Vagueness-Related Partial Belief and the Constitution of Borderline Cases

2021 ◽  
pp. 293-302
Author(s):  
Crispin Wright
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Attitude ◽  
Phenomenological Research ◽  
Borderline Case ◽  
Borderline Cases ◽  
Partial Belief ◽  
Book Symposium

This chapter, specially written for a Philosophy and Phenomenological Research book symposium on the Stephen Schiffer’s The Things We Mean, is focused on Schiffer’s proposal there concerning the most central and important question about vagueness: namely, what, specifically, something’s being a borderline case of a vague expression consists in. Schiffer argues for a new kind of approach, according to which vagueness is constitutively a psychological phenomenon, grounded in a supposedly distinctive propositional attitude taken by practitioners of vague discourse: vagueness-related partial belief (VPB), contrasting in ways Schiffer details with standard partial belief (SPB). Two principal problems are raised for this proposal. First, on Schiffer’s account, VPB looks to be characteristic of a wider range of kinds of indeterminacy besides the targeted soritical vagueness. Second, there is an awkward dilemma arising over whether or why a thinker could not, as a matter of psychological contingency, adopt a VPB towards a precise proposition.

scholarly journals On the Characterization of Borderline Cases

2021 ◽  
pp. 367-392
Author(s):  
Crispin Wright
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Borderline Case ◽  
Borderline Cases ◽  
Partial Belief ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Characterization Problem ◽  
Oxford University Press

This chapter was originally written for Gary Ostertag’s edition of the festschrift for Stephen Schiffer, Meanings and Other Things (Oxford University Press, 2016). It centres on Schiffer’s treatment of the characterization problem: the problem of saying what being a borderline case of a concept expressed by a vague expression consists in. While broadly sympathetic to Schiffer’s approach, the chapter takes issue with two aspects of it. Schiffer endorses Verdict Exclusion: the doctrine that a ‘polar verdict’ about a borderline case cannot be an expression of knowledge. This endorsement comes at too high a cost: among other things, it conflicts with the entitlement intuition—the intuition that there will be no point in a Sorites sequence at which it is mandatory to return neither of the polar verdicts. The chapter argues for agnosticism about Verdict Exclusion (‘Liberalism’). It also rejects Schiffer’s idea that a special genre of partial belief—vagueness-related partial belief—plays an essential role in characterizing the possession conditions for vague concepts.

scholarly journals The Question To Be Faced Is One of Fact: H.L.A. Hart’s Legal Theory Through His View of International Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Giovanni Bisogni
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Borderline Case ◽  
Borderline Cases ◽  
Central Case ◽  
The Concept Of Law ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
Concept Of Law

H.L.A. Hart says that The Concept of Law is focused on municipal or domestic law because that is the “central case”1 for the usage of the word ‘law.’ At the beginning of the book he states that “at various points in this book the reader will find discussions of the borderline cases where legal theorists have felt doubts about the application of the expression ‘law’ or ‘legal system,’ but the suggested resolution of these doubts, which he will also find here, is only a secondary concern of the book.”2 Yet among those borderline cases there is one that is rather intriguing, since Hart closely discusses a particular instance of them: it is international law, to which he devotes an entire chapter—the final one—of The Concept of Law. My goal in this article is therefore to make clear why the ‘resolution’ of the borderline case of international law is not entirely ‘secondary’ to Hart’s overall project in The Concept of Law and, in so doing, to show that Chapter X is not as unhappy as many think it is.

Partial Belief and Borderline Cases

Noûs ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (s1) ◽  
pp. 289-301
Author(s):  
Jorge Rodriguez Marqueze
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Cases ◽  
Partial Belief

A Paradox of Consciousness

2021 ◽  
pp. 4-18
Author(s):  
Michael Tye
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Borderline Case ◽  
Borderline Cases

There are strong reasons to hold that phenomenal consciousness (experience) cannot be sharp (on/off) and equally strong reasons to hold that phenomenal consciousness cannot be vague (admitting borderline cases). In the former case, the reasons have to do with understanding the emergence of consciousness in the physical world. In the latter case, the reasons have to do with the fact that when we try to describe a borderline case of consciousness, we always end up describing a case in which there is indeterminacy in what is experienced as opposed to in experience or consciousness itself. A paradox thus arises in our thinking about consciousness. This chapter is devoted to laying out the paradox in detail.

scholarly journals Borderline Cases and the Collapsing Principle

Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUKE ELSON
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Case ◽  
Borderline Cases ◽  
John Broome ◽  
Value Incommensurability

John Broome has argued that value incommensurability is vagueness, by appeal to a controversial ‘collapsing principle’ about comparative indeterminacy. I offer a new counterexample to the collapsing principle. That principle allows us to derive an outright contradiction from the claim that some object is a borderline case of some predicate. But if there are no borderline cases, then the principle is empty. The collapsing principle is either false or empty.

Partial Belief and Borderline Cases

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 289-301
Author(s):  
Jorge Rodríguez Marqueze
Keyword(s):  
Borderline Cases ◽  
Partial Belief

Domestic workers’ lived realities of empowerment and disempowerment within the South African labour legislative context: Two sides of the same “coin”

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-83
Author(s):  
Christel Marais ◽  
Christo Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Phenomenological Research ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
Employment Relationship ◽  
Employee Voice ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Employment Standards ◽  
Phenomenological Research Design ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Elusive Concept

South Africa is heralded as a global ambassador for the rights of domestic workers. Empowerment, however, remains an elusive concept within the sector. Fear-based disempowerment still characterises the employment relationship, resulting in an absence of an employee voice. The dire need to survive renders this sector silent. This article explores the role that legislative awareness can play in the everyday lives of domestic workers. By means of a post-positive, forwardlooking positive psychological and phenomenological research design the researchers sought to access the voiced experiences of domestic workers within their employment context. Consequently, purposive, respondent-driven selfsampling knowledgeable participants were recruited. In-depth interviewing generated the data. The distinct voice of each participant was noted during an open inductive approach to data analysis. Findings indicated that empowerment was an unknown construct for all participants. They lacked the confidence to engage their employers on employment issues. Nevertheless, domestic workers should embrace ownership and endeavour to empower themselves. This would sanction their right to assert their expectations of employment standards with confidence and use the judicial system to bring about compliant actions. The article concludes with the notion that legislative awareness could result in empowered actions though informed employee voices.

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