Abstract

I argue against a prominent type of solution to the sorites paradox, what Stephen Schiffer calls "happy-face solutions" and in favor of what he dubs "unhappy-face solutions". A happy-face solution to a paradox does two things: first, it points to the mistake made in the formulation of a paradox; and second, it removes the air of plausibility from the mistake. An unhappy-face solution, on the other hand, claims that the paradox cannot be given a happy-face solution, and seeks to explain what about the relevant notions involved in the paradox causes the paradox to arise. It may or may not propose an alternative, replacement notion to the one which generates the paradox. ;In Part One, I show that the correct solution to the sorites paradox will be an unhappy-faced one. In Chapter One, I claim that all approaches that respect the central features of vagueness have as a consequence that the sorites is a genuine paradox, which is unsolvable in the traditional happy-faced sense. In Chapter Two, I survey the most prominent happy-face solutions to the paradox and argue against them. ;In Part Two, I assess the major unhappy-face solutions in an attempt to find the most plausible of these. In Chapter Three, I examine the solutions of Wright and Dummett. Dummett's position, the more thoroughly unhappy-faced one is shown to be more plausible, although there are problems with his claim that the rules which govern the use of vague terms are incoherent. In Chapter Four, I examine Terence Horgan's unhappy-faced contextualist position, comparing it with Diana Raffman's happy-faced one. I claim that Horgan's position is more successful than Raffman's but that the success of his account turns on Dummett's incoherence thesis. In Chapter Five, I claim that it is better for the unhappy-face solution to avoid claiming, as Dummett claims, that the use of vague terms is governed by incoherent rules. A far more plausible claim is that the sorites arises due to an indeterminacy inherent in vague terms. Stephen Schiffer's position, the only one which makes such a claim, is thus the most successful of the proposed unhappy-face solutions. However, it remains an open question whether other plausible unhappy-face solutions which appeal to the indeterminacy of vague terms could be given. ;In Part Three, I try to answer two main questions: must the successful solution to each genuine philosophical paradox be an unhappy-faced one? and if so, must this unhappy-face solution take the form of the kind that I argued was the successful solution to the sorites paradox? I focus on the skeptical paradox and the liar and try to extrapolate from these and the sorites paradox, to an account of paradoxes in general