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Feb 8, 1997 · Evans agrees that there are vague identity statements in which one of the flanking terms is vague (just as Kripke agrees that there are contingent identity statements when one of the flanking terms is a flaccid designator). But then the vagueness is due to language, not the world.
The vagueness so far discussed does not require vagueness in the world. But worldly vagueness can be treated in a similar way. Suppose, as we normally do, that there really is a nonlinguistic property of being red, a property expressed by the predicate ‘is red’.
Other philosophers, known as epistemists, agree that there is no ‘real’ vagueness in the world, but rather than attributing vagueness to our language, they hold it to be a result of a limitation of our knowing powers. 2 Consequently, there is no ‘solution’ to the problem of vagueness – it’s just something we have to learn to live ...
Vagueness, on the face of it, can reside in both language and the world. However, in what follows I shall mainly focus on vagueness in language, although I do hope to say something later about vagueness in the world.
If the world were precise, language would remain vague, because reference is determined in ways that do not preclude indeterminacy. The existence of ontological vageuness does not let language off the hook. Understanding the origin of vagueness in language demands scrutiny of the reference relation.
Aug 18, 2020 · Elizabeth Barnes and J. Robert G. Williams claim to offer a new ontic theory of vagueness, the kind of theory which considers vagueness to exist not in language but in reality. This paper...
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Jun 29, 2011 · Much, or perhaps all, of natural language is vague: the concepts expressed in natural language seem to have unclear boundaries. A central example is that of “heap”—as grains of sand are removed from a heap, at what point does it cease to be a heap?
