Vague terms, indexicals, and vague indexicals

Philosophical Studies 140 (3):437 - 445 (2008)
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Abstract

Jason Stanley has criticized a contextualist solution to the sorites paradox that treats vagueness as a kind of indexicality. His objection rests on a feature of indexicals that seems plausible: that their reference remains fixed in verb phrase ellipsis. But the force of Stanley’s criticism depends on the undefended assumption that vague terms, if they are a special sort of indexical, must function in the same way that more paradigmatic indexicals do. This paper argues that there can be more than one sort of indexicality, that one term might easily have both sorts, and that therefore, and despite Stanley’s worries, vagueness might easily be assimilated to one form.

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Joshua Gert
College of William and Mary

Citations of this work

Contextualist Theories of Vagueness.Jonas Åkerman - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (7):470-480.
Recent Work on Vagueness.M. Eklund - 2011 - Analysis 71 (2):352-363.

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References found in this work

Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology of Demonstratives and other Indexicals.David Kaplan - 1989 - In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan. Oxford University Press. pp. 481-563.
Knowledge and practical interests.Jason Stanley - 2005 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Knowledge and Practical Interests.Jason Stanley - 2006 - Critica 38 (114):98-107.
Précis of Knowledge and Practical Interests.Jason Stanley - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (1):168-172.
Context and logical form.Jason Stanley - 2000 - Linguistics and Philosophy 23 (4):391--434.

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