Vagueness: A Global Approach

✍ Scribed by Kit Fine

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2020
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 77
• Series: The Rutgers Lectures in Philosophy
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Series Editor Foreword
Preface
1. The Problem of Vagueness
2. The Possibility of Vagueness
3. The Phenomenon of Vagueness
Appendix A: The Impossibility Theorem
Appendix B: The Possibility Theorem
References
Index