Vagueness in a Precise World: Essays on Metaphysical Vagueness.

Metaphysical Vagueness;Philosophy;Humanities;Philosophy

Sud, RohanSwanson, Eric Peter ;

University of Michigan

关键词: Metaphysical Vagueness;    Philosophy;    Humanities;    Philosophy;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/135870/rsud_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Our words are vague, yet the world is precise. This dissertation consists of three essays that jointly attempt to articulate, explore, and defend this claim. In the first essay, I present my positive proposal for a non-metaphysical treatment of vagueness. Inspired by research on the Problem of the Many, I claim that we are speaking many perfectly precise languages simultaneously and that each speech act involves uttering many perfectly precise sentences. This position, which I call supersententialism, is the most plausible alternative to metaphysical vagueness: it provides a fully reductive account of vagueness that preserves the T-schema. The second essay aims to address a rampant, albeit unnoticed, argument schema that purports to show that non-metaphysical accounts of vagueness cannot explain vagueness in fundamental, or perfectly natural, properties. In response, I propose a position that I call ersatz metaphysical vagueness according to which the term ;;perfectly natural’ is vague. Ersatz metaphysical vagueness retains the idea that the world is precise, but replicates the advantages of genuine metaphysical vagueness. I show how, by adopting this hypothesis, there can be vagueness in attributions of perfectly natural properties arising from the vagueness in our notion of perfect naturalness rather than from ;;the world itself’. Ersatz metaphysical vagueness thus provides us with a highly general alternative to genuine metaphysical vagueness. The final essay explores the relationship between metaphysical vagueness and ontological deflationism. Ontological deflationist positions treat the quantifier as having a highly plastic meaning. This plasticity naturally leads to vagueness in the quantifier. Thus, ontological deflationists are committed to vague existence. Is this vague existence ;;metaphysical vagueness’ or ;;vagueness in the world’? The rest of the essay clarifies this question and answers it under various clarifications.