What makes it a Heap?

Erkenntnis 44 (3):327 - 339 (1996)
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Abstract

On the epistemic view of vagueness, a vague expression has sharp boundaries whose location speakers of the language cannot recognize. The paper argues that one of the deepest sources of resistance to the epistemic view is the idea that all truths are cognitively accessible from truths in a language for natural science, conceived as precise, in a sense explained. The implications of the epistemic view for issues about the relations between vague predicates and scientific predicates are investigated.

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Timothy Williamson
University of Oxford

Citations of this work

Sorites paradox.Dominic Hyde - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Sorites Paradox.Dominic Hyde & Diana Raffman - 2012 - In Peter Adamson (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Vagueness, epistemicism and response-dependence.J. Burgess - 2001 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (4):507 – 524.
Temporal externalism and epistemic theories of vagueness.Henry Jackman - 2004 - Philosophical Studies 117 (1-2):79-94.

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References found in this work

Vagueness.Timothy Williamson - 1994 - New York: Routledge.
Blindspots.Roy A. Sorensen - 1988 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Two notions of necessity.Martin Davies & Lloyd Humberstone - 1980 - Philosophical Studies 38 (1):1-31.
Vagueness and ignorance.Timothy Williamson - 2010 - In Darragh Byrne & Max KoĢˆlbel (eds.), Arguing about language. New York: Routledge. pp. 145 - 177.
Why Logically Equivalent Predicates May Pick out Different Properties.Elliott Sober - 1982 - American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (2):183-189.

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