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Vagueness is the study of concepts that admit borderline cases. The epistemology of vagueness concerns attitudes we should have towards propositions we know to be borderline. On this basis Andrew Bacon develops a new theory of vagueness in which vagueness is fundamentally a property of propositions, explicated in terms of its role in thought.
List of contents
- Part I: Background
- 1: Non-Classical and Nihilistic Approaches
- 2: Classical Approaches: An Overview of the Current Debate
- 3: An Outline of a Theory of Propositional Vagueness
- Part II: Epistemological Matters
- 4: Vagueness and Language
- 5: Vagueness and Ignorance
- 6: Vagueness and Evidence
- 7: Probabilism, Assertion and Higher-order Vagueness
- 8: Vagueness and Uncertainty
- 9: Vagueness and Decision
- 10: Vagueness and Desire
- Part III: Logical Matters
- 11: Vague Propositions
- 12: Vagueness and Precision
- 13: Symmetry Semantics
- 14: Vagueness and the World
- 15: Vagueness and Modality
- 16: Vague Objects
- 17: Beyond Vagueness
- 18: Appendices
About the author
Andrew Bacon is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. His work typically applies the methods of philosophical logic to issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language. Recently he has worked on vagueness, the semantic paradoxes, and logic and epistemology of conditional statements.
Summary
Vagueness is the study of concepts that admit borderline cases. The epistemology of vagueness concerns attitudes we should have towards propositions we know to be borderline. On this basis Andrew Bacon develops a new theory of vagueness in which vagueness is fundamentally a property of propositions, explicated in terms of its role in thought.
Additional text
This is a remarkable book. I accept its main thesis, that propositional vagueness is more fundamental than sentential vagueness. I am in favor of treating vague beliefs in probabilistic terms, and the investigation of how we should reason with vague beliefs and vague desires is a valuable project. There has been relatively little work on this, and Bacon's book goes much further than any before. The idea of using Jeffrey conditioning to explain the impact of vague beliefs is an excellent one.
