Wright on the epistemic conception of vagueness

Nous, 1999

In Williamson's 'Vagueness', he presents an epistemic view of vagueness. However, this view causes an anti-intuitive consequence. Neither epistemicists nor semanticists have given a satisfactory solution. Higher-order vagueness is one of the core issue in the research area of vagueness, on characterizing which Williamson rejects semantic views of vagueness mainly by their failure. However he himself does not characterize higher-order vagueness good enough. In this paper I find the essential reason of that anti-intuitive consequence, and offer a margin model of knowledge. This model is not only suitable for describing higher-order vagueness, but also can avoid the anti-intuitive consequence. 1 Epistemicism Epistemicism is a view about vagueness. Vagueness is phenomenon causing the sorites paradox. A typical example of the sorites paradox is: a grain of wheat does not make a heap, and if so then two grains of wheat do not make a heap, and if so then three grains of wheat do not make a heap, and so on ad infinitum. Thus we can say that ten thousand grains of wheat do not make a heap, which is clearly false. The fact is that we know one grain of wheat does not make a heap and we also know that ten thousand grains of wheat do make a heap, but we do not know whether a hundred grains of wheat make a heap. Therefore we call a hundred grains of wheat a borderline case of the predict 'heap'. The semantic view used to be the study's mainstream in the area of vagueness, which treats vagueness as a semantic phenomenon. Generally, people who hold the view think that the vague predicates such as 'tall', 'red', 'heap' and 'bold' are partially or unusually defined, which means the truth of propositions like 'a hundred grains of wheat make a heap' are void or something except Truth and Falsity. However, a different view on vagueness has become very active due to Williamson's monograph Vagueness published in 1994. In this book, he defends a view named epistemicism, and in this view, the semantics of vagueness predicts are precise but unknowable. There are two main standpoints of epistemicism: one is that the bivalence principle remains valid for vague propositions, and the other is that KK principle fails when knowledge is inexact for inexact knowledge is governed by the margin for error principles. In this paper I will not talk about the defense of the bivalence principle. We can just presuppose it. The margin for error principles and the failure of KK principle, on the contrary, will be explicated introduced for our purpose. The margin for error principles are actually reliability conditions for inexact knowledge. Williamson holds that when our knowledge is inexact, only if we leave a margin for error, the belief saying something is the case could be reliable enough to be knowledge. A belief has a margin for error means that in all situations similar enough to the actual situation, the thing is still the case. Let us look at an example, and we will see why inexact knowledge should be governed by the margin for error principles.

According to the epistemic theory of vagueness a sentence like The apple is red is always determinately true or false. However for an apple that is on the borderline of redness we will forever be ignorant of (1)'s truth-value. For we do not know enough about the meaning of 'red' to ascertain where the boundary between red and non-red lies. It is often objected that this theory severs the relation between our use of vague terms and their meaning. A variety of reasons for this position are discussed: the unintuitiveness of sharp boundaries, the problematic relation between a fuzzy practise of assent and dissent and crisp boundaries, the intended indeterminateness of some vague predicates and the unimaginability of the relation between meaning and use on the epistemic theory. These objections are shown to founder on the overly voluntaristic presupposition that we are in full control of the meaning of the terms of our language.

Philosophical studies, 2004

Philosophical Perspectives, 2008

In his book 'Vagueness', Timothy Williamson defends the following claims. 1 First, sentences containing vague expressions satisfy (other things being equal) the relevant instances of the law of excluded middle and the law of bivalence. Even if, for example, Jack is a borderline case of tallness, Jack is tall or Jack is not tall and 'Jack is tall' is true or false. To speak more metaphorically: vague expressions and correspondingly the semantic values denoted by them have "sharp boundaries" or "sharp cut-off points". Second, we do not and cannot know the sharp cut-off points corresponding to vague expressions. 2 If, for example, Jack is a borderline case of tallness then we do not and cannot know whether or not Jack is tall. Third, the explanation of why we do not and cannot know the sharp cut-off points corresponding to vague expressions is a safety-based explanation. The explanation goes roughly like this: in closeby possible worlds, ones in which the use facts for a certain vague expression differ only slightly from their actual use facts, the meaning and consequently the cut-off point of the expression is slightly different (or, to use the terminology of , vague expressions are semantically plastic). This entails that our beliefs about the cut-off points corresponding to vague expressions are not safe and thus do not constitute knowledge.

2015

I propose a new theory of vagueness centered around the epistemology and normativity of vagueness. The theory is a version of epistemicism—the view that vagueness is a fundamentally epistemic phenomenon—that improves upon existing epistemicist accounts by accommodating both the alleged tolerance and open texture of vague predicates, while foregoing excessive metaphysical commitments. I offer a novel solution to the infamous Sorites paradox, one that outrivals alternative contextualist theories in their ability to explain the phenomenology of vagueness as well as its deontic consequences.Philosoph

Philosophical Studies, 2007

This paper presents an new epistemicist account of vagueness, one that avoids standard arbitrariness worries by exploiting a plenitudinous metaphysic. There are two natural objections to epistemicist accounts of vagueness that one frequently encounters in conversation (objections that are frequently run together). 1 One objection is that it is hard to live without an informative answer to the question as to how the non-semantic facts-non-relational and relational-about a given individual determine the semantic profile of that individual. Let us call this the Bruteness worry. A second objection is that it seems metaphysically arbitrary that just one of the many candidate cut-offs for, say, baldness, should be associated with some ordinary pattern of use of the term 'bald'. Let us call this the Arbitrariness worry. In this paper we sketch an epistemicist approach to vagueness that provides a distinctive perspective on these foundational issues. On the one hand, it affords epistemicism protection against the Arbitrariness worry, by combining the evenhandedness typically associated with supervaluationism with the logic and semantics distinctive of epistemicism. 2 And on the other, it renders the Bruteness objection less pressing by assimilating it to a kind of bruteness that many of us have

Philosophical studies, 2007

This essay defends an epistemicist response to the phenomenon of vagueness concerning moral terms. I outline a traditional model of - and then two novel approaches to - epistemicism about moral predicates, and I demonstrate how the foregoing are able to provide robust explanations of the source of moral, as epistemic, indeterminacy. The first approach to moral epistemicism concerns the extensions of moral predicates, as witnessed by the non-transitivity of a value-theoretic sorites paradox. The second approach to moral epistemicism is induced by the status of moral dilemmas in the epistemic interpretation of two-dimensional semantics. I examine the philosophical significance of the foregoing, and compare the proposal to those of ethical expressivism, constructivism, and scalar act-consequentialism. Finally, I examine the status of moral relativism in light of the epistemicist models of moral vagueness developed in the paper.