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.
Erscheinungsdatum: 31.10.2012

lgrsnf/A:\Springer\bok%3A978-94-011-3494-1.pdf

nexusstc/Vagueness: An Investigation into Natural Languages and the Sorites Paradox/fcd3a3376336dac65417d6c7f7dbb91e.pdf

zlib/Society, Politics & Philosophy/Linda Claire Burns (auth.)/Vagueness: An Investigation into Natural Languages and the Sorites Paradox_2242445.pdf

Lynda Burns

Springer Science + Business Media BV

Kluwer Academic Publishers

Springer; Brand: Springer

Reason and argument, v. 4, Dordrecht, ©1991

Reason and argument, 4, Dordrecht, 2013

Springer Nature, Dordrecht, 2012

Dordrecht ; Boston ; London

Netherlands, Netherlands

Oct 31, 2012

1, 2013

lg1073479

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Source title: Vagueness (Reason and Argument)

Front Matter....Pages i-xii
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Conceptions of Vagueness....Pages 3-30
Linguistic Behaviour and the Communal Language....Pages 31-46
Approaches to Vagueness....Pages 47-80
Front Matter....Pages 81-81
The Paradox and the Incoherence Thesis....Pages 83-98
Reponses to the Paradox....Pages 99-123
A Solution to the Paradox....Pages 124-138
Further Problems and Puzzles....Pages 139-155
Vagueness and Perception....Pages 156-174
Conclusions....Pages 175-194
Back Matter....Pages 195-203

2013-12-12