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8983
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If 'red' is vague, then membership of the set of red things is vague, so there is no set of red things [Sainsbury]
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Full Idea:
Sets have sharp boundaries, or are sharp objects; an object either definitely belongs to a set, or it does not. But 'red' is vague; there objects which are neither definitely red nor definitely not red. Hence there is no set of red things.
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From:
Mark Sainsbury (Concepts without Boundaries [1990], §2)
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A reaction:
Presumably that will entail that there IS a set of things which can be described as 'definitely red'. If we describe something as 'definitely having a hint of red about it', will that put it in a set? In fact will the applicability of 'definitely' do?
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8986
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We should abandon classifying by pigeon-holes, and classify around paradigms [Sainsbury]
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Full Idea:
We must reject the classical picture of classification by pigeon-holes, and think in other terms: classifying can be, and often is, clustering round paradigms.
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From:
Mark Sainsbury (Concepts without Boundaries [1990], §8)
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A reaction:
His conclusion to a discussion of the problem of vagueness, where it is identified with concepts which have no boundaries. Pigeon-holes are a nice exemplar of the Enlightenment desire to get everything right. I prefer Aristotle's categories, Idea 3311.
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8984
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If concepts are vague, people avoid boundaries, can't spot them, and don't want them [Sainsbury]
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Full Idea:
Vague concepts are boundaryless, ...and the manifestations are an unwillingness to draw any such boundaries, the impossibility of identifying such boundaries, and needlessness and even disutility of such boundaries.
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From:
Mark Sainsbury (Concepts without Boundaries [1990], §5)
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A reaction:
People have a very fine-tuned notion of whether the sharp boundary of a concept is worth discussing. The interesting exception are legal people, who are often forced to find precision where everyone else hates it. Who deserves to inherit the big house?
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8985
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Boundaryless concepts tend to come in pairs, such as child/adult, hot/cold [Sainsbury]
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Full Idea:
Boundaryless concepts tend to come in systems of contraries: opposed pairs like child/adult, hot/cold, weak/strong, true/false, and complex systems of colour terms. ..Only a contrast with 'adult' will show what 'child' excludes.
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From:
Mark Sainsbury (Concepts without Boundaries [1990], §5)
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A reaction:
This might be expected. It all comes down to the sorites problem, of when one thing turns into something else. If it won't merge into another category, then presumably the isolated concept stays applicable (until reality terminates it? End of sheep..).
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11214
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We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
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Full Idea:
The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A.
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From:
Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
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A reaction:
[compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role).
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