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Ideas for 'Material Beings', 'Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes' and 'On the Philosophy of Logic'

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2 ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / d. Vagueness as linguistic

17582	Singular terms can be vague, because they can contain predicates, which can be vague [Inwagen]
	Full Idea: Since singular terms can contain predicates, and since vague predicates are common, vague singular terms are common. For 'the tallest man that Sally knows' there are lots of men for whom it is unclear whether Sally knows them.
	From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17)

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / g. Degrees of vagueness

8946	We could make our intuitions about heaps precise with a million-valued logic [Fisher]
	Full Idea: We could construct a 1,000,000-valued logic that would allow our intuitions concerning a heap to vary exactly with the amount of sand in the heap.
	From: Jennifer Fisher (On the Philosophy of Logic [2008])
	A reaction: Presumably only an infinite number of grains of sand would then produce a true heap, and even one grain would count as a bit of a heap, which must both be wrong, so I can't see this helping much.