Verities May Be.Igor Douven & Lieven Decock - 2017 - Mind 126 (502):386-428.
    Edgington has proposed a solution to the sorites paradox in terms of ‘verities’, which she defines as degrees of closeness to clear truth. Central to her solution is the assumption that verities are formally probabilities. She is silent on what verities might derive from and on why they should be probabilities. This paper places Edgington’s solution in the framework of a spatial approach to conceptualization, arguing that verities may be conceived of as deriving from how our concepts relate to each (...)
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  • 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.
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  • Vagueness as Indecision.J. Robert G. Williams - 2016 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 90 (1):285-309.
    This essay explores the thesis that for vague predicates, uncertainty over whether a borderline instance x of red/large/tall/good is to be understood as practical uncertainty over whether to treat x as red/large/tall/good. Expressivist and quasi-realist treatments of vague predicates due to John MacFarlane and Daniel Elstein provide the stalking-horse. It examines the notion of treating/counting a thing as F , and links a central question about our attitudes to vague predications to normative evaluation of plans to treat a thing as (...)
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  • Degrees of belief, expected and actual.Rosanna Keefe - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):3789-3800.
    A framework of degrees of belief, or credences, is often advocated to model our uncertainty about how things are or will turn out. It has also been employed in relation to the kind of uncertainty or indefiniteness that arises due to vagueness, such as when we consider “a is F” in a case where a is borderline F. How should we understand degrees of belief when we take into account both these phenomena? Can the right kind of theory of the (...)
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  • Imprecise Probability and Higher Order Vagueness.Susanne Rinard - 2017 - Res Philosophica 94 (2):257-273.
    There is a trade-off between specificity and accuracy in existing models of belief. Descriptions of agents in the tripartite model, which recognizes only three doxastic attitudes—belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment—are typically accurate, but not sufficiently specific. The orthodox Bayesian model, which requires real-valued credences, is perfectly specific, but often inaccurate: we often lack precise credences. I argue, first, that a popular attempt to fix the Bayesian model by using sets of functions is also inaccurate, since it requires us to (...)
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  • Nonclassical Minds and Indeterminate Survival.J. Robert G. Williams - 2014 - Philosophical Review 123 (4):379-428.
    Revisionary theories of logic or truth require revisionary theories of mind. This essay outlines nonclassically based theories of rational belief, desire, and decision making, singling out the supervaluational family for special attention. To see these nonclassical theories of mind in action, this essay examines a debate between David Lewis and Derek Parfit over what matters in survival. Lewis argued that indeterminacy in personal identity allows caring about psychological connectedness and caring about personal identity to amount to the same thing. The (...)
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  • Unexpected Expectations.Alan Hájek - 2014 - Mind 123 (490):533-567.
    A decade ago, Harris Nover and I introduced the Pasadena game, which we argued gives rise to a new paradox in decision theory even more troubling than the St Petersburg paradox. Gwiazda's and Smith's articles in this volume both offer revisionist solutions. I critically engage with both articles. They invite reflections on a number of deep issues in the foundations of decision theory, which I hope to bring out. These issues include: some ways in which orthodox decision theory might be (...)
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  • Borel on the Heap.Paul Égré & Anouk Barberousse - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (5):1043-1079.
    In 1907 Borel published a remarkable essay on the paradox of the Heap (“Un paradoxe économique: le sophisme du tas de blé et les vérités statistiques”), in which Borel proposes what is likely the first statistical account of vagueness ever written, and where he discusses the practical implications of the sorites paradox, including in economics. Borel’s paper was integrated in his book Le Hasard, published 1914, but has gone mostly unnoticed since its publication. One of the originalities of Borel’s essay (...)
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  • Decision-Making Under Indeterminacy.J. Robert G. Williams - 2014 - Philosophers' Imprint 14.
    Decisions are made under uncertainty when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and one is uncertain to which the act will lead. Decisions are made under indeterminacy when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and it is indeterminate to which the act will lead. This paper develops a theory of (synchronic and diachronic) decision-making under indeterminacy that portrays the rational response to such situations as inconstant. Rational agents have to capriciously and randomly choose how to resolve (...)
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  • Vaghezza: confini, cumuli e paradossi.Sebastiano Moruzzi - 2012 - Roma: Laterza.
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  • Idealisations in normative models.Mark Colyvan - 2013 - Synthese 190 (8):1337-1350.
    In this paper I discuss the kinds of idealisations invoked in normative theories—logic, epistemology, and decision theory. I argue that very often the so-called norms of rationality are in fact mere idealisations invoked to make life easier. As such, these idealisations are not too different from various idealisations employed in scientific modelling. Examples of the latter include: fluids are incompressible (in fluid mechanics), growth rates are constant (in population ecology), and the gravitational influence of distant bodies can be ignored (in (...)
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  • Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, by Nicholas J. J. Smith. [REVIEW]Robert Williams - 2011 - Mind 120 (480):1297-1305.
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  • Tolerant, Classical, Strict.Pablo Cobreros, Paul Egré, David Ripley & Robert van Rooij - 2012 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 41 (2):347-385.
    In this paper we investigate a semantics for first-order logic originally proposed by R. van Rooij to account for the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, that is, for the principle that if x is P, then y should be P whenever y is similar enough to x. The semantics, which makes use of indifference relations to model similarity, rests on the interaction of three notions of truth: the classical notion, and two dual notions simultaneously defined in terms of it, (...)
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  • Contradictions at the borders.David Ripley - 2011 - In Rick Nouwen, Robert van Rooij, Uli Sauerland & Hans-Christian Schmitz (eds.), Vagueness in Communication. Springer. pp. 169--188.
    The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on a certain type of sentence, which I call a borderline contradiction. A borderline contradiction is a sentence of the form F a ∧ ¬F a, for some vague predicate F and some borderline case a of F , or a sentence equivalent to such a sentence. For example, if Jackie is a borderline case of ‘rich’, then ‘Jackie is rich and Jackie isn’t rich’ is a borderline contradiction. Many theories (...)
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  • Just what is vagueness?Otávio Bueno & Mark Colyvan - 2012 - Ratio 25 (1):19-33.
    We argue that standard definitions of ‘vagueness’ prejudice the question of how best to deal with the phenomenon of vagueness. In particular, the usual understanding of ‘vagueness’ in terms of borderline cases, where the latter are thought of as truth-value gaps, begs the question against the subvaluational approach. According to this latter approach, borderline cases are inconsistent (i.e., glutty not gappy). We suggest that a definition of ‘vagueness’ should be general enough to accommodate any genuine contender in the debate over (...)
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  • Lógicas no clásicas de la vaguedad.Paula Teijeiro - 2015 - Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 5:7-16.
    In this paper, we present a simple overview of the main non classical logics proposed for dealing with the Sorites paradox, that is, weakly paracomplete logics, weakly paraconsistent, and type 1 fuzzy logics. We note some of their advantages and problems and we suggest that the problems can be at least partially overcome by adopting a solution which relies on interval based type 2 fuzzy logics.
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  • Ethical Vagueness and Practical Reasoning.Billy Dunaway - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (266):38-60.
    This paper looks at the phenomenon of ethical vagueness by asking the question, how ought one to reason about what to do when confronted with a case of ethical vagueness? I begin by arguing that we must confront this question, since ethical vagueness is inescapable. I then outline one attractive answer to the question: we ought to maximize expected moral value when confronted with ethical vagueness. This idea yields determinate results for what one rationally ought to do in cases of (...)
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  • Vague judgment: a probabilistic account.Paul Égré - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):3837-3865.
    This paper explores the idea that vague predicates like “tall”, “loud” or “expensive” are applied based on a process of analog magnitude representation, whereby magnitudes are represented with noise. I present a probabilistic account of vague judgment, inspired by early remarks from E. Borel on vagueness, and use it to model judgments about borderline cases. The model involves two main components: probabilistic magnitude representation on the one hand, and a notion of subjective criterion. The framework is used to represent judgments (...)
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  • Tolerating Gluts.Zach Weber, David Ripley, Graham Priest, Dominic Hyde & Mark Colyvan - 2014 - Mind 123 (491):813-828.
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  • Vagueness and Order Effects in Color Categorization.Paul Egré, Vincent de Gardelle & David Ripley - 2013 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 22 (4):391-420.
    This paper proposes an experimental investigation of the use of vague predicates in dynamic sorites. We present the results of two studies in which subjects had to categorize colored squares at the borderline between two color categories (Green vs. Blue, Yellow vs. Orange). Our main aim was to probe for hysteresis in the ordered transitions between the respective colors, namely for the longer persistence of the initial category. Our main finding is a reverse phenomenon of enhanced contrast (i.e. negative hysteresis), (...)
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  • Vagueness and blurry sets.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2004 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 33 (2):165-235.
    This paper presents a new theory of vagueness, which is designed to retain the virtues of the fuzzy theory, while avoiding the problem of higher-order vagueness. The theory presented here accommodates the idea that for any statement S₁ to the effect that 'Bob is bald' is x true, for x in [0, 1], there should be a further statement S₂ which tells us how true S₁ is, and so on - that is, it accommodates higher-order vagueness without resorting to the (...)
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  • Recent Work on Vagueness.M. Eklund - 2011 - Analysis 71 (2):352-363.
    Vagueness, as discussed in the philosophical literature, is the phenomenon that paradigmatically rears its head in the sorites paradox, one prominent version of which is: One grain of sand does not make a heap. For any n, if n grains of sand do not make a heap, then n + 1 grains of sand do not make a heap. So, ten billion grains of sand do not make a heap. It is common ground that the different versions of the sorites (...)
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  • Foreword: Three-valued logics and their applications.Pablo Cobreros, Paul Égré, David Ripley & Robert van Rooij - 2014 - Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics 24 (1-2):1-11.
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  • Tolerant reasoning: nontransitive or nonmonotonic?Pablo Cobreros, Paul Egré, Dave Ripley & Robert van Rooij - 2017 - Synthese 199 (Suppl 3):681-705.
    The principle of tolerance characteristic of vague predicates is sometimes presented as a soft rule, namely as a default which we can use in ordinary reasoning, but which requires care in order to avoid paradoxes. We focus on two ways in which the tolerance principle can be modeled in that spirit, using special consequence relations. The first approach relates tolerant reasoning to nontransitive reasoning; the second relates tolerant reasoning to nonmonotonic reasoning. We compare the two approaches and examine three specific (...)
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  • Vagueness, Uncertainty and Degrees of Belief: Two Kinds of Indeterminacy—One Kind of Credence.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (5):1027-44.
    If we think, as Ramsey did, that a degree of belief that P is a stronger or weaker tendency to act as if P, then it is clear that not only uncertainty, but also vagueness, gives rise to degrees of belief. If I like hot coffee and do not know whether the coffee is hot or cold, I will have some tendency to reach for a cup; if I like hot coffee and know that the coffee is borderline hot, I (...)
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  • On Non-Eliminative Structuralism. Unlabeled Graphs as a Case Study, Part B†.Hannes Leitgeb - 2021 - Philosophia Mathematica 29 (1):64-87.
    This is Part B of an article that defends non-eliminative structuralism about mathematics by means of a concrete case study: a theory of unlabeled graphs. Part A motivated an understanding of unlabeled graphs as structures sui generis and developed a corresponding axiomatic theory of unlabeled graphs. Part B turns to the philosophical interpretation and assessment of the theory: it points out how the theory avoids well-known problems concerning identity, objecthood, and reference that have been attributed to non-eliminative structuralism. The part (...)
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  • Fuzzy-set representation and processing of fuzzy images: non-linguistic vagueness as representation, approximation and scientific practice.Jordi Cat - 2015 - Archives for the Philosophy and History of Soft Computing 2015 (1).
    This is the first part of a two-part paper in which I conclude the process, initiated elsewhere, of tracking objective conditions of vagueness of representation from language to pictures, from philosophy to imaging science, from vagueness to approximation, from representation to reasoning, with a focus on the application of fuzzy set theory and its challenges.
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  • Undead argument: the truth-functionality objection to fuzzy theories of vagueness.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):3761–3787.
    From Fine and Kamp in the 70’s—through Osherson and Smith in the 80’s, Williamson, Kamp and Partee in the 90’s and Keefe in the 00’s—up to Sauerland in the present decade, the objection continues to be run that fuzzy logic based theories of vagueness are incompatible with ordinary usage of compound propositions in the presence of borderline cases. These arguments against fuzzy theories have been rebutted several times but evidently not put to rest. I attempt to do so in this (...)
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  • Prospects for Experimental Philosophical Logic.Jeremiah Joven Joaquin - 2019 - Organon F: Medzinárodný Časopis Pre Analytickú Filozofiu 26 (2):265–286.
    This paper focuses on two interrelated issues about the prospects for research projects in experimental philosophical logic. The first issue is about the role that logic plays in such projects; the second involves the role that experimental results from the cognitive sciences play in them. I argue that some notion of logic plays a crucial role in these research projects, and, in turn, the results of these projects might inform substantive debates in the philosophy of logic.
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  • A New Semantics for Vagueness.Joshua D. K. Brown & James W. Garson - 2017 - Erkenntnis 82 (1):65-85.
    Intuitively, vagueness involves some sort of indeterminacy: if Plato is a borderline case of baldness, then there is no fact of the matter about whether or not he’s bald—he’s neither bald nor not bald. The leading formal treatments of such indeterminacy—three valued logic, supervaluationism, etc.—either fail to validate the classical theorems, or require that various classically valid inference rules be restricted. Here we show how a fully classical, yet indeterminist account of vagueness can be given within natural semantics, an alternative (...)
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  • What Is Graded Membership?Lieven Decock & Igor Douven - 2012 - Noûs 48 (4):653-682.
    It has seemed natural to model phenomena related to vagueness in terms of graded membership. However, so far no satisfactory answer has been given to the question of what graded membership is nor has any attempt been made to describe in detail a procedure for determining degrees of membership. We seek to remedy these lacunae by building on recent work on typicality and graded membership in cognitive science and combining some of the results obtained there with a version of the (...)
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  • Three-valued semantic pluralism: a defense of a three-valued solution to the sorites paradox.Wen-Fang Wang - 2018 - Synthese 195 (10):4441-4476.
    Disagreeing with most authors on vagueness, the author proposes a solution that he calls ‘three-valued semantic pluralism’ to the age-old sorites paradox. In essence, it is a three-valued semantics for a first-order vague language with identity with the additional suggestion that a vague language has more than one correct interpretation. Unlike the traditional three-valued approach to a vague language, three-valued semantic pluralism can accommodate the phenomenon of higher-order vagueness and the phenomenon of penumbral connection when equipped with ‘suitable conditionals’. The (...)
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  • Typicality and Graded Membership in Dimensional Adjectives.Steven Verheyen & Paul Égré - 2018 - Cognitive Science 42 (7):2250-2286.
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  • The Problem of Artificial Precision in Theories of Vagueness: A Note on the Rôle of Maximal Consistency.Vincenzo Marra - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (5):1015-1026.
    The problem of artificial precision is a major objection to any theory of vagueness based on real numbers as degrees of truth. Suppose you are willing to admit that, under sufficiently specified circumstances, a predication of “is red” receives a unique, exact number from the real unit interval [0, 1]. You should then be committed to explain what is it that determines that value, settling for instance that my coat is red to degree 0.322 rather than 0.321. In this note (...)
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  • En defensa del argumento finitista.Diego Tajer - 2014 - Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 40 (2):129-143.
    En este artículo, analizo las principales respuestas que se han dado al argumento finitista de Etchemendy, y muestro que ninguna de ellas es exitosa. Primero, describo y critico las propuestas que intentan resolverlo apelando a consideraciones modales. Estas soluciones fallan porque presuponen un finitismo demasiado débil, donde se acepta la existencia de infinitos conjuntos o de mundos posibles con infinitos objetos. Pero hay versiones más fuertes del finitismo que reintroducen el problema. Luego considero las soluciones que apelan a categorías semánticas. (...)
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  • Making sense of (in)determinate truth: the semantics of free variables.John Cantwell - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (11):2715-2741.
    It is argued that truth value of a sentence containing free variables in a context of use, just as the reference of the free variables concerned, depends on the assumptions and posits given by the context. However, context may under-determine the reference of a free variable and the truth value of sentences in which it occurs. It is argued that in such cases a free variable has indeterminate reference and a sentence in which it occurs may have indeterminate truth value. (...)
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