I propose that the meanings of vague expressions render the truth conditions of utterances of sentences containing them sensitive to our interests. For example, 'expensive' is analyzed as meaning 'costs a lot', which in turn is analyzed as meaning 'costs significantly greater than the norm'. Whether a difference is a significant difference depends on what our interests are. Appeal to the proposal is shown to provide an attractive resolution of the sorites paradox that is compatible with classical logic and semantics.

This paper deals with the truth-Conditions and the logic for vague languages. The use of supervaluations and of classical logic is defended; and other approaches are criticized. The truth-Conditions are extended to a language that contains a definitely-Operator and that is subject to higher order vagueness.

Supervaluationism, traditionally conceived, is the conjunction of three theses: Vagueness in a language gives rise to there being a multitude of acceptable assignments of semantic values to some expressions of the language, These assignments correspond to possible completions of the meanings of vague expressions, Truth is truth under all acceptable assignments, and falsity is falsity under all acceptable assignments. Supervaluationism has three chief virtues. It preserves classical logic. It provides an account of what vagueness is . And it extends nicely (...) to the vagueness of singular terms. I argue, however, that the existence of vagueifiers ‐ expressions like‘roughly’– pose problems for thesis of Supervaluationism, and that the supervaluationist can get around these problems only at a serious cost. Toward the end of the paper, I present an alternative analysis of vagueness, which preserves the main virtues of Supervaluationism, but which identifies vagueness as semantic Overdetermination, rather than as semantic underdetermination. (shrink)