Vagueness and utility: The semantics of common nouns [Book Review]

Linguistics and Philosophy 17 (6):521 - 535 (1994)
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Abstract

A utility-based approach to the understanding of vague predicates (VPs) is proposed. It is argued that assignment of truth values to propositions containing VPs entails unjustifiable assumptions of consensus; two models of VP semantics are criticized on this basis: (1) the super-truth theory of Kit Fine (1975), which requires an unlikely consensus on base points; (2) the fuzzy logic of Lotfi Zadeh (1975), on fuzzy truth values of sentences. Pragmatism is held to provide a key: successful behavior justifies a person's knowledge of the content of a VP. Instead of attempting to determine a consensus underlying successful communication, the utility of individual communications is held to rest on sufficient approximation of meanings between people. 3 Figures, 17 References. Adapted from the source document

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Rohit Parikh
CUNY Graduate Center

Citations of this work

The dynamics of vagueness.Chris Barker - 2002 - Linguistics and Philosophy 25 (1):1-36.
A knowledge based semantics of messages.Rohit Parikh & Ramaswamy Ramanujam - 2003 - Journal of Logic, Language and Information 12 (4):453-467.
Communication, meaning, and interpretation.Prashant Parikh - 2000 - Linguistics and Philosophy 23 (2):185-212.
Questioning to resolve decision problems.Robert van Rooy - 2003 - Linguistics and Philosophy 26 (6):727-763.

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References found in this work

Convention: A Philosophical Study.David Kellogg Lewis - 1969 - Cambridge, MA, USA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?Edmund L. Gettier - 1963 - In Sven Bernecker & Fred I. Dretske (eds.), Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology. Oxford University Press.

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