Elsa Magnell

According to Ruth Chang (2002, 2022), incommensurability in hard cases cannot be cases of vagueness. This is because vagueness, unlike hard cases, can always be resolved by arbitrary stipulation, leaving no resolutional remainder or substantive disagreement. Contrary to this, I argue that Chang’s argument fails because proponents of the vagueness view are in no way necessarily committed to the claim that vagueness always can be resolved by arbitrary stipulation. In fact, there seems to be no reason to assume that vagueness could not accommodate our intuitions about resolutional remainder and substantive disagreements in a satisfying way. If we want a simple theory, and if at least some incommensurability is vagueness, this could then be a reason for understanding incommensurability as vagueness; and perhaps even rejecting parity.

We discuss the striking similarities between Friedrich Nietzsche's and Wilfrid Sellars's respective philosophies of mind. Drawing especially on recent Nietzsche scholarship by Riccardi and Katsafanas, we argue that the Nietzschean picture of consciousness is essentially the same as Sellars's view of conceptually structured thought. In particular, we argue that both consider structured thinking to be a linguistic phenomenon whose structure, in turn, arises contingently from social interactions within a community. Further, both views provide for a special role to be played by specifically mentalistic vocabulary, making it possible to engage with the mental states of others in a reflective way. We also discuss how this parallel extends to their respective views on perception. Drawing on O'Shea and Riccardi, we argue for interpretations on which there still is a clear connection between their respective views. Finally, we end the article by discussing some reasons why this similarity should not be as unexpected as it initially seems.