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Full Idea
We can see Epistemicism [vagueness as ignorance] as a common and misguided tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. We are unsure how to characterise vagueness, and identify it with the resulting ignorance, instead of explaining it.
Gist of Idea
Identifying vagueness with ignorance is the common mistake of confusing symptoms with cause
Source
Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
Book Ref
Fine,Kit: 'Vagueness: a global approach' [OUP 2020], p.16
A Reaction
Love it. This echoes my repeated plea in these reactions to stop identifying features of reality with the functions which embody them or the patterns they create. We need to explain them, and must dig deeper.
Related Idea
Idea 23543 We identify laws with regularities because we mistakenly identify causes with their symptoms [Fine,K]
| 23539 | Classical semantics has referents for names, extensions for predicates, and T or F for sentences [Fine,K] |
| 23544 | Local indeterminacy concerns a single object, and global indeterminacy covers a range [Fine,K] |
| 23540 | Conjoining two indefinites by related sentences seems to produce a contradiction [Fine,K] |
| 23542 | Identifying vagueness with ignorance is the common mistake of confusing symptoms with cause [Fine,K] |
| 23541 | Supervaluation can give no answer to 'who is the last bald man' [Fine,K] |
| 23543 | We identify laws with regularities because we mistakenly identify causes with their symptoms [Fine,K] |
| 23545 | We do not have an intelligible concept of a borderline case [Fine,K] |
| 23546 | Standardly vagueness involves borderline cases, and a higher standpoint from which they can be seen [Fine,K] |
| 23548 | Indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic [Fine,K] |
| 23547 | It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K] |