Switch to: References

Citations of:

Vagueness: A fifth column approach

In J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on Paradox. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press UK (2003)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Vagueness.Robert Williams - 2011 - In Gillian Russell & Delia Graff Fara (eds.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language. New York, USA: Routledge.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   75 citations  
  • Truth-Bearers and Modesty.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2011 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 82 (1):49–75.
    In this paper I discuss Künne’s Modest Theory of truth, and develop a variation on a worry that Field expresses with respect to Horwich’s related view. The worry is not that deflationary accounts are false, but rather that, because they take propositions as truth-bearers, they are not philosophically interesting. Compatibly with the intuitions of ordinary speakers, we can understand proposition so that the proposals do account for a property that such truth-bearers have. Nevertheless, we saliently apply the truth-concept also to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Indeterminacy and normative silence.J. R. G. Williams - 2012 - Analysis 72 (2):217-225.
    This paper examines two puzzles of indeterminacy. The first puzzle concerns the hypothesis that there is a unified phenomenon of indeterminacy. How are we to reconcile this with the apparent diversity of reactions that indeterminacy prompts? The second puzzle focuses narrowly on borderline cases of vague predicates. How are we to account for the lack of theoretical consensus about what the proper reaction to borderline cases is? I suggest (building on work by Maudlin) that the characteristic feature of indeterminacy is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   33 citations  
  • (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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Gradational accuracy and nonclassical semantics.J. Robert G. Williams - 2012 - Review of Symbolic Logic 5 (4):513-537.
    Joyce (1998) gives an argument for probabilism: the doctrine that rational credences should conform to the axioms of probability. In doing so, he provides a distinctive take on how the normative force of probabilism relates to the injunction to believe what is true. But Joyce presupposes that the truth values of the propositions over which credences are defined are classical. I generalize the core of Joyce’s argument to remove this presupposition. On the same assumptions as Joyce uses, the credences of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • (1 other version)The impossibility of vagueness.Kit Fine - 2008 - Philosophical Perspectives 22 (1):111-136.
    I wish to present a proof that vagueness is impossible. Of course, vagueness is possible; and so there must be something wrong with the proof. But it is far from clear where the error lies and, indeed, all of the assumptions upon which the proof depends are ones that have commonly been accepted. This suggests that we may have to radically alter our current conception of vagueness if we are to make proper sense of what it is.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   14 citations  
  • Liberalism, entitlement, and verdict exclusion.Sven Rosenkranz - 2009 - Synthese 171 (3):481 - 497.
    In a series of recent papers, Crispin Wright has developed and defended an epistemic account of borderline cases which he calls ‘Liberalism’. If Verdict Exclusion is the claim that no polar verdict on borderline cases is knowledgeable, then Liberalism implies the view that Verdict Exclusion is itself nothing we are in a position to know. It is a matter of ongoing discussion what more Liberalism implies. In any case, Wright argues that Liberalism affords the means to account for the intuition (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Strange Kinds, Familiar Kinds, and the Charge of Arbitrariness.Daniel Z. Korman - 2010 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics:119-144.
    Particularists in material-object metaphysics hold that our intuitive judgments about which kinds of things there are and are not are largely correct. One common argument against particularism is the argument from arbitrariness, which turns on the claim that there is no ontologically significant difference between certain of the familiar kinds that we intuitively judge to exist (snowballs, islands, statues, solar systems) and certain of the strange kinds that we intuitively judge not to exist (snowdiscalls, incars, gollyswoggles, the fusion of the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   27 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   84 citations  
  • Epistemicism and response-dependence.Ivan Hu - 2021 - Synthese 199 (3-4):9109-9131.
    Epistemicists claim that if it is vague whether p, it is unknowable whether p. Some contest this on epistemic grounds: vague intuitions about vague matters need not fully preclude knowledge, if those intuitions are response-dependent in some special sense of enabling vague knowledge. This paper defends the epistemicist principle that vagueness entails ignorance against such objections. I argue that not only is response-dependence an implausible characterization of actual vague matters, its mere possibility poses no threat to epistemicism and is properly (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Rampant Non‐Factualism: A Metaphysical Framework and its Treatment of Vagueness.Alexander Jackson - 2019 - Analytic Philosophy 60 (2):79-108.
    Rampant non-factualism is the view that all non-fundamental matters are non-factual, in a sense inspired by Kit Fine (2001). The first half of this paper argues that if we take non-factualism seriously for any matters, such as morality, then we should take rampant non-factualism seriously. The second half of the paper argues that rampant non-factualism makes possible an attractive theory of vagueness. We can give non-factualist accounts of non-fundamental matters that nicely characterize the vagueness they manifest (if any). I suggest (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • ‘Vague’ at Higher Orders.Ivan Hu - 2017 - Mind 126 (504):1189-1216.
    Sorensen has argued that one can exploit the vagueness of an ordinary predicate like ‘small’ to induce a sort of vagueness in ‘vague’, by constructing a series of predicates of the form ‘n-small’, where x is n- small if and only if x is small or x n. The resulting ‘Sorensen’ed’ predicates present a Sorites case for ‘vague’ ; hence the vagueness of ‘vague’. Hyde argues that this demonstrates that all vague predicates are higher-order vague. Others doubt whether Sorensen’s series (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Being in a Position to Know and Closure: Reply to Heylen.Sven Rosenkranz - 2016 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 5 (1):68-72.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • I—Columnar Higher-Order Vagueness, or Vagueness is Higher-Order Vagueness.Susanne Bobzien - 2015 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 89 (1):61-87.
    Most descriptions of higher-order vagueness in terms of traditional modal logic generate so-called higher-order vagueness paradoxes. The one that doesn't is problematic otherwise. Consequently, the present trend is toward more complex, non-standard theories. However, there is no need for this.In this paper I introduce a theory of higher-order vagueness that is paradox-free and can be expressed in the first-order extension of a normal modal system that is complete with respect to single-domain Kripke-frame semantics. This is the system QS4M+BF+FIN. It corresponds (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • 4. Contradictorial Gradualism Vs. Discontinuism: Two Views On Fuzziness And The Transition Problem.Marcelo VÁsconez - 2006 - Logique Et Analyse 49 (195).
    The dissertation has two parts, each dealing with a problem, namely: 1) What is the most adequate account of fuzziness -the so-called phenomenon of vagueness?, and 2) what is the most plausible solution to the sorites, or heap paradox? I will try to show that fuzzy properties are those which are gradual, amenable to be possessed in a greater or smaller extent. Acknowledgement of degrees in the instantiation of a property allows for a gradual transition from one opposite to the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • (1 other version)Response to Eklund.Elizabeth Barnes & J. Robert G. Williams - 2011 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 6. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • Visual experience of natural kind properties: is there any fact of the matter?Heather Logue - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 162 (1):1-12.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, by Nicholas J. J. Smith. [REVIEW]Robert Williams - 2011 - Mind 120 (480):1297-1305.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Manifestability and Epistemic Truth.Julien Murzi - 2012 - Topoi 31 (1):17-26.
    I argue that the standard anti-realist argument from manifestability to intuitionistic logic is either unsound or invalid. Strong interpretations of the manifestability of understanding are falsified by the existence of blindspots for knowledge. Weaker interpretations are either too weak, or gerrymandered and ad hoc. Either way, they present no threat to classical logic.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • 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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • Imagination and the motivational view of belief 55.George F. Schumm - unknown
    1. The view that beliefs can be characterized solely by their motivational role promises an informative reduction of what it is for a state to be a belief state. It is therefore of import if such a view is wrong. In ‘On the aim of belief’ David Velleman (2000) presents an argument against such a motivational view of belief.1 On Velleman’s construal of the motivational view.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Ontic Vagueness: A Guide for the Perplexed.Elizabeth Barnes - 2010 - Noûs 44 (4):601-627.
    In this paper I develop a framework for understanding ontic vagueness. The project of the paper is two-fold. I first outline a definitional account of ontic vagueness – one that I think is an improvement on previous attempts because it remains neutral on other, independent metaphysical issues. I then develop one potential manifestation of that basic definitional structure. This is a more robust (and much less neutral) account which gives a fully classical explication of ontic vagueness via modal concepts. The (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   125 citations  
  • Bivalence and what is said.Manuel García-Carpintero - 2007 - Dialectica 61 (1):167–190.
    On standard versions of supervaluationism, truth is equated with supertruth, and does not satisfy bivalence: some truth-bearers are neither true nor false. In this paper I want to confront a well-known worry about this, recently put by Wright as follows: ‘The downside . . . rightly emphasized by Williamson . . . is the implicit surrender of the T-scheme’. I will argue that such a cost is not high: independently motivated philosophical distinctions support the surrender of the T- scheme, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • (1 other version)Indeterminate truth.Patrick Greenough - 2008 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32 (1):213-241.
    In §2-4, I survey three extant ways of making sense of indeterminate truth and find each of them wanting. All the later sections of the paper are concerned with showing that the most promising way of making sense of indeterminate truth is via either a theory of truthmaker gaps or via a theory of truthmaking gaps. The first intimations of a truthmaker–truthmaking gap theory of indeterminacy are to be found in Quine (1981). In §5, we see how Quine proposes to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   23 citations  
  • (1 other version)The possibility of vagueness.Kit Fine - 2017 - Synthese 194 (10):3699-3725.
    I present a new approach to the logic and semantics of vagueness.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Higher-Order Vagueness and Borderline Nestings: A Persistent Confusion.Susanne Bobzien - 2013 - Analytic Philosophy 54 (1):1-43.
    ABSTRACT: This paper argues that the so-called paradoxes of higher-order vagueness are the result of a confusion between higher-order vagueness and the distribution of the objects of a Sorites series into extensionally non-overlapping non-empty classes.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • The Quietist’s Gambit.Ricardo Mena - 2018 - Crítica. Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía 50 (149):3-30.
    In this paper I develop a semantic theory of vagueness that is immune to worries regarding the use of precise mathematical tools. I call this view semantic quietism. This view has the advantage of being clearly compatible with the phenomenon of vagueness. The cost is that it cannot capture every robust semantic fact.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • 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.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Epistemicism, paradox, and conditional obligation.Ivan Hu - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (8):2123-2139.
    Stewart Shapiro has objected to the epistemicist theory of vagueness on grounds that it gives counterintuitive predictions about cases involving conditional obligation. This paper details a response on the epistemicist’s behalf. I first argue that Shapiro’s own presentation of the objection is unsuccessful as an argument against epistemicism. I then reconstruct and offer two alternative arguments inspired by Shapiro’s considerations, and argue that these fail too, given the information-sensitive nature of conditional obligations.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • How high the sky? Rumfitt on the (putative) indeterminacy of the set-theoretic universe.Crispin Wright - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (8):2067-2078.
    This comment focuses on Chapter 9 of The Boundary Stones of Thought and the argument, due to William Tait, that Ian Rumfitt there sustains for the indeterminacy of set. I argue that Michael Dummett’s argument, based on the notion of indefinite extensibility and set aside by Rumfitt, provides a more powerful basis for the same conclusion. In addition, I outline two difficulties for the way Rumfitt attempts to save classical logic from acknowledged failures of the principle of bivalence, one specifically (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Borderline Cases and the Project of Defining Art.Annelies Monseré - 2016 - Acta Analytica 31 (4):463-479.
    Most philosophers of art assume that there are three categories with regard to arthood, namely ‘art’, ‘artful’ and ‘non-art’ and that, therefore, a definition must be able to account for ‘artful items’, also called ‘borderline cases of art’. This article, however, defends the thesis that, since there is no agreement over which items fall under the category ‘artful’, the ability to account for borderline cases of art should not be used as a criterion for evaluating definitions of art. The defended (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The pain of rejection, the sweetness of revenge. [REVIEW]Crispin Wright - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (3):465-476.
    The pain of rejection, the sweetness of revenge Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9794-2 Authors Crispin Wright, Department of Philosophy, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Faultless and Genuine Disagreement over Vague Predicates.Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska - 2021 - Theoria 87 (1):152-166.
    In this article I propose a view which explains how it is possible that the disagreement concerning clear cases of a given vague predicate is genuine, whereas that concerning borderline cases is faultless. I take the possibility of faultless disagreement concerning borderline cases to be an important characteristic of vague predicates and in my view any adequate theory of vagueness should account for it. My proposal might be called “contextual supervaluationism” and it is inspired by Kölbel's relativist view from his (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Fragmented Truth.Andy Demfree Yu - 2016 - Dissertation, University of Oxford
    This thesis comprises three main chapters—each comprising one relatively standalone paper. The unifying theme is fragmentalism about truth, which is the view that the predicate “true” either expresses distinct concepts or expresses distinct properties. -/- In Chapter 1, I provide a formal development of alethic pluralism. Pluralism is the view that there are distinct truth properties associated with distinct domains of subject matter, where a truth property satisfies certain truth-characterizing principles. On behalf of pluralists, I propose an account of logic (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Evaluating beliefs.Alexander Paul Vincent Jackson - unknown
    This dissertation examines some of ways of evaluating beliefs, relevant to epistemology and to metaphysics. Some problems in normative epistemology are solved by properly relating justified belief, rational belief, and knowledge. Chapter 1 uses this strategy to defend externalism about justified belief. Chapters 3 and 4 defend the view that knowledge is the epistemic standard we aim for our beliefs to meet. Chapter 2 investigates which beliefs are improper because formed in an objectionably circular way. The findings support the Moorean (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • On what it is to be in a quandary.Patrick Greenough - 2009 - Synthese 171 (3):399 - 408.
    A number of serious problems are raised against Crispin Wright’s quandary conception of vagueness. Two alternative conceptions of the quandary view are proposed instead. The first conception retains Wright’s thesis that, for all one knows, a verdict concerning a borderline case constitutes knowledge. However a further problem is seen to beset this conception. The second conception, in response to this further problem, does not enjoin the thesis that, for all one knows, a verdict concerning a borderline case constitutes knowledge. The (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Vagueness as Semantic.Max Kölbel - 2010 - In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  • (1 other version)Estado de la cuestión: Filosofia Del lenguaje (state of the art: Philosophy of language).Manuel García-Carpintero - 2005 - Theoria 20 (2):223-238.
    Se presentan propuestas recientes en tres ámbitos de la filosofía del lenguaje en que se están haciendo contribuciones significativas: el fenómeno de la vaguedad; la distinción entre semántica y pragmática, y el uso de semánticas “bidimensionales” para tratar problemas generados por las tesis de “referencia directa”. Hace unos años existia una percepción de la pérdida por la filosofia del lenguaje, en favor de la filosofia de la mente, del lugar central ocupado en la tradición analítica -una perdida que equivaldría según (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark