Vagueness

however, is able to solve this paradox by ultimately suggesting the invalidity of modus ponens and therefore rejecting the reasoning of these arguments. While the rejection of modus ponens is undoubtedly a controversial decision to make, it is ultimately supported due to the idea that modus ponens is only true for statements that are completely true or completely false. For everything in between, it tends to “leak” a small amount of truth, and over multiple applications this small loss in truth value is enough to show the invalidity of the argument. This approach to vagueness is refuted by many philosophers due to the idea that a vague question is given a vague answer, but it is important to understand that truth values ultimately describe confidence in the trueness or falsity of the answer. For that reason, vague questions must always have intermediate truth values. For this reason, the “degrees of truth” approach to vagueness provides a very acceptable theory for the sorites…

several other premises, chief among which is the premise that existence is never vague. Kathrin Koslicki (preceding article) claims that the argument fails since its crucial premise is unsupported, and is dialectically inappropriate to assume in the context of arguing for four-dimensionalism. Since the relationship between four-dimensionalism and the non-vagueness of existence is not perfectly transparent, I think the argument would retain some interest even if the premise were wholly…

be a factor in shaping our society due to its unpredictable outcomes. Education’s main goal is to lead us closer to our desires, goals, and our mission in life, however, if allowed to shape education, our desires could be something amazing or something horrendous. In Davidson’s view, “the community most served by the solution should be chiefly involved in the process of finding it” (51). In other words, Davidson believes that students who are pursuing their desires should be the one’s…

The application of an embodied meaning as a way of understanding language, a lack of precise equivalence lacks between the meaning of word and sentences. Monella 's case of ambiguity appears to be striking appearing in a strong manner in the argument. This creates some sense of misunderstandings and conflicts. The concept of problematic ambiguity is present in this case. Vagueness as a type of ambiguity seems to be outstanding in this case. A clear lack of boundaries can be seen in applications…

When a state law is challenged in federal court as unconstitutionally overbroad or vague, the federal court is caught between two fundamental principles of constitutional law. The void for vagueness doctrine argues that a law cannot be enforced if it is so vague or confusing that men of common intelligence could not figure out what is being prohibited or what the penalties are for breaking that law (Hall, 2015). As a result, the law is so unclearly to defined that persons of common intelligence…

with vagueness” (Shapiro, 2004). This was a position originally created by Van Fraassen, but adapted to the Sorites Paradox by Dummett (1975) (Hyde, 2014). Supervaluationism takes the position that premise 1 of the Sorites Paradox (x grains makes a heap), can be true, false, or potentially neither true, nor false. This is dependent upon whether it is true, false, or neither true nor false on all admissible sharpenings. An admissible sharpening was a term which supervaluationists used to define a…

and inconvenience. In particular, it covers behaviour which falls short of violence or the threat of violence. For instance, an elderly street preacher name Mr Hammond was convicted under section 5 for displaying a sign which says “homosexual conduct was immoral ”. Some passers-by became angry with the writing and tried to remove the sign, others threw water and dirt at him Mr Hammod. The police came and arrested him, and he was prosecuted, convicted, and fined £300 plus £305 court costs. The…

nor they are equal; they are on a par. Introducing this fourth relation indicates that incomparability does not entail incommensurability; in the case of an ‘on a par’ comparison there is a common measure. Philosophers have developed several arguments that prove the existence of value incomparability. One way is to explain it by the vagueness of contributory values (Broome) Vagueness appears when the value relations of the T thesis are neither true nor false. Therefore, it seems that the theory…

characters face, the use of a sense of vagueness, symbolism, characterization, and uncertain mood helps to explain the looming issue and their indecisiveness towards it. Noting that this short story was written in 1927, the sense of vagueness toward the topic of abortion would seem proper as it was rarely ever discussed amongst people and definitely never discussed in public. Due to this common etiquette the issue at hand, which is assumed to be an unwanted pregnancy, would have never been…

The theory of intersectionality, coined by legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989 in her ground-breaking article Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, has been regarded as one of the most important contributions to feminist scholarship. This theory allows for examination of intersections of identities, and how these intersections form individual identities. However, this definition is vague and does not explain how one should study…