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Most expressions in natural language are vague. But what is the best semantic treatment of terms like 'heap', 'red' and 'child'? And what is the logic of arguments involving this kind of vague expression? These questions are receiving increasing philosophical attention, and in this timely book Rosanna Keefe explores the questions of what we should want from an account of vagueness and how we should assess rival theories. Her discussion ranges widely and comprehensively over the main theories of vagueness and their supporting arguments, and she offers a powerful and original defence of a form

Vagueness (Philosophy) --- Philosophy

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"Lawmaking is - paradigmatically - a type of speech act: people make law by saying things. It is natural to think, therefore, that the content of the law is determined by what lawmakers communicate. However, what they communicate is sometimes vague and, even when it is clear, the content itself is sometimes vague. This monograph examines the nature and consequences of these two linguistic sources of indeterminacy in the law. The aim is to give plausible answers to three related questions: In virtue of what is the law vague? What might be good about vague law? How should courts resolve cases of vagueness? It argues that vagueness in the law is sometimes a good thing, although its value should not be overestimated. It also proposes a strategy for resolving borderline cases, arguing that textualism and intentionalism - two leading theories of legal interpretation - often complement rather than compete with each other.--

Law --- Vagueness (Philosophy) --- Interpretation and construction. --- Philosophy.

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Vagueness is currently the subject of vigorous debate in the philosophy of logic and language. Vague terms - such as 'tall', 'red', 'bald', and 'tadpole' - have borderline cases (arguably, someone may be neither tall nor not tall); and they lack well-defined extensions (there is no sharp boundary between tall people and the rest). So the phenomenon of vagueness poses a fundamental challenge to classical logic and semantics, which assumes that propositions are either true or false and that extensions are determinate. Another striking problem to which vagueness gives rise is the sorites paradox. If you remove one grain from a heap of sand, surely you must be left with a heap. Yet apply this principle repeatedly as you remove grains one by one, and you end up, absurdly, with a solitary grain that counts as a heap. This anthology collects for the first time the most important papers in the area.

Logic --- Philosophy of language --- Vagueness (Philosophy) --- Philosophy --- Philosophy & Religion --- Human-computer interaction. --- Kunstmatige intelligentie. --- Mens-computer interactie. --- Vagueness (philosophy)

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Modernist Fiction and Vagueness marries the artistic and philosophical versions of vagueness, linking the development of literary modernism to changes in philosophy. This book argues that the problem of vagueness - language's unavoidable imprecision - led to transformations in both fiction and philosophy in the early twentieth century. Both twentieth-century philosophers and their literary counterparts (including James, Eliot, Woolf, and Joyce) were fascinated by the vagueness of words and the dream of creating a perfectly precise language. Building on recent interest in the connections between analytic philosophy, pragmatism, and modern literature, Modernist Fiction and Vagueness demonstrates that vagueness should be read not as an artistic problem but as a defining quality of modernist fiction.

Modernism (Literature) --- Fiction --- Vagueness (Philosophy) --- Language and languages in literature. --- Philosophy --- Crepuscolarismo --- Literary movements --- Postmodernism (Literature) --- History and criticism. --- Language and languages in literature --- History and criticism

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Die überwiegende Zahl der Begriffe in natürlichen Sprachen verfügt über unscharfe Begriffsumfänge. Sie lassen Grenzfälle zu, d.h. es gibt Gegenstände, für die nicht ohne Weiteres feststeht, ob sie unter den jeweiligen Begriff fallen oder nicht. Wo geht zum Beispiel Rot in Orange über? Solche Begriffe sind vage. Sie können zu logischen Problem führen, da die Sätze, die sie enthalten, oft nicht eindeutig als wahr oder falsch bewertet werden können. Vagheit wird darum meist als Defekt natürlicher Sprachen betrachtet. Doch die Vagheit in den natürlichen Sprachen hat auch Vorteile, die in dieser Arbeit aufgezeigt werden: Die Kommunikation mit vagen Prädikaten ist trotz aller formallogischen Probleme in der Regel erfolgreich. Durch sie ist eine effiziente, ökonomische und flexible Kommunikation möglich. Vage Prädikate tragen zudem den limitierten kognitiven Ressourcen und Wahrnehmungsfähigkeiten des Menschen Rechnung. Die Arbeit untersucht zudem, ob Vagheit im Recht positive Aspekte hat, und analysiert alltagspraktische Anknüpfungspunkte.

Semantics. --- Vagueness (Philosophy) --- Ambiguity. --- Language and languages --- Grammar, Comparative and general --- Semantics --- Philosophy --- Formal semantics --- Semasiology --- Semiology (Semantics) --- Comparative linguistics --- Information theory --- Lexicology --- Meaning (Psychology) --- Philosophy. --- Borderline Cases. --- Philosophy of Language. --- Semantic Extension.