more on this theme | more from this text
Full Idea
Vague terms come in at least two different kinds: those whose constituent parts come in discrete packets (bald, rich, red) and those that don't (beauty, boredom, niceness).
Gist of Idea
Vagueness can involve components (like baldness), or not (like boredom)
Source
Jennifer Fisher (On the Philosophy of Logic [2008], 07.II)
Book Ref
Fisher,Jennifer: 'On the Philosophy of Logic' [Thomson Wadsworth 2008], p.97
A Reaction
The first group seem to be features of the external world, and the second all occur in the mind. Baldness may be vague, but presumably hairs are (on the whole) not. Nature doesn't care whether someone is actually 'bald' or not.
| 8946 | We could make our intuitions about heaps precise with a million-valued logic [Fisher] |
| 8941 | We can't explain 'possibility' in terms of 'possible' worlds [Fisher] |
| 8943 | Three-valued logic says excluded middle and non-contradition are not tautologies [Fisher] |
| 8945 | Fuzzy logic has many truth values, ranging in fractions from 0 to 1 [Fisher] |
| 8944 | Vagueness can involve components (like baldness), or not (like boredom) [Fisher] |
| 8947 | If all truths are implied by a falsehood, then not-p might imply both q and not-q [Fisher] |
| 8949 | In relevance logic, conditionals help information to flow from antecedent to consequent [Fisher] |
| 8950 | Logic formalizes how we should reason, but it shouldn't determine whether we are realists [Fisher] |
| 8951 | Classical logic is: excluded middle, non-contradiction, contradictions imply all, disjunctive syllogism [Fisher] |
| 8952 | We reach 'reflective equilibrium' when intuitions and theory completely align [Fisher] |