Theories of vagueness: An examination
LE3 .A278 2012
2012
Maitzen, Stephen
Acadia University
Bachelor of Arts
Honours
Philosophy
I examine the leading proposed solutions to the problem of vagueness and show that none of them succeeds. Each approach, I argue, faces serious objections that it lacks the tools to address. Epistemicism and contextualism cannot account for the sharp and unknowable boundaries to which they are committed. Many-valued logics either cannot give an account of logical validity or else cannot assign truth-values in a principled way. Supervaluationism is committed an infinite hierarchy of admissible sharpenings that ordinary language, the only plausible source of those sharpenings, cannot provide. Semantic nihilism, lastly, is by its own lights not even true.
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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:881