Truth-Functional and Penumbral Intuitions

Two of the main intuitions that underlie the phenomenon of vagueness are the truth-functional and the penumbral intuitions. After presenting and contrasting them, I will put forward Tappenden's gappy approach to vagueness (which takes into account the truth-functional intuition). I will contrast Tappenden's view with another of the theories of vagueness that see it as a semantic phenomenon: Supervaluationism (which takes into account the penumbral intuition). Then I will analyze some objections to Tappenden's approach and some objections to Supervaluationism. Finally, I will present my own worries about Tappenden's account

A Criticism of the Argument from Vagueness for Unrestricted Composition

A subject of much recent philosophical discussion is the thesis that for any finite class of objects, the xs, there is necessarily an object composed of those xs. Composition is unrestricted. Some support for this view arises from concerns about whether composition can be a vague matter. Ted Sider offers an ‘argument from vagueness’ in defense of unrestricted mereological composition which relies heavily on the premise that composition cannot be vague. However, he endorses a particular view of vagueness which, I propose, commits him to abandoning certain premises of his argument. I will defend Sider’s charge that composition cannot be vague. I will argue, though, that Sider should actually be committed to accepting sharp cutoffs with regard to composition, since the theory of vagueness Sider endorses itself requires sharp cutoffs. The purpose of this paper is to show that his views on vagueness and sharp cutoffs are at conflict with one another, and because of that, his argument for unrestricted composition fails

Against 'Against 'Against Vague Existence''

Alessandro Torza argues that Ted Sider’s Lewisian argument against vague existence is insufficient to rule out the possibility of what he calls ‘super-vague existence’, that is the idea that existence is higher-order vague, for all orders. In this chapter it is argued that the possibility of super-vague existence is ineffective against the conclusion of Sider’s argument since super-vague existence cannot be consistently claimed to be a kind of linguistic vagueness. Torza’s idea of super-vague existence seems to be better suited to model vague existence under the assumption that vague existence is instead a form of ontic indeterminacy, contra what Ted Sider and David Lewis assume

Mass/Count Variation: A Mereological, Two-Dimensional Semantics

We argue that two types of context are central to grounding the semantics for the mass/count distinction. We combine and develop the accounts of Rothstein (2010) and Landman (2011), which emphasize (non-)overlap at a context. We also adopt some parts of Chierchia’s (2010) account which uses precisifying contexts. We unite these strands in a two-dimensional semantics that covers a wide range of the puzzling variation data in mass/count lexicalization. Most importantly, it predicts where we should expect to find such variation for some classes of nouns but not for others, and also explains why

Semantic Ambiguity and Perceived Ambiguity

I explore some of the issues that arise when trying to establish a connection between the underspecification hypothesis pursued in the NLP literature and work on ambiguity in semantics and in the psychological literature. A theory of underspecification is developed `from the first principles', i.e., starting from a definition of what it means for a sentence to be semantically ambiguous and from what we know about the way humans deal with ambiguity. An underspecified language is specified as the translation language of a grammar covering sentences that display three classes of semantic ambiguity: lexical ambiguity, scopal ambiguity, and referential ambiguity. The expressions of this language denote sets of senses. A formalization of defeasible reasoning with underspecified representations is presented, based on Default Logic. Some issues to be confronted by such a formalization are discussed.Comment: Latex, 47 pages. Uses tree-dvips.sty, lingmacros.sty, fullname.st

Being Metaphysically Unsettled: Barnes and Williams on Metaphysical Indeterminacy and Vagueness

This chapter discusses the defence of metaphysical indeterminacy by Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams and discusses a classical and bivalent theory of such indeterminacy. Even if metaphysical indeterminacy arguably is intelligible, Barnes and Williams argue in favour of it being so and this faces important problems. As for classical logic and bivalence, the chapter problematizes what exactly is at issue in this debate. Can reality not be adequately described using different languages, some classical and some not? Moreover, it is argued that the classical and bivalent theory of Barnes and Williams does not avoid the problems that arise for rival theories

An Ontology for Grounding Vague Geographic Terms

Many geographic terms, such as “river” and “lake”, are vague, with no clear boundaries of application. In particular, the spatial extent of such features is often vaguely carved out of a continuously varying observable domain. We present a means of defining vague terms using standpoint semantics, a refinement of the philosophical idea of supervaluation semantics. Such definitions can be grounded in actual data by geometric analysis and segmentation of the data set. The issues raised by this process with regard to the nature of boundaries and domains of logical quantification are discussed. We describe a prototype implementation of a system capable of segmenting attributed polygon data into geographically significant regions and evaluating queries involving vague geographic feature terms

Event Location and Vagueness

That our event talk is vague is no news. Unlike facts, events are particulars located in space and time. But in ordinary circumstances it is utterly difficult, if not impossible, to specify the exact extent of the relevant spatiotemporal location. We say that Brutus stabbed Caesar and we intend to refer to an event — Brutus’s stabbing of Caesar—that took place at a certain time in a certain place. It took place in the Senate (not in the Coliseum) during the Ides of March (not April) in Rome, 44 BC. But where exactly in the Senate did this event take place? Did it spread only through Brutus and Caesar? Did it spread through their entire bodies? (Was Brutus’s left ear involved at all in this event?) Did it also spread through some space between them? Through what portion of space? And when exactly on March 15 did the killing begin? When exactly did it end? We don’t think the difficulty here is purely epistemic, as if it were just a matter of ignoring the facts. It’s not that there is this event, Brutus’s killing of Caesar, that has perfectly precise and yet unknown spatiotemporal boundaries, boundaries that historians have not been able (and will never be able) to locate. It’s not that such events as the industrial revolution, the discovery of penicillin, or World War II have precise and unknown spatiotemporal boundaries whose location eschews us. The indeterminacy here is not epistemic, or so we claim. Does it follow that the indeterminacy is ontological—that events such as these have fuzzy spatial or temporal boundaries? We don’t think so, either

Belief, Rational and Justified

It is clear that beliefs can be assessed both as to their justification and their rationality. What is not as clear, however, is how the rationality and justification of belief relate to one another. Stewart Cohen has stumped for the popular proposal that rationality and justification come to the same thing, that rational beliefs just are justified beliefs, supporting his view by arguing that ‘justified belief’ and ‘rational belief’ are synonymous. In this paper, I will give reason to think that Cohen’s argument is spurious. I will show that ‘rational’ and ‘justified’ occupy two distinct semantic categories – ‘rational’ is an absolute gradable adjective and ‘justified’ is a relative gradable adjective – telling against the thought that ‘rational belief’ and ‘justified belief’ are synonymous. I will then argue that the burden of proof is on those who would equate rationality and justification, making the case that those who hold this prominent position face the difficulty of explaining how rationality and justification come to the same thing even though ‘rational’ and ‘justified’ are not synonymous