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Vagueness And Degrees Of Truth
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Book Synopsis Vagueness and Degrees of Truth by : Nicholas J. J. Smith
Download or read book Vagueness and Degrees of Truth written by Nicholas J. J. Smith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-11-06 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, Nicholas Smith develops a new theory of vagueness: fuzzy plurivaluationism. A predicate is said to be vague if there is no sharply defined boundary between the things to which it applies and the things to which it does not apply. For example, 'heavy' is vague in a way that 'weighs over 20 kilograms' is not. A great many predicates - both in everyday talk, and in a wide array of theoretical vocabularies, from law to psychology to engineering - are vague. Smith argues, on the basis of a detailed account of the defining features of vagueness, that an accurate theory of vagueness must involve the idea that truth comes in degrees. The core idea of degrees of truth is that while some sentences are true and some are false, others possess intermediate truth values: they are truer than the false sentences, but not as true as the true ones. Degree-theoretic treatments of vagueness have been proposed in the past, but all have encountered significant objections. In light of these, Smith develops a new type of degree theory. Its innovations include a definition of logical consequence that allows the derivation of a classical consequence relation from the degree-theoretic semantics, a unified account of degrees of truth and subjective probabilities, and the incorporation of semantic indeterminacy - the view that vague statements need not have unique meanings - into the degree-theoretic framework. As well as being essential reading for those working on vagueness, Smith's book provides an excellent entry-point for newcomers to the era - both from elsewhere in philosophy, and from computer science, logic and engineering. It contains a thorough introduction to existing theories of vagueness and to the requisite logical background.
Book Synopsis Vagueness and Degrees of Truth by : Nicholas J. J. Smith
Download or read book Vagueness and Degrees of Truth written by Nicholas J. J. Smith and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-11-06 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, Nicholas Smith develops a new theory of vagueness: fuzzy plurivaluationism. A predicate is said to be vague if there is no sharply defined boundary between the things to which it applies and the things to which it does not apply. For example, 'heavy' is vague in a way that 'weighs over 20 kilograms' is not. A great many predicates - both in everyday talk, and in a wide array of theoretical vocabularies, from law to psychology to engineering - are vague. Smith argues, on the basis of a detailed account of the defining features of vagueness, that an accurate theory of vagueness must involve the idea that truth comes in degrees. The core idea of degrees of truth is that while some sentences are true and some are false, others possess intermediate truth values: they are truer than the false sentences, but not as true as the true ones. Degree-theoretic treatments of vagueness have been proposed in the past, but all have encountered significant objections. In light of these, Smith develops a new type of degree theory. Its innovations include a definition of logical consequence that allows the derivation of a classical consequence relation from the degree-theoretic semantics, a unified account of degrees of truth and subjective probabilities, and the incorporation of semantic indeterminacy - the view that vague statements need not have unique meanings - into the degree-theoretic framework. As well as being essential reading for those working on vagueness, Smith's book provides an excellent entry-point for newcomers to the era - both from elsewhere in philosophy, and from computer science, logic and engineering. It contains a thorough introduction to existing theories of vagueness and to the requisite logical background.
Book Synopsis Truth, Vagueness, and Paradox by : Vann McGee
Download or read book Truth, Vagueness, and Paradox written by Vann McGee and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Awarded the 1988 Johnsonian Prize in Philosophy. Published with the aid of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Download or read book Vagueness written by Timothy Williamson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-04 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you keep removing single grains of sand from a heap, when is it no longer a heap? From discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece, to modern formal approaches like fuzzy logic, Timothy Williamson traces the history of the problem of vagueness. He argues that standard logic and formal semantics apply even to vague languages and defends the controversial, realist view that vagueness is a form of ignorance - there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we can never know exactly which one it is.
Download or read book Vagueness written by Kit Fine and published by Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy. This book was released on 2020 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vagueness is a subject of long-standing interest in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and philosophical logic. Numerous accounts of vagueness have been proposed in the literature but there has been no general consensus on which, if any, should be be accepted. Kit Fine here presents a new theory of vagueness based on the radical hypothesis that vagueness is a "global" rather than a "local" phenomenon. In other words, according to Fine, the vagueness of an object or expression cannot properly be considered except in its relation to other objects or other expressions. He then applies the theory to a variety of topics in logic, metaphysics and epistemology, including the sorites paradox, the problem of personal identity, and the transparency of mental phenomenon. This is the inaugural volume in the Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy series, presenting lectures from the most important contemporary thinkers in the discipline.
Download or read book Cuts and Clouds written by Richard Dietz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-11 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vagueness is a deeply puzzling aspect of the relation between language and the world. Is it a feature of the way we represent reality in language, or a feature of reality itself? How can we reason with vague concepts? Cuts and Clouds presents the latest work towards an understanding of these puzzles about the nature and logic of vagueness.
Download or read book Unruly Words written by Diana Raffman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Unruly Words, Diana Raffman advances a new theory of vagueness which, unlike previous accounts, is genuinely semantic while preserving bivalence. According to this new approach, called the multiple range theory, vagueness consists essentially in a term's being applicable in multiple arbitrarily different, but equally competent, ways, even when contextual factors are fixed.
Download or read book Logic written by Nicholas J.J. Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an essential introduction to classical logic.
Download or read book Vagueness written by Rosanna Keefe and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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). 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 papers in the field. After an introduction that surveys the field, the essays form four groups, starting with some historically notable pieces. The 1970s saw an explosion of interest in vagueness, and the second group of essays reprints classic papers from this period. The following group of papers represent current work on the logic and semantics of vagueness. The essays in the final group are contributions to the continuing debate about vague objects and vague identity.
Book Synopsis Theories of Vagueness by : Rosanna Keefe
Download or read book Theories of Vagueness written by Rosanna Keefe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-28 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful comparative study of the main theories of vagueness, first published in 2000.
Download or read book Not Exactly written by Kees van Deemter and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our lives are full of inexactitude. We say a person is tall or an action is just without the precision of measurement on a dial. In this engaging account, Kees van Deemter explores vagueness, cutting across areas such as language, mathematical logic, and computing. He considers why vagueness is inherent, and why it is important in how we function.
Download or read book Spandrels of Truth written by Jc Beall and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-04-07 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the various conceptions of truth is one according to which 'is true' is a transparent, entirely see-through device introduced for only practical (expressive) reasons. This device, when introduced into the language, brings about truth-theoretic paradoxes (particularly, the notorious Liar and Curry paradoxes). The options for dealing with the paradoxes while preserving the full transparency of 'true' are limited. In Spandrels of Truth, Beall concisely presents and defends a modest, so-called dialetheic theory of transparent truth.
Book Synopsis Fuzzy Logic and Mathematics by : Radim Bělohlávek
Download or read book Fuzzy Logic and Mathematics written by Radim Bělohlávek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main part of the book is a comprehensive overview of the development of fuzzy logic and its applications in various areas of human affair since its genesis in the mid 1960s. This overview is then employed for assessing the significance of fuzzy logic and mathematics based on fuzzy logic.
Book Synopsis Vagueness and Contradiction by : Roy A. Sorensen
Download or read book Vagueness and Contradiction written by Roy A. Sorensen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did Buddha become a fat man in one second? Is there a tallest short giraffe? Epistemicists answer 'Yes!' They believe that any predicate that divides things divides them sharply. They solve the ancient sorites paradox by picturing vagueness as a kind of ignorance. The alternative solutions are radical. They either reject classical theorems or inference rules or reject our common sense view of what can exist. Epistemicists spare this central portion of our web of belief by challenging peripheral intuitions about the nature of language. So why is this continuation of the status quo so incredible? Why do epistemicists themselves have trouble believing their theory? In Vagueness and Contradiction Roy Sorensen traces our incredulity to linguistic norms that build upon our psychological tendencies to round off insignificant differences. These simplifying principles lead to massive inconsistency, rather like the rounding off errors of calculators with limited memory. English entitles speakers to believe each 'tolerance conditional' such as those of the form 'If n is small, then n + 1 is small.' The conjunction of these a priori beliefs entails absurd conditionals such as 'If 1 is small, then a billion is small.' Since the negation of this absurdity is an a priori truth, our a priori beliefs about small numbers are jointly inconsistent. One of the tolerance conditionals, at the threshold of smallness, must be an analytic falsehood that we are compelled to regard as a tautology. Since there are infinitely many analytic sorites arguments, Sorensen concludes that we are obliged to believe infinitely many contradictions. These contradictions are not specifically detectable. They are ineliminable, like the heat from a light bulb. Although the light bulb is not designed to produce heat, the heat is inevitably produced as a side-effect of illumination. Vagueness can be avoided by representational systems that make no concession to limits of perception, or memory,or testimony. But quick and rugged representational systems, such as natural languages, will trade 'rationality' for speed and flexibility. Roy Sorensen defends epistemicism in his own distinctive style, inventive and amusing. But he has some serious things to say about language and logic, about the way the world is and about our understanding of it.
Download or read book Vagueness written by Delia Graff and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vagueness, volume XX, contains twenty-seven essays, with issues covered including: nihilism, phenomenal sorites, degrees of truth, epistemicism, higher-order vagueness, contextualism, and intuitionism. Written by leading contemporary philosophers, these essays will be of interest to researchers in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, metaphysics and epistemology; as well as those in natural language semantics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science more generally. A substantial introduction written by the editors provides a guide to the topic and to the essays in the volume.
Download or read book Vagueness and Law written by Geert Keil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 563 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vague expressions are omnipresent in natural language. As such, their use in legal texts is virtually inevitable. If a law contains vague terms, the question whether it applies to a particular case often lacks a clear answer. One of the fundamental pillars of the rule of law is legal certainty. The determinacy of the law enables people to use it as a guide and places judges in the position to decide impartially. Vagueness poses a threat to these ideals. In borderline cases, the law seems to be indeterminate and thus incapable of serving its core rule of law value. In the philosophy of language, vagueness has become one of the hottest topics of the last two decades. Linguists and philosophers have investigated what distinguishes "soritical " vagueness from other kinds of linguistic indeterminacy, such as ambiguity, generality, open texture, and family resemblance concepts. There is a vast literature that discusses the logical, semantic, pragmatic, and epistemic aspects of these phenomena. Legal theory has hitherto paid little attention to the differences between the various kinds of linguistic indeterminacy that are grouped under the heading of "vagueness ", let alone to the various theories that try to account for these phenomena. Bringing together leading scholars working on the topic of vagueness in philosophy and in law, this book fosters a dialogue between philosophers and legal scholars by examining how philosophers conceive vagueness in law from their theoretical perspective and how legal theorists make use of philosophical theories of vagueness. The chapters of the book are organized into three parts. The first part addresses the import of different theories of vagueness for the law, referring to a wide range of theories from supervaluationist to contextualist and semantic realist accounts in order to address the question of whether the law can learn from engaging with philosophical discussions of vagueness. The second part of the book examines different vagueness phenomena. The contributions in part 2 suggest that the greater awareness to different vagueness phenomena can make lawyers aware of specific issues and solutions so far overlooked. The third part deals with the pragmatic aspects of vagueness in law, providing answers to the question of how to deal with vagueness in law and with the professional, political, moral, and ethical issues such vagueness gives rise to.
Book Synopsis Vagueness as Arbitrariness by : Sagid Salles
Download or read book Vagueness as Arbitrariness written by Sagid Salles and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes a new solution to the problem of vagueness. There are several different ways of addressing this problem and no clear agreement on which one is correct. The author proposes that it should be understood as the problem of explaining vague predicates in a way that systematizes six intuitions about the phenomenon and satisfies three criteria of adequacy for an ideal theory of vagueness. The third criterion, which is called the "criterion of precisification", is the most controversial one. It is based on the intuition that a predicate is vague only if it is imprecise. The author considers some different definitions of linguistic imprecision, proposing that a predicate is imprecise if and only if there is no sharp boundary between objects to which its application yields some particular truth-value and objects to which its application does not yield that truth-value. The volume critically reviews the current theories of vagueness and proposes a new one, the Theory of Vagueness as Arbitrariness, which defines a vague predicate as an arbitrary predicate that must be precisified in order to contribute to a sentence that has truth-conditions. The main advantages of this theory over the current alternatives are that it satisfies all three criteria and systematizes the relevant intuitions.
