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Vagueness

An Investigation into Natural Languages and the Sorites Paradox

  • Book
  • © 1991

Overview

Authors:
  1. Linda Claire Burns

    1. University of Melbourne, Australia

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Part of the book series: Reason and Argument (REAR, volume 4)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
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  2. Puzzles, Problems and Paradoxes

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Conceptions of Vagueness

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 3-30

    3. Linguistic Behaviour and the Communal Language

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 31-46

    4. Approaches to Vagueness

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 47-80

  3. The Sorites Paradox

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81
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    2. The Paradox and the Incoherence Thesis

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 83-98

    3. Reponses to the Paradox

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 99-123

    4. A Solution to the Paradox

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 124-138

    5. Further Problems and Puzzles

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 139-155

    6. Vagueness and Perception

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 156-174

    7. Conclusions

      • Linda Claire Burns
      Pages 175-194

  4. Back Matter

    Pages 195-203
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Keywords

About this book

This work is in two parts. It began as a general investigation of vagueness in natural languages. The Sorites Paradox came to dominate the work however, and the second part of the book consists in an discussion ofthat puzzle and related problems. The first part contains a general discussion ofthe nature ofvagueness and its sources. I discuss various conceptions of vagueness in chapter 1 and outline some of the problems to do with the conception of vagueness as a linguistic phenomenon. The most interesting of these is the Sorites paradox, which occurs where natural languages exhibit a particular variety of borderline case vagueness. I discuss some sources of vagueness of the borderline case variety, and views of the relation between linguistic behaviour and languages which are vague in this sense. I argue in chapter 2 that these problems are not to be easily avoided by statistical averaging techniques or attempts to provide a mathematical model of consensus in linguistic usage. I also consider in chapter 3 various approaches to the problem of providing an adequate logic and semantics for vague natural languages, and argue against two currently popular approaches to vagueness. These are supervaluation accounts which attempt to provide precise semantic models for vague languages based on the notion of specification spaces, and attempts to replace the laws ofclassical logic with systems offuzzy logic.

Authors and Affiliations

  • University of Melbourne, Australia

    Linda Claire Burns

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Vagueness

  • Book Subtitle: An Investigation into Natural Languages and the Sorites Paradox

  • Authors: Linda Claire Burns

  • Series Title: Reason and Argument

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3494-1

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1991

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-1489-9Published: 30 November 1991

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-94-010-5545-1Published: 31 October 2012

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-011-3494-1Published: 06 December 2012

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XII, 202

  • Topics: Philosophy, general, Logic, Philosophy of Language

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