Vagueness: A Reader (Keefe, Smith, 1997)

Vagueness: A Reader (Keefe, Smith, 1997)

5.0 out of 5 stars Best First Book Available on the Subject, July 22, 2003
By Mark Silcox (The American Southwest.)

I found this book enormously helpful. It contains most of the classic recent papers on vagueness in the analytic tradition from Dummett onward, plus a little pre-history, a few small curiosities (the papers by Tye and Machina, for example, seem to have been included mostly for their novelty value, but I found them both interesting and worth the effort) and a very comprehensive introduction that covers most of the main theories of vagueness that contemporary philosophers tend to find most plausible. The issue of vagueness is slowly coming to attract the same intensity and vigor of debate that the issue of analyticity did in the 1950s and 1960s, and this makes the value of Keefe and Smith's work almost impossible to measure. If only more anthologies of recent work in philosophy were assembled this carefully and intelligently!

[JLJ - the discussion of the difference between ambiguity and vagueness has left me feeling uncertain, which is not quite the same either. Likewise, do not confuse vagueness with incoherence, or use the term when you really mean inconsistent. Then there is the concept of higher-order vagueness, and the sections devoted to boundarylessness. Sainsbury argues that recognizing boundarylessness is essential for a genuine understanding of vagueness. Another view is that vagueness is a type of ignorance, even while being real and ubiquitous. I didn't know that. We discuss the concepts of super-truth and super-false, almost like sixth graders would (super-true!). We then spend the remainder of the book obsessing over the term 'tall', and exactly what makes a heap a heap. We have approximate certainties and approximate truths. For the brave and daring, we can discuss the degrees of vagueness.

After reading this book, I feel more certain about vagueness, but then again I sometimes feel like I knew more about vagueness before I read the book.

The entire concept, regardless of what has been written, is somewhat vague.]

p.1 Around the 1970s there was an explosion of interest in the topic [JLJ - Vague was in vogue. Unfortunately, 'vague' is vague. Specifically, when did interest in vagueness start? I suspect that the specific point in time is somewhat vague.]

p.5 [Bertrand] Russell argues (controversially) that all natural language expressions are vague

p.14 Peirce 1902 (endorsed by Black, p.71) writes, "a proposition is vague when there are possible states of things concerning which it is intrinsically uncertain whether, had they been contemplated by the speaker, he would have regarded them as excluded or allowed by the proposition"

p.20 The requirement that you leave a margin for error would prevent your original belief about the borderline case counting as knowledge. This neatly explains our ignorance about the application of vague predicates to particular borderline cases.

p.136 Vagueness is ambiguity on a grand and systematic scale [JLJ - huh? ] ... Ambiguity is like the super-imposition of several pictures, vagueness like an unfinished picture, with marginal notes for completion.

p.227 ignorance might be taken as the normal state: perhaps we should think of knowledge as impossible unless special circumstances make it possible, rather than as possible unless special circumstances make it impossible.

p.338 Aqvist, L. 1962. "Reflections on the logic of nonsense." Theoria 28: 138-57. [JLJ - with a name like Aqvist, I would expect a paper of no less seriousness.]

p.338 Burns, L.C. 1995. "Something to do with vagueness." Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (Supplement): 23-47. [JLJ - Burns is vague even in the title of his paper. I guess that you can't really be specific about vagueness, in any of its forms.]

p.339 Evans, G. 1978. "Can there be vague objects?" Analysis 38: 208. Reprinted in this volume: 317. [JLJ - If we specifically locate and identify a vague object, does it then lose its quality of being a vague object? Was it then ever a vague object? Hello?]

p.340 Garrett, B.J. 1988. "Vagueness and Identity." Analysis 48: 130-34. [JLJ - I might have thought, therefore I could have been? I had what resembled a thought, therefore I possessed a quality somewhat similar to existence? Hello?]

p.340 Kamp, J.A.W. 1981. "The paradox of the heap." In Aspects of Philosophical Logic, ed. U. Monnich, 225-77. Dordrecht: Reidel. [JLJ - If we throw your worthless paper on top of the heap of all the other worthless papers, does the heap of worthless papers change?]

p.342 McGee, V. and B. McLaughlin. 1995. "Distinctions without a difference." Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (Supplement): 203-51. [JLJ - Mr. McGee and Mr. McLaughlin, as I toss your paper into the trash can, in the same way and method that I toss all the other worthless papers, please explain how I did this in some distinct way? Am I following your line of thought? You guys are smarter than me so maybe you could help me here...]

p.342 Prior, A.N. 1968. " 'Now'. " Nous 2: 101-19. [JLJ - I wonder if Now is any different, in 2010, than it was in 1968. I mean, we are in the future, as far as Prior was concerned, when he wrote about Now. Is the Now of the past any different from the Now of Now? Do we call his Now, the past Now, because we in the future have our own Now? Welcome to the quicksand.]

p.344 Tye, M. 1995. "Vagueness: welcome to the quicksand." Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (Supplement): 1-22. [JLJ - When exploring vagueness, you start to sink quickly and soon are in over your head.]

p.344 Unger, P. 1979a. "I do not Exist." In Perception and Identity, ed. G. F. Macdonald, 235-51. London: Macmillan. [JLJ - How clever of P. Unger to attach his name to his article about not existing. Perhaps it should have been published as anonymous. Now I can poke fun at your article or plagiarize it and you won't be able to object.]

p.344 Unger, P. 1979b. "There are no ordinary things." Synthese 41: 117-54. [JLJ - Not bad writing for someone who does not exist. Perhaps there are no ordinary things, if you don't exist. I guess he got someone to type up his article and mail it to the Journal for him.]

p.344 Wheeler, S.C. 1979. "On that which is not." Synthese 41: 155-73. [JLJ - Perhaps this is the sequel to the article, On that which is. Perhaps Mr. Wheeler can specifically point out to us the things which are not, so we can better understand what he is talking about.]

p.345 Wright, C. 1988. "Realism, anti-realism, irrealism, quasi-realism." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 12, eds. P.A. French... [JLJ - Surreal title...]

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