Essential Vagueness: Two Models, One Simple Truth

Nous, 2002

For what you're admitting is that you cannot answer which is the last of "few" or the first of "many". Carneades

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.

Vassar College Journal of Philosophy, 2018

This article argues that resolutions to the sorites paradox offered by epistemic and supervaluation theories fail to adequately account for vagueness. After explai​ning the paradox, I examine the epistemic theory defended by Timothy Williamson and discuss objections to his semantic argument for vague terms having precise boundaries. I then consider Rosanna Keefe's supervaluationist approach and explain why it fails to accommodate the problem of higher-order vagueness. I conclude by discussing how fuzzy logic may hold the key to resolving the sorites paradox without positing indefensible borders to the correct application of vague terms.

Approaching Vagueness, 1983

It is argued in this paper that the vagueness of natural language predicates arises from the fact that they are learned and used always in limited contexts and hence are incompletely defined. A semantics for natural language must take this into account by making the interpretation of predicates context-dependent. It is shown that a context dependent semantics also provides the means for an account of vagueness. These notions are first developed and argued for in abstract terms and are then applied to a solution of the prototype of vagueness puzzles: the paradox of the heap.

Analysis 65 (2005), 95-104, 2005

Contrary to the great bulk of philosophical work on vagueness, the core of vagueness is not to be found in vague monadic predicates such as ‘bald’, ‘tall’, or ‘old’. The true source of vagueness – at least vagueness of the type that typically appears in the sorites – lies beneath these, in a mechanism using a buried quantifier operative over the comparatives ‘balder’, ‘taller’ and ‘older’. Or so I propose. Here the quantifier account is presented in its simplest form, with the limited claim that it offers a paradigmatic treatment for paradigmatic vague predicates in the sorites. Questions remain as to whether the account or something like it can be extended to all soritesvulnerable predicates, and qualifications and concessions in this regard are offered in §9. What the approach promises, however, even in this limited form, is deeper understanding of vagueness through a deeper understanding of non-comparative adjectives derived from comparatives, a central explanation for a range of otherwise puzzling and disparate phenomena, and a new resolution for the sorites.

philosophy.stanford.edu

Bull. EATCS, 2020

We look at the history of research on vagueness and the Sorites paradox. That search has been largely unsuccessful and the existing solutions are not quite adequate. But following Wittgenstein we show that the notion of a successful language game works. Language games involving words like “small" or “red" can be successful and people can use these words to cooperate with others. And yet, ultimately these words do not have a meaning in the sense of a tight semantics. It is just that most of the time these games work. It is fine to say, “the light is green and we can go," even though the color word “green" does not actually have a semantics.

Vagueness has long been a foe of natural kind theorists. It reveals our inconsistency in holding a commonsensical world view in which objects are classified into groups, kinds, or types. To avoid this inconsistency some philosophers opt for highly unintuitive ontology as well as far-fetched semantic thesis. This paper aims to show that this price does not have to be paid. Specifically, I question the meaning of “+1” in the minor premise of the Sorties argument. I argue that the “1” depends on the universe (in a logic sense) we chose, which is determined by the stance we pick. I will show that the “+1” in any Sorties argument will impose certain restrictions on its premises, such that they cannot all be true. Towards the end I will explain how vagueness could turn into an argument in favor of the irreducibility of the natural kind terms to lower-level simples.

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 1995

The Architecture of Continuity: Essays and Conversations, 2008

A text that was published in its first version already in 2002, in a book titled TransUrbanism (V2_publishing). The essay was reworked many times; for the last time in The Architecture of Continuity, a collection of essays from 2008. It considers the analog-computing methods of Frei Otto and Gaudi as material and generative techniques that are inherently configurational, as opposed to many formalist techniques, such as parametricism. Otto’s “form-finding” techniques led me to the notion of vagueness, a word that I distinguish from the more familiar architectural concept of neutrality.