A Dictionary of Philosophy, Third Edition
. To be distinguished from AMBIGUITY and OPEN TEXTURE. Problems about vagueness arise especially from the HEAP (or sorites) paradox, and mainly concern how far it affects TRUTH and the law of EXCLUDED MIDDLE, and whether it is an objective feature of the world, or simply a feature, perhaps unavoidable, of our language, or is an illusion depending on our ignorance.
G.Evans, ‘Can there be vague objects?’, Analysis, 1978. (One-page article raising problem for view that there can. NB: The symbol ‘∇’ means ‘It is vague whether’, and ‘∆’ means ‘It is definite whether’.
Cf. also (difficult) discussion by S.A.Rasmussen in Mind, 1986.)
T.Parsons and P.Woodruff, ‘Worldly inderminacy of identity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1995. (Vagueness is an objective feature of the world. Cf. also M.Tye, ‘Vague objects’, Mind, 1990.)
T.Williams, Vagueness, Routledge, 1994. (General treatment, including historical material and defending the view that vagueness depends on our ignorance. See also bibliography to HEAP.)
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