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Bacon Andrew. Vagueness and Thought. Oxford University Press,2018. — 361 p. — (Oxford Philosophical Monographs). 2018

According to orthodoxy the study of vagueness belongs to the domain of the philosophy of language. According to that paradigm, solving the paradoxes of vagueness involves investigating the nature of words like ‘heap’ and ‘bald’ in English, and parallel words in other languages. By contrast, the theory I advocate in this book is a theory ofpropositional vagueness. While I certainly recognize a notion of vagueness applicable to sentences and other linguistic expressions, these notions are to be explained in terms of propositional vagueness and not the other way around. Instead of understanding vagueness in terms of language, the view of this book places the study of vagueness squarely in epistemological terms, situating it within a theory of rational propositional attitudes.

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PART I Background Non-Classical and Nihilistic Approaches

Consider the following valid piece of reasoning:[2]

Responding to the Sorites

Weakening Classical Logic

2 Classical Approaches

An Overview of the Current Debate

Epistemicism and Supervaluationism

Does Vagueness Involve Ignorance?

Does Vagueness Involve Truth Value Gaps?

Many Interpretations or One?

Is Validity Local or Global?

An Outline of a Theory of Propositional Vagueness

The disputes we have discussed in chapter 2 do not draw the lines youd initially expect.

Is Vagueness Linguistic?

The Epistemology of Vagueness

Logical Features

Vagueness-Related Uncertainty as a Special Sort ofPsychological Attitude

PART II Epistemological Matters Vagueness and Language

As is often the case in philosophy, competing philosophical theories, purportedly about the same subject matter, can be couched in very different vocabulary.

Can One Explain Propositional Borderlineness in Terms of Sentential Borderlineness?

name=bookmark342>Vague Objects

name=bookmark346>Montague's Paradox

More Vague Propositions than Sentences

Vagueness and the Objects of Thought

Vagueness and Ignorance

According to a widely held intuition there is an important, systematic connection between borderlineness and knowledge.

InFavourofVaguePropositions

Explaining Ignorance about the Vague

Denying Ignorance about the Vague

6 Vagueness and Evidence

In chapter 5,1 argued against linguistic accounts of vagueness on the grounds that if it is true that we cannot know whether Harry is bald, then this is not because of the way the English sentence ‘Harry is bald' happens to be used. Whether a belief that Harry is bald constitutes knowledge or not, I suggested, is just not sensitive to facts about your linguistic environment.

InexactEvidence

Updating on Vague Evidence

A Principle of Plenitude for Vague Propositions

Evidential Roles and Degrees of Truth

Probabilism, Assertion, and Higher-Order Vagueness

The theory of vague propositions outlined in chapter 6 appealed freely to the orthodox Bayesian theory of credences and learning, which assumes, among other things, that the correct theory of rational credence is one governed by the classical axioms of probability theory.

Field’s Theory

Uncertainty in the Face of Higher-Order Vagueness

7.3 Should Our Credences in the Vague Obey the Probability Calculus?

Vagueness and Uncertainty

Epistemicism is notorious for making a pair of counterintuitive claims.1

Expressivism about Vagueness

Disagreements about Morals, Conditionals, and Epistemic Modals

Do All Rational Disagreements about the Vague Boil Down to Disagreements about the Precise?

Vagueness and Decision

A compelling thought, no doubt inspired by the idea that vagueness is primarily linguistic, has it that beliefs and desires about vague matters are, in some sense, redundant.

Vagueness and Decision Theory

Vagueness and Action

Vagueness and Preferences

Probability in the Absence of Uncertainty

10 Vagueness and Desire

In chapter 8, we noted that by treating vagueness-related ignorance as straightforwardly analogous to ignorance about the world, we concede much to the epistemicist way of thinking.

The View that Vagueness is Merelya Kind of Ignorance

The Indifference Principle

Caring about the Vague

Is it Always Possible to Articulate your Desires Using Precise Language?

PART III Logical Matter

11 Vague Propositions

In the following chapters, we shall attend to a number of logical issues that arise concerning the treatment of vague propositions.

Fineness of Grain

IndividuationConditions

A Theory of Propositions

Moderately Fine-Grained Theories of Content

12 Vagueness and Precision

So far we have been theorizing in a fairly abstract and informal way about the distinction between vague and precise propositions.

BorderlinenessasPrimitive

Are the Propositions of Physics Precise?

Vagueness as Primitive

Vagueness and Precision

A Semantical Account of Precision in Terms of Symmetries

14 Vagueness and the World

Despite the pervasiveness of vagueness, it is natural to find some version of the following schematic thought extremely compelling:

Factual Propositions and Supervaluationism

14.2 The Problem of Higher-Order Vagueness

Vagueness All the Way Down

15 Vagueness and Modality

In this chapter, we shall be investigating the interaction of metaphysical modalities with vagueness.

The Interaction of Vagueness and Modality

The Proper Logic of Vagueness and Modality

The Supervenience of the Vague on the Precise

A Representation Theorem?

16 Vague Objects

We observed in section 4.4 that an adequate linguistic account of vagueness must provide more than an account of sentential vagueness.

Vagueness Throughout the Type Hierarchy

17 Beyond Vagueness

There are lots of different ways in which a portion of language can end up being defective or indeterminate.

Semantic Indecision

Can We Get By without Semantic Indecision?

An Account of Semantic Indecision

ConcludingRemarks

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