Worldly Vagueness and Semantic Indeterminacy

This chapter continues the examination begun in the previous chapter of objections to the fuzzy view of vagueness in particular, and to degree theoretic treatments of vagueness in general. It covers the major remaining objections to the fuzzy view: the problems of artificial precision and sharp boundaries. In response, a new version of the fuzzy view is proposed, called fuzzy plurivaluationism, which combines fuzzy models with semantic indeterminacy of the sort involved in plurivaluationism. The chapter concludes that fuzzy plurivaluationism is the correct theory of vagueness, on the grounds...

This chapter continues the examination begun in the previous chapter of objections to the fuzzy view of vagueness in particular, and to degree theoretic treatments of vagueness in general. It covers the major remaining objections to the fuzzy view: the problems of artificial precision and sharp boundaries. In response, a new version of the fuzzy view is proposed, called fuzzy plurivaluationism, which combines fuzzy models with semantic indeterminacy of the sort involved in plurivaluationism. The chapter concludes that fuzzy plurivaluationism is the correct theory of vagueness, on the grounds that, first, it is a degree theory — and so satisfies the positive requirement on a theory of vagueness — and, second, it withstands all known objections to degree theories.