Précis zu: How to Swim in Sinking Sands: The Sorites Paradox and the Nature and Logic of Vague Language

2021 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-460
Author(s):  
Inga Bones
Keyword(s):  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Vague Language

Prefaces, Sorites and Guides to Reasoning

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-226
Author(s):  
Rosanna Keefe
Keyword(s):  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Degrees Of Belief ◽  
Preface Paradox ◽  
Probabilistic Structure ◽  
Vague Language ◽  
The Preface Paradox

Is there an interesting relation between the Preface paradox and the Sorites paradox that might be used to illuminate either or both of those paradoxes and the phenomena of rationality and vagueness with which they, respectively, are bound up? In particular, if we consider the analogy alongside a familiar response to the Preface Paradox that employs degrees of belief, does this give any support to the thought that we should adopt some kind of degree-theoretic treatment of vagueness and the sorites? This chapter argues that it does not; indeed exploring the disanalogies contributes to a case against such a treatment of vagueness more generally. Among other views, it considers Edgington’s account of vagueness that employs a probabilistic structure of ‘verities’. It then contends that appeal to the framework of supervaluationism yields a better guide to reasoning in vague language than the degree-theoretic treatment can sustain.

Vagueness and Legal Theory

Legal Theory ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy A. O. Endicott
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Borderline Case ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Ronald Dworkin ◽  
Good Account ◽  
Hans Kelsen ◽  
The Law ◽  
Vague Language ◽  
Vague Statement

The use of vague language in law has important implications for legal theory. Legal philosophers have occasionally grappled with those implications, but they have not come to grips with the characteristic phenomenon of vagueness: the sorites paradox. I discuss the paradox, and claim that it poses problems for some legal theorists (David Lyons, Hans Kelsen, and, especially, Ronald Dworkin). I propose that a good account of vagueness will have three consequences for legal theory: (i) Theories that deny that vagueness in formulations of the law leads to discretion in adjudication (including Dworkin's) cannot accommodate “higher-order” vagueness, (ii) A legal theory should accept that the law is partly indeterminate when it can be stated in vague language, (iii) However, the traditional formulation of the indeterminacy claim, that a vague statement is “neither true nor false” in a borderline case, is misconceived and should be abandoned.

Indeterminacy as Indecision, Lecture III: Indeterminacy as Indecision

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (11) ◽  
pp. 643-667
Author(s):  
John MacFarlane ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Direction Of Fit ◽  
Normative Language ◽  
Allan Gibbard ◽  
Vague Language

This lecture presents my own solution to the problem posed in Lecture I. Instead of a new theory of speech acts, it offers a new theory of the contents expressed by vague assertions, along the lines of the plan expressivism Allan Gibbard has advocated for normative language. On this view, the mental states we express in uttering vague sentences have a dual direction of fit: they jointly constrain the doxastic possibilities we recognize and our practical plans about how to draw boundaries. With this story in hand, I reconsider some of the traditional topics connected with vagueness: bivalence, the sorites paradox, higher-order vagueness, and the nature of vague thought. I conclude by arguing that the expressivist account can explain, as its rivals cannot, what makes vague language useful.

Vagueness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kit Fine
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Mental States ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Local Phenomenon ◽  
Intrinsic Feature

The book is about the problem of vagueness. It begins by discussing some of the existing views on vagueness and then explains why they have not been thought to be satisfactory. It then outlines a new account of vagueness, based on the general idea that vagueness is a global rather than a local phenomenon. In other words, the vagueness of an expression or object is not an intrinsic feature of the object or an expression but a matter of how it relates to other objects and expression. The development of this idea leads to a new semantics and logic for vagueness. The semantics and logic are then applied to a number of issues, including the sorites paradox, the transparency or luminosity of mental states, and personal identity. It is shown that the view allows one to hew to a much more intuitive position on these various issues.

Vagueness: An Investigation into Natural Languages and the Sorites Paradox.

1994 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 483
Author(s):  
Roy A. Sorensen ◽  
Linda Claire Burns
Keyword(s):  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Natural Languages

The Riddle of Vagueness

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Crispin Wright
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Borderline Case ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Sorites Paradox ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Pure Mathematics ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Critical Overview ◽  
Original Treatment

This anthology includes fourteen of Crispin Wrights’s highly influential essays on the phenomenon of vagueness in natural language, collectively representing almost half a century of cutting-edge systematic research. Key issues addressed include whether or under what assumptions vague expressions’ apparent tolerance of marginal changes in things to which they apply indicates that they are governed by inconsistent semantic rules, the varieties of Sorites paradox and the roots of the plausibility of their respective major premises, what it is for something to be a borderline case of a vague expression, whether vagueness should be viewed as fundamentally a semantic or an epistemic phenomenon, whether there is ‘higher-order’ vagueness, and what should be the appropriate logic for vague statements. The essays reprinted here jointly document the development of a distinctively original treatment of the philosophy and logic of vagueness, broadly analogous to the intuitionistic philosophy and logic for pure mathematics. Richard Kimberly Heck contributes an extended introductory essay, providing both an insightful critical overview of the development of the distinctive elements of Wright’s thought about vagueness, and indeed an invaluable advanced introduction to the topic.

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