Vagueness

by Timothy Williamson

Book Overview

Vagueness, volume XX, contains twenty-seven essays, with issues covered including: nihilism, phenomenal sorites, degrees of truth, epistemicism, higher-order vagueness, contextualism, and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415033314
• ISBN13: 9780415033312
• Release Date: July 1994
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.7" x 8.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

John Nagate doesn't know what he's talking about.

Clearly, the previous reviewer, Mr. Nagate, doesn't even understand the problem of vagueness. His explanation of Sorites paradox is that "at some point" after removing grains of sand from a heap, we are unsure whether, if removing another grain of sand, it can still be called "a heap". And after removing some more grains of sand, "at some point", we become sure that it is not a heap. This simply begs the question, at what point exactly are we "unsure" that it is a heap? It is the same problem -- and remains a problem for most of the meaningful language that we use. To say such things, he seems to understand neither the problem of vagueness nor Wittgenstein. Timothy Williamson is a fantastic philosopher, and one whom I'm inclined to believe will one day rank with Wittgenstein in the history books (thankfully, he is still alive and productive, and most certainly not "historical"). I sincerely hope that no one will forgo purchasing this book on the basis of that reviewer's "original research" and unorthodox "interpretation" of Wittgenstein. He clearly knows little to nothing of serious philosophy, and clearly lacks the imagination to see why anyone would see vagueness as a legitimate philosophical problem (which greater minds than both he and Wittgenstein have believed -- for a couple thousand years).

The Standard Text on Sorites Problems

If you took grains of sand away from a pile of sand, when would it cease to be a pile? The paradox of the sorites goes back to early Greek philosophers, and recent metaphysicians have revived the debate after a couple thousand years of philosophers ignoring it. According to Timothy Williamson, there is an exact point when every pile ceases to be a pile, and we could never know what that point is. If a man loses a certain number of hairs, he will be bald, and just one hair makes the difference. Williamson's epistemic view of vagueness has now come to occupy the front stage. Everyone wants to show why such a wacky view just can't be right, but no one seems to have a convincing reply to his arguments. His book covers the main views for dealing with problems of vagueness, and it goes through basic reasons deriving just from standard logic, showing why the other views are seriously inadequate unless they revise our standard logic to the point of absurdity. This book isn't easy even for trained philosophers, but it's well worth it for anyone who wants to delve into this fundamental issue in metaphysics and philosophy of language.