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Voting and vagueness
Citation
Chase, JK, Voting and vagueness, Synthese: an international journal for epistemology, methodology and philosophy of science, 193 pp. 2453-2468. ISSN 0039-7857 (2016) [Refereed Article]
Copyright Statement
Copyright 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
DOI: doi:10.1007/s11229-015-0859-1
Abstract
Howto handle vagueness? Oneway is to introduce the machinery of acceptable
sharpenings, and reinterpret truth as truth-in-all-sharpenings (supervaluationism)
or truth-in-some-sharpenings (subvaluationism). A major selling point has been the
conservativism of the resulting systems with respect to classical theoremhood and
inference. Supervaluationism and subvaluationism possess interesting formal symmetries,
a fact that has been used to argue for the subvaluationist approach. However,
the philosophical motivation behind each is a different matter. Subvaluationism comes
with a standard story (due to Stanislaw Ja´skowski) that is difficult to sign up to. In this
paper, I make use of a variant of Putnam’s well-known idea of linguistic deference, and
some results in voting theory, to answer this criticism of subvaluationism. The acceptability
intuitions of each member of a linguistic community amount to their voting
for one or more acceptable sharpenings, with truth then characterised as truth-in-a-
(contextually-determined)-sufficiency-of-sharpenings. This produces a family of logical
systems that are close relations of subvaluationism, share its conservatism results,
yet have stronger philosophical foundations in the workings of externalist content.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | Vagueness · Subvaluationism · Externalism · Deference |
Research Division: | Philosophy and Religious Studies |
Research Group: | Philosophy |
Research Field: | Logic |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in philosophy and religious studies |
UTAS Author: | Chase, JK (Associate Professor James Chase) |
ID Code: | 103140 |
Year Published: | 2016 (online first 2015) |
Deposited By: | School of Humanities |
Deposited On: | 2015-09-22 |
Last Modified: | 2017-10-31 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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