How Barnes and Williams have failed to present an intelligible ontic theory of vagueness

Analysis 75 (4):565-573 (2015)
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Abstract

Elizabeth Barnes and J. Robert G. Williams claim to offer a new ontic theory of vagueness, the kind of theory which considers vagueness to exist not in language but in reality. This paper refutes their claim. The possible worlds they employ are ersatz possible worlds, i.e., sets of sentences. Unlike reality, they don’t contain concrete and often material objects. As a result, there is nothing in Barnes and Williams’s description of the theory that the semanticist cannot or does not accept. Thus, they have failed to establish their theory as a genuine intelligible ontic alternative to semantic theories

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Ken Akiba
Virginia Commonwealth University

References found in this work

Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1994 - New York: Routledge.
Vagueness, truth and logic.Kit Fine - 1975 - Synthese 30 (3-4):265-300.
Theories of Vagueness.Rosanna Keefe - 2000 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy.Elizabeth Barnes & J. Robert G. Williams - 2011 - In Karen Bennett & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Volume 6. Oxford University Press UK. pp. 103-148.

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