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Vagueness and Partial Belief

Noûs 34 (s1):220 - 257 (2000)

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  1. Supervaluationism and the Report of Vague Contents.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2010 - In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Schiffer has given an argument against supervaluationist accounts of vagueness, based on reports of vague contents. Suppose that Al tells Bob ‘Ben was there’, pointing to a certain place, and later Bob says, ‘Al said that Ben was there’, pointing in the same direction. According to supervaluationist semantics, Schiffer contends, both Al’s and Bob’s utterances of ‘there’ indeterminately refer to myriad precise regions of space; Al’s utterance is true just in case Ben was in any of those precisely bounded regions (...)
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  • Vagueness unlimited: In defence of a pragmatical approach to sorites paradoxes.Bart Van Kerkhove - 2003 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 11:251-276.
    As far as ‘modern’ logical theories of vagueness are concerned, a main distinction can be drawn between ‘semantical’ ones and ‘pragmatical’ ones. The latter are defended here, because they tend to retake into account important contextual dimensions of the problem abandoned by the former. Their inchoate condition seems not alarming, since they are of surprisingly recent date. This, however, could very well be an accidental explanation. That is, the true reason for it might sooner or later turn out to be (...)
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  • (1 other version)Moral Vagueness: A Dilemma for Non-Naturalism.Cristian Constantinescu - 2014 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 9. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 152-185.
    In this paper I explore the implications of moral vagueness (viz., the vagueness of moral predicates) for non-naturalist metaethical theories like those recently championed by Shafer-Landau, Parfit, and others. I characterise non-naturalism in terms of its commitment to 7 theses: Cognitivism, Correspondence, Atomism, Objectivism, Supervenience, Non-reductivism, and Rationalism. I start by offering a number of reasons for thinking that moral predicates are vague in the same way in which ‘red’, ‘tall’, and ‘heap’ are said to be. I then argue that (...)
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  • Vague Value.Tom Dougherty - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (2):352-372.
    You are morally permitted to save your friend at the expense of a few strangers, but not at the expense of very many. However, there seems no number of strangers that marks a precise upper bound here. Consequently, there are borderline cases of groups at the expense of which you are permitted to save your friend. This essay discusses the question of what explains ethical vagueness like this, arguing that there are interesting metaethical consequences of various explanations.
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  • Skepticism and the vagaries of justified belief.Stephen Schiffer - 2004 - Philosophical Studies 119 (1-2):161-184.
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  • 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.
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  • Topics in Population Ethics.Teruji Thomas - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    This thesis consists of several independent papers in population ethics. I begin in Chapter 1 by critiquing some well-known 'impossibility theorems', which purport to show there can be no intuitively satisfactory population axiology. I identify axiological vagueness as a promising way to escape or at least mitigate the effects of these theorems. In particular, in Chapter 2, I argue that certain of the impossibility theorems have little more dialectical force than sorites arguments do. From these negative arguments I move to (...)
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  • Vagueness without ignorance.Cian Dorr - 2003 - Philosophical Perspectives 17 (1):83–113.
    I motivate and briefly sketch a linguistic theory of vagueness, on which the notion of indeterminacy is understood in terms of the conventions of language: a sentence is indeterminate iff the conventions of language either forbid asserting it and forbid asserting its negation, under the circumstances, or permit asserting either. I then consider an objection that purports to show that if this theory (or, as far as I can see, any other theory of vagueness that deserved the label "linguistic" were (...)
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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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  • 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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  • Rational Suspension.Alexandra Zinke - 2021 - Theoria 87 (5):1050-1066.
    The article argues that there are different ways of justifying suspension of judgement. We suspend judgement not only privatively, that is, because we lack evidence, but also positively, that is, because there is evidence that provides reasons for suspending judgement: suspension is more than the rational fallback position in cases of insufficient evidence. The article applies the distinction to recent discussions about the role of suspension for inquiry, Turri's puzzle about withholding, and formal representations of suspension.
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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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  • Vagueness-related partial belief and the constitution of borderline cases. [REVIEW]Crispin Wright - 2006 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (1):225–232.
    For all post-1970s effort expended on the topic, the most central and important question about vagueness—what it is: what, specifically, something’s being a borderline case of a vague expression consists in—has seldom been tackled with the theoretical explicitness necessary if issues expectably downstream of it, like the nature of valid inference among vague statements, or the Sorites paradox, are to receive a properly motivated treatment. The great interest of Chapter V of The Things We Mean is that it points the (...)
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  • Back to the open future.Elizabeth Barnes & Ross P. Cameron - 2011 - Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1):1-26.
    Many of us are tempted by the thought that the future is open, whereas the past is not. The future might unfold one way, or it might unfold another; but the past, having occurred, is now settled. In previous work we presented an account of what openness consists in: roughly, that the openness of the future is a matter of it being metaphysically indeterminate how things will turn out to be. We were previously concerned merely with presenting the view and (...)
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  • The No-Proposition View of Vagueness.Paula Sweeney - 2016 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 93 (2):179-195.
    This paper proposes a novel method of identifying the nature of vague sentences and a novel solution to the sorites paradox. The theory is motivated by patterns of use that language users display when using vague predicates. Identifying a coherent cause of this behaviour provides us with a theory of vague sentences that is behaviour- rather than paradox-led. The theory also provides a solution to the sorites paradox and is therefore more explanatory than other available theories of vagueness.
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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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  • Supervaluational propositional content.Benjamin Rohrs - 2017 - Synthese 194 (6).
    It’s not clear what supervaluationists should say about propositional content. Does a vague sentence, e.g., ‘Harry is bald’, express one proposition, or a barrage of propositions, or none at all? Or is the matter indeterminate? The supervaluationist canon is not decisive on the issue; authoritative passages can be cited in favor of each of the proposals just mentioned. Furthermore, some detractors have argued that supervaluationism is incapable of providing any coherent account of propositional content. This paper considers each of the (...)
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  • Degree of belief is expected truth value.Nicholas J. J. Smith - 2010 - In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 491--506.
    A number of authors have noted that vagueness engenders degrees of belief, but that these degrees of belief do not behave like subjective probabilities. So should we countenance two different kinds of degree of belief: the kind arising from vagueness, and the familiar kind arising from uncertainty, which obey the laws of probability? I argue that we cannot coherently countenance two different kinds of degree of belief. Instead, I present a framework in which there is a single notion of degree (...)
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  • Excluded Knowledge.Christian Ryan Lee - 2016 - Synthese 193 (8):1-26.
    Does vagueness exclude knowledge? After arguing for an affirmative answer to this question, I consider a fascinating objection. Barnett offers purported counterexamples to the following: Vagueness as to whether p entails that nobody knows whether p. These putative counterexamples, were they successful, would establish that standard accounts of vagueness are mistaken. I defend three central theses: First, whenever it is vague whether p competent speakers would be ambivalent about whether p when considering whether p, and such ambivalence would exclude knowledge (...)
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  • (1 other version)Partial Belief and Borderline Cases.Jorge Rodríguez Marqueze - 2000 - Noûs 34 (s1):289 - 301.
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  • (1 other version)Partial Belief and Borderline Cases.Jorge Rodríguez Marqueze - 2000 - Philosophical Issues 10 (1):289-301.
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