On the measurement of sustainability of rural water supply in India: A Supervaluationist–Degree Theory approach

The paper proposes an empirical methodology for understanding the nature and behavior of Sustainable Development as a vague and multidimensional concept by a case study of participatory and demand determined Rural Drinking water Supply systems in India. It combines for the first time, two of the most influential models – ‘Supervaluationism’ and ‘Degree Theory’- on the measurement of ‘Vagueness’, for timely public intervention in reversing the process of Un-sustainability. Analysis clearly brings out the role of institutional, financial and environmental factors that should be part of Public Policy, for ensuring sustainability of potable water supplysustainability, supervaluationism, degree theory

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

Locating Vagueness

The claim that all vagueness must be a feature of language or thought is the current orthodoxy. This is a claim about the “location” of vagueness. “Locating Vagueness” argues that this claim is false, largely by defending the possibility of borderline cases in the absence of language and thought. If the orthodoxy about the location of vagueness is false, then so too is any account of the “nature” of vagueness that implies that orthodoxy. So this paper concludes that various accounts of the nature of vagueness are false. Among such accounts, so this paper argues, are the standard versions of supervaluationism and the standard versions of epistemicism. So I conclude that those accounts are false. Along the way, I present, and uncover ways to motivate, several heretical accounts of the nature of vagueness, including nonstandard versions of both supervaluationism and epistemicism

Paraconsistent vagueness: a positive argument

Paraconsistent approaches have received little attention in the literature on vagueness (at least compared to other proposals). The reason seems to be that many philosophers have found the idea that a contradiction might be true (or that a sentence and its negation might both be true) hard to swallow. Even advocates of paraconsistency on vagueness do not look very convinced when they consider this fact; since they seem to have spent more time arguing that paraconsistent theories are at least as good as their paracomplete counterparts, than giving positive reasons to believe on a particular paraconsistent proposal. But it sometimes happens that the weakness of a theory turns out to be its mayor ally, and this is what (I claim) hap- pens in a particular paraconsistent proposal known as subvaluationism. In order to make room for truth-value gluts subvaluationism needs to endorse a notion of logical consequence that is, in some sense, weaker than standard notions of consequence. But this weakness allows the subvaluationist theory to accommodate higher-order vague- ness in a way that it is not available to other theories of vagueness (such as, for example, its paracomplete counterpart, supervaluationism)

Dynamics of rural water supply in coastal Kerala : a sustainable development view

This paper examines empirically within sustainable development framework the dynamics of coverage in rural drinking water supply of 180 demand-driven schemes from Malappuram, predominantly a coastal district of Kerala State. The methodology for the analysis comprised (i) multidimensional specification of sustainability in terms of attributes relating to source, technology, quality, finance, institution and hygiene behaviour and (ii) estimation of the degree of sustainability using models of vagueness. Two methods of ‘vagueness’ viz. ‘supervaluationism’ and ‘fuzzy inference system’ were applied to identify systems that are at or below the sustainability line. Results show that sustainability due to source and quality is lower in schemes from non-costal regions, whereas sustainability in dimensions of finance, institution, and hygiene behaviour is lower in coastal regions. Empirical analysis of ‘marginal systems’ indicates that gender participation; female education and income have favourable impact on sustainability of schemes in rural areas. Key words: Sustainable development, Vagueness, Supervaluationism, Degree theory, Fuzzy inference, Rural drinking water supply. JEL Classification: Q56

Epistemicism and modality

What kind of semantics should someone who accepts the epistemicist theory of vagueness defended in Timothy Williamson’s Vagueness (1994) give a definiteness operator? To impose some interesting constraints on acceptable answers to this question, I will assume that the object language also contains a metaphysical necessity operator and a metaphysical actuality operator. I will suggest that the answer is to be found by working within a three-dimensional model theory. I will provide sketches of two ways of extracting an epistemicist semantics from that model theory, one of which I will find to be more plausible than the other

Vagueness: Subvaluationism

Supervaluationism is a well known theory of vagueness. Subvaluationism is a less well known theory of vagueness. But these theories cannot be taken apart, for they are in a relation of duality that can be made precise. This paper provides an introduction to the subvaluationist theory of vagueness in connection to its dual, supervaluationism. A survey on the supervaluationist theory can be found in the Compass paper of Keefe (2008); our presentation of the theory in this paper will be short to get rapidly into the logical issues. This paper is relatively self-contained. A modest background on propositional modal logic is, though not strictly necessary, advisable. The reader might find useful the Compass papers Kracht (2011) and Negri (2011) (though these papers cover issues of more complexity than what is demanded to follow this paper

Personhood, Vagueness and Abortion

In a recent paper, Lee Kerckhove and Sara Waller (hereafter K & W) argue that the concept of personhood is irrelevant for the abortion debate.1 Surprisingly, this irrelevance is due merely to the fact that the predicate ‘being a person’ — hereafter ‘personhood’ — is inherently vague. This vagueness, they argue, reduces ‘personhood’ to incoherency and disqualifies the notion from being a useful moral concept. In other words, if ‘personhood’ isn’t a precise notion with well-defined boundaries, then it cannot be of any use in the debate over the permissibility of abortion. This argument is mistaken. While it may be true that ‘personhood’ is irrelevant for the debate over abortion (a substantive issue not dealt with in this paper), it is not true that ‘personhood’ should be disqualified merely because it is vague. Section 2 of the paper is a quick survey in which I briefly review the importance of ‘personhood’ in some of the more recent literature concerning the moral status of abortion. Section 3 is a reconstruction of K & W’s argument against the relevancy of ‘personhood’ and a criticism showing why their argument fails. Section 4 approaches the use of a vague predicate in moral debate and explores the application of ‘personhood’ given three contemporary solutions to vagueness: degree theory, epistemicism and supervaluationism