Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Vagueness, Sharp Boundaries, and Supervenience Conditions

Vagueness, Sharp Boundaries, and Supervenience Conditions GARY EBBS VAGUENESS, SHARP BOUNDARIES, AND SUPERVENIENCE CONDITIONS In his impressive book Vagueness, Timothy Williamson critically surveys the entire literature on vagueness and presents a brilliant new version of the theory that our vague concepts have unknown sharp boundaries. His probing criticisms of previous views of vagueness are unified by a deep commitment to realism and a correspondingly thorough rejection of definitional theories of meaning and consensus theories of truth. I share Williamson’s commitment to realism, and I find many of his arguments persuasive. As I see it, however, Williamson’s proposed explanation of our ignorance of borderline vague truths faces a dilemma: either we have no grounds for accepting it, or it is no more than an elaborate restatement of what it is supposed to explain – our starting observation that we do not know borderline vague truths. This dilemma discredits Williamson’s underlying methodological assumption that we can distinguish between “conceptual” and “empirical” sources of our ignorance of borderline vague truths. To show why, I will focus on an intuitively plausible assumption that many philosophers simply take for granted. The assumption is best seen as a generalization from intuitions about the conditions for applying par- ticular vague concepts. For http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Synthese Springer Journals

Vagueness, Sharp Boundaries, and Supervenience Conditions

Ebbs, Gary
Synthese , Volume 127 (3) – Oct 3, 2004
Download PDF
22 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/vagueness-sharp-boundaries-and-supervenience-conditions-16chYK5e0v

References (2)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Subject
Philosophy; Philosophy of Science; Epistemology; Logic; Philosophy of Language; Metaphysics
ISSN
0039-7857
eISSN
1573-0964
DOI
10.1023/A:1010353810702
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

GARY EBBS VAGUENESS, SHARP BOUNDARIES, AND SUPERVENIENCE CONDITIONS In his impressive book Vagueness, Timothy Williamson critically surveys the entire literature on vagueness and presents a brilliant new version of the theory that our vague concepts have unknown sharp boundaries. His probing criticisms of previous views of vagueness are unified by a deep commitment to realism and a correspondingly thorough rejection of definitional theories of meaning and consensus theories of truth. I share Williamson’s commitment to realism, and I find many of his arguments persuasive. As I see it, however, Williamson’s proposed explanation of our ignorance of borderline vague truths faces a dilemma: either we have no grounds for accepting it, or it is no more than an elaborate restatement of what it is supposed to explain – our starting observation that we do not know borderline vague truths. This dilemma discredits Williamson’s underlying methodological assumption that we can distinguish between “conceptual” and “empirical” sources of our ignorance of borderline vague truths. To show why, I will focus on an intuitively plausible assumption that many philosophers simply take for granted. The assumption is best seen as a generalization from intuitions about the conditions for applying par- ticular vague concepts. For

Journal

Synthese – Springer Journals

Published: Oct 3, 2004

There are no references for this article.