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.

The paper is a response to Davies, arguing that he misdiagnoses the difficulties with the architecturalist and externalist arguments he targets. Whether or not there are independent grounds for the principles limiting the transfer of epistemic warrant across known entailments, the problem with both types of argument is that they equivocate. It is shown that, in each case, if the premise I have mental property M, expresses something about which the subject is non‐empirically authoritative, it should be viewed as empty of subtantial empirical content; whereas if premise If I have mental property M, then I meet condition C, expresses something knowable a priori, then since its consequent involves substantial empirical content, so must the antecedent. Hence, the modus ponens step is flawed because of equivocation.

Of the many families of words that are thought to be vague, so-called observational predicates may be both the most fascinating and the most confounding. Roughly, observational predicates are terms that apply to objects on the basis of how those objects appear to us perceptually speaking. ‘Red’, ‘loud’, ‘sweet’, ‘acrid’, and ‘smooth’ are good examples. Delia Graff explains that a “predicate is observational just in case its applicability to an object (given a fixed context of evaluation) depends only on the way that object appears” (2001, 3). By the same token observational predicates are, as Crispin Wright observes, terms “whose senses are taught entirely by ostension” (1976). Like other vague predicates, observational words appear to generate sorites paradoxes. Consider for example a series of 20 colored patches progressing from a clearly red one to a clearly orange one, so ordered that each patch is just noticeably different in hue from the one before. The following argument then seems forced upon us: (1) Patch #1 is red. (2) Any patch that differs only slightly in hue from a red patch is itself red. (3) Therefore patch #20 is red. Premise (2) expresses what Wright has called the tolerance of ‘red’: the application of the predicate tolerates small changes in a decisive parameter (here, hue). Of course, most vague predicates, hence most versions of the sorites, are not observational. For instance, given a series of.

Worries about the artistic integrity (for lack of a better term) of twelve-tone music are not new. Critics, philosophers, musicians, even composers them- selves have assailed the idiom with a fervor usually reserved for individual artists or works. Just why it is supposed to be defective is not entirely clear, however. I want to revisit these questions by way of putting some insights from music history and theory together with some insights from the philosophy and psychology of music. To find out whether twelve-tone composition is defective we will need to reflect carefully upon our concepts of music and art in general, so if all goes well our conclusions should have some broader import. Because I will be pulling together considerations from several domains, I will need to lay a fair amount of groundwork at the beginning; but once that is done, we will have a vantage on the present issues that would not otherwise be open to us.