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 (...) a truth-preserving manner; and (v) that strong versions of dualism are unable to accommodate the possibility of borderline consciousness. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel problem for representationalism (also known as "intentionalism"), a popular contemporary account of perception. We argue that representationalism is incompatible with supervaluationism, the leading contemporary account of vagueness. The problem generalizes to naive realism and related views, which are also incompatible with supervaluationism.

An increasing amount of contemporary philosophy of mathematics posits, and theorizes in terms of special kinds of mathematical modality. The goal of this paper is to bring recent work on higher-order metaphysics to bear on the investigation of these modalities. The main focus of the paper will be views that posit mathematical contingency or indeterminacy about statements that concern the ‘width’ of the set theoretic universe, such as Cantor’s continuum hypothesis. Within a higher-order framework I show that contingency about the (...) width of the set-theoretic universe refutes two orthodoxies concerning the structure of modal reality: the view that the broadest necessity has a logic of S5, and the ‘Leibniz biconditionals’ stating that what is possible, in the broadest sense of _possible_, is what is true in some possible world. Nonetheless, I suggest that the underlying picture of modal set-theory is coherent and has attractions. (shrink)

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 (...) from that model theory, one of which I will find to be more plausible than the other. (shrink)

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 (...) set-theoretically will not be identity, for real identity will already be there, built into the background of the model, and perfectly precise. (shrink)

Intellectualists about knowledge how argue that knowing how to do something is knowing the content of a proposition (i.e, a fact). An important component of this view is the idea that propositional knowledge is translated into behavior when it is presented to the mind in a peculiarly practical way. Until recently, however, intellectualists have not said much about what it means for propositional knowledge to be entertained under thought's practical guise. Carlotta Pavese fills this gap in the intellectualist view by (...) modeling practical modes of thought after Fregean senses. In this paper, I take up her model and the presuppositions it is built upon, arguing that her view of practical thought is not positioned to account for much of what human agents are able to do. (shrink)

This article discusses recent work in metaphysics on temporal parts. After a short introduction introducing the notion of a temporal part, we examine several well‐known arguments for the view that ordinary material objects such as tables, trees, and persons have temporal parts: (1) positing temporal parts makes it possible to solve puzzles of coincidence (e.g., the statue/lump puzzle); (2) positing temporal parts makes it possible to solve the problem of intrinsic change over time; and (3) the existence of temporal parts (...) can be demonstrated based on considerations about vagueness in composition. We conclude by examining briefly a recent argument that the dispute over whether there are temporal parts is merely verbal. (shrink)

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 (...) epistemicists, supervaluationists, and theorists of metaphysical vagueness like Barnes and Williams (2010) can interpret the framework.  We will also present a complete axiomatization of the logic we recommend to both epistemicists and local supervaluationists. . (shrink)

A presentation of the Lewis-Sider argument from vagueness for unrestricted composition and possible responses.

Epistemicism associates vagueness with ignorance produced by semantic plasticity: the shiftiness of intensions in our language resulting from small changes in usage. The recent literature (Caie 2012; Magidor 2018; Yli-Vakkuri 2016) points to a missing piece in the epistemicist theory of vagueness, namely a clear account of the semantics of the definiteness operator Δ. The fundamentals of the epistemicist theory are well understood. However, the technical work of defining the definiteness operator has proven difficult. There are several desiderata that we (...) would like Δ to satisfy. For instance, we would like the epistemicist notion of ‘definiteness’ to interact well with modal operators and validate intuitive principles like ‘necessarily, if φ is definitely true, then φ is true’. Providing an account that would meet all such desiderata has eluded the epistemicists so far. In this paper, I present a novel version of a multidimensional model inspired by the work of Robert Stalnaker and David Kaplan. Using this model, I provide an account of epistemicist definiteness that meets our desiderata. (shrink)