81:2 April 1998
Vagueness 

Advisory Editor: Timothy Williamson, Edinburgh

The sorites paradox raises the philosophical problem of vagueness in its most intractable form. If the successive removal of grains turns a heap into a non-heap, standard reasoning seems to show that at some point the removal of one grain turned a heap into a non-heap, a conclusion which many dislike. One can label the problem by saying that the vagueness of the distinction between heaps and non-heaps is to blame. Many accounts treat vagueness as a semantic or pragmatic phenomenon; others treat it as epistemic or ontological. The paradox cannot be solved by means of a technical fix; what is needed is a philosophically well-motivated account of the underlying nature of vagueness. Such an account may engage with wider issues about deviance in logic, disquotational and verificationist theories of truth, and the idea that reality itself is indeterminate. Historical discussion, for example of the sorites paradox in antiquity or of the emergence of vagueness as a problem in early analytic philosophy, is also relevant. Contributors will include Stephen Schiffer and Roy Sorensen.

Table of Contents:

Stephen Schiffer 

Two Issues of Vagueness

Roy Sorensen 

Ambiguity, Discretion and the Sorites

John A. Burgess 

In Defense of an Indeterminist Theory of Vagueness

Hartry Field 

Some Thoughts on Radical Indeterminacy

Richard Heck 

That There Might be Vague Objects (So Far As Concerns  Logic)

Dominic Hyde 

Vagueness, Ontology and Supervenience

Terence Horgan 

The Transvaluationist Conception of Vagueness

Graham Priest 

Fuzzy Identity and Local Validity

Timothy Chambers

On Vagueness, Sorites, and Putnam's "Intuitionistic Strategy"