Vagueness

About this book

Vagueness is currently the subject of vigorous debate in the philosophy of logic and language. Vague terms - such as 'tall', 'red', 'bald', and 'tadpole' - have borderline cases (arguably, someone may be neither tall nor not tall); and they lack well-defined extensions (there is no sharp boundary between tall people and the rest). So the phenomenon of vagueness poses a fundamental challenge to classical logic and semantics, which assumes that propositions are either true or false and that extensions are determinate. Another striking problem to which vagueness gives rise is the sorites paradox. If you remove one grain from a heap of sand, surely you must be left with a heap. Yet apply this principle repeatedly as you remove grains one by one, and you end up, absurdly, with a solitary grain that counts as a heap. This anthology collects for the first time the most important papers in the area.