Diana Raffman

Vague terms have unclear or “blurred” boundaries of application, where having blurred boundaries is taken to consist in having (possible) borderline cases. Borderline cases in turn are standardly defined in terms of the opposition between a vague term ‘ Φ ’ and its contradictory ‘not Φ ’: for example, borderline cases for ‘ Φ ’ are _neither definitely Φ nor definitely not Φ _, or such that _neither ‘x_ is Φ _’ nor_ ‘_x_ is not Φ ’_is true_, or such that _both ‘x_ is Φ _’ and ‘x_ is not Φ ’_are indefinite in value_. This chapter provides a number of reasons to think that the standard analysis of borderline cases in terms of contradictories cannot be correct.

The chapter has several goals. First, it exposes some misconceptions about the perceptual indiscriminability relation as it figures in recent treatments (pro and con) of disjunctivism by M. G. F. Martin (2004, 2006) and Susanna Siegel (2004). In particular, it draws upon some experimental results that cast doubt upon their contention that indiscriminability is nontransitive. It then proposes a different, more plausible understanding of the (in)discriminability relation and its relata. The most important insight here is that, contra Martin and Siegel, only external stimuli, not mental states or experiences, can stand in relations of (in)discriminability to one another. Experiences can be phenomenally the same or different, but not discriminable or indiscriminable. This insight enables a new conception of so-called phenomenal continua and, as against some other theorists, counts in favor of their existence. Even if worries about nontransitivity can be set aside, however, the indiscriminability relation probably cannot do the philosophical work that Martin’s disjunctivist asks of it. At the end the chapter suggests an alternative account of the commonality among veridical perceptions, hallucinations, and illusions—an account that may satisfy the disjunctivist’s needs without appealing to indiscriminability.

Higher-order vagueness is widely thought to be a feature of vague predicates that any adequate theory of vagueness must accommodate. It takes a variety of forms. Perhaps the most familiar is the supposed existence, or at least possibility, of higher-order borderline cases: borderline borderline cases, borderline borderline borderline cases, and so forth. A second form of higher-order vagueness, what this chapter calls ‘prescriptive’ higher-order vagueness, is thought to characterize complex predicates constructed from vague predicates by attaching operators having to do with the predicates' proper application. For example, the predicates ‘mandates application of _old_’ and ‘can competently be called _old_’ are prescriptively higher-order vague. Higher-order vagueness appears in other guises as well, but these two have been of particular interest to philosophers and are the target here. This chapter exposes some misconceptions about them, and shows that higher-order vagueness is less prevalent and less important theoretically than is usually supposed.

Externalism about some mental property, M, is the thesis that whether a person has M conceptually depends, in part, on the person's environment. Architecturalism about M is the thesis that whether a person has M conceptually depends, in part, on the person's internal cognitive architecture. I consider a number of arguments of the form (MC):(1) I have mental property M;(2) If I have mental property M, then I meet condition C; Therefore, (3) I meet condition C... These arguments are potentially problematic to the extent that premise (1) can be known with first‐person authority and premise (2) can be known by way of a philosophical argument for an externalist or architecturalist thesis. For, in that case, knowledge of both premises can be had without rising from the armchair, and there is a transparently valid argument from these premises to the conclusion (3). Yet it is intuitively implausible that I have a non‐empirical route to substantive knowledge about my environment or about my cognitive architecture. I suggest that we can avoid this problem of armchair knowledge if we allow that there are principles that limit the transmission of epistemic warrant from the premises to the conclusion of even palpably valid arguments.

The goal of this book is to defend a supervaluationist theory of vagueness. Keefe begins by laying out a series of desiderata for an adequate theory of vagueness generally: among other things, such a theory will need to solve the sorites paradox, provide a plausible analysis of borderline cases, preserve so-called penumbral connections among borderline predications, accommodate the phenomenon of higher-order vagueness, and comport with as many of our ordinary linguistic intuitions as possible. She then proceeds to evaluate in turn each of the main competitors to a supervaluationist theory—including epistemic, many-valued, degree-theoretic, and pragmatic accounts—in light of these desiderata, and finds each seriously lacking. Having thus cleared the ground, she advances a version of the supervaluationist approach and replies to a number of potential objections.

Modality, morality and belief are among the most controversial topics in philosophy today, and few philosophers have shaped these debates as deeply as Ruth Barcan Marcus. Inspired by her work, a distinguished group of philosophers explore these issues, refine and sharpen arguments and develop new positions on such topics as possible worlds, moral dilemmas, essentialism, and the explanation of actions by beliefs. This 'state of the art' collection honours one of the most rigorous and iconoclastic of philosophical pioneers.

This paper explores the implications of some experimental data for views that identify colors with objective physical properties such as reflectance profiles. Those who reject objectivist views often argue from the existence of intersubjective differences in color categorization ; but objectivists have managed to stand their ground by identifying colors with sets or ranges of reflectances individuated by the ways in which they stimulate the visual system. In the interest of moving the debate forward, I provide a new kind of evidence against objectivism. Results of a psycholinguistic experiment reveal hysteresis and enhanced contrast in ordinary speakers’ applications of vague terms. These dynamical patterns are purely psychological and give rise to intra-subjective variation in subjects’ applications of vague predicates; in particular, in the case of color predicates, nothing in the stimulus configuration or the illuminant undergoes any change, the only variable being the order in which stimuli are judged. I hypothesize that these order effects are necessary if vague words are to be applicable to values on dimensions, like color, that admit of continuous change. To the extent that this hypothesis is correct, it suggests that if colors are the properties named by ordinary color predicates, and ordinary color predicates are vague, and the application of vague predicates exhibits the order effects found in the experiment, colours cannot be physical or otherwise objective in nature.

accounts in general, contrary to what he seems to think. Stanley’s discussion concerns the dynamic or ‘forced march’ version of the sorites, viz. the version framed in terms of the judgments that would be made by a competent speaker who proceeds step by step along a sorites series for a vague predicate ‘F’. According to Stanley, the contextualist treatment of the paradox is based on the idea that the speaker shifts the content of the predicate whenever necessary to make it the case that each successive pair of adjacent items are category-identical – in other words, either both items satisfy ‘F’ or neither does. These adjustments allow the speaker to progress from a clear case for ‘F’ to a clear case for ‘not-F’ without breaking the seeming continuity of the series.

It is generally agreed that vague predicates like ‘red’, ‘rich’, ‘tall’, and ‘bald’, have borderline cases of application. For instance, a cloth patch whose color lies midway between a definite red and a definite orange is a borderline case for ‘red’, and an American man five feet eleven inches in height is (arguably) a borderline case for ‘tall’. The proper analysis of borderline cases is a matter of dispute, but most theorists of vagueness agree at least in the thought that borderline cases for vague predicate ‘ ’ are items whose satisfaction of ‘ ’ is in some sense unclear or problematic: it is unclear whether or not the patch is red, unclear whether or not the man is tall.1 For example, Lynda Burns cites a widespread view as holding that borderline cases “are not definitely within the positive or negative extension of the predicate. … Border- line cases are seen as falling within a gap between the cases of definite application of the predicate and cases of definite application of its negation” (1995, 30). Michael Tye writes that the “concept of a border- line case is the concept of a case that is neither definitely in nor defi- nitely out” (1994b, 18).