The topic of vagueness re-emerged in the twentieth century from relative obscurity. It deals with the phenomenon in natural language that manifests itself in apparent semantic indeterminacy - the indeterminacy, for example, that arises when asked to draw the line between the tall and non-tall, or the drunk and the sober. An associated paradox emphasises the challenging nature of the phenomenon, presenting one of the most resilient paradoxes of logic. The apparent threat posed for orthodox theories of the semantics and logic of natural language has become the focus of intense philosophical...
The topic of vagueness re-emerged in the twentieth century from relative obscurity. It deals with the phenomenon in natural language that manifests it...
Richard Sylvan and Val Plumwood were eminent twentieth-century Australian philosophers who, in the way of philosophers, devoted their lives to examining fundamental assumptions about thought and the world. Though they were both renowned logicians - and probed metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, social and political theory and economics - it was their determination to fuse the practical and the intellectual, to 'walk the talk', that made them special. The world they sought to elucidate was not primarily interior; not for them navel-gazing or abstract theorising, but a passionate concern about...
Richard Sylvan and Val Plumwood were eminent twentieth-century Australian philosophers who, in the way of philosophers, devoted their lives to examini...