Worldly Indeterminacy: A Rough Guide
Abstract
This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in
the world itself---as opposed to merely in our representations of the
world---against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we
consider the idea that the world might contain vague *properties and
relations*; we show that this idea is already implied by certain
well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most
notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might
contain vague *objects*; we argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain
respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a
maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea
that the *world as a whole* might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is
indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate
objects.