Frege supposedly believes that vague predicates have no referent or Bedeutung. But given other things he evidently believes, such a position would seem to commit him to a suspect nihilism according to which assertoric sentences containing vague predicates are neither true nor false. I argue that we have good reason to resist ascribing to Frege the view that vague predicates have no Bedeutung and thus good reason to resist seeing him as committed to the suspect nihilism.
In some comments on his classic essay U Β¨ber Sinn und Bedeutung, Frege affirms what has come to be known as his sharpness requirement on concepts: 'It must be determinate for every object whether it falls under a concept or not; a concept word that does not meet this requirement on its Bedeutung is bedeutungslos' (NS 1:133/PW 122). 1 This text and others like it have given rise to something of a scholarly consensus according to which Frege endorses what I will call SHARPNESS:
(SHARPNESS) Vague or otherwise incompletely defined predicates have no
Bedeutung. 2 1 Editions of Frege's works are cited using the following abbreviations: B: M. Beaney (ed.), The Frege Reader (Boston: Blackwell, 1997); BS: T.W. Bynum (ed.), Conceptual Notation (Oxford UP, 1972), cited by section number; CP: B. McGuinness (ed.