In an interesting experimental study, Bonini et al. (1999) present partial support for truth-gap theories of vagueness. We say this despite their claim to find theoretical and empirical reasons to dismiss gap theories and despite the fact that they favor an alternative, epistemic account, which they call ‘vagueness as ignorance’. We present yet more experimental evidence that supports gap theories, and argue for a semantic/pragmatic alternative that unifies the gappy supervaluationary approach together with its glutty relative, the subvaluationary approach.

The term “vagueness” describes a property of natural concepts, which normally have fuzzy boundaries, admit borderline cases, and are susceptible to Zeno's sorites paradox. We will discuss the psychology of vagueness, especially experiments investigating the judgment of borderline cases and contradictions. In the theoretical part, we will propose a probabilistic model that describes the quantitative characteristics of the experimental finding and extends Alxatib's and Pelletier's () theoretical analysis. The model is based on a Hopfield network for predicting (...) truth values. Powerful as this classical perspective is, we show that it falls short of providing an adequate coverage of the relevant empirical results. In the final part, we will argue that a substantial modification of the analysis put forward by Alxatib and Pelletier and its probabilistic pendant is needed. The proposed modification replaces the standard notion of probabilities by quantum probabilities. The crucial phenomenon of borderline contradictions can be explained then as a quantum interference phenomenon. (shrink)

Naive speakers find some logical contradictions acceptable, specifically borderline contradictions involving vague predicates such as Joe is and isn’t tall. In a recent paper, Cobreros et al. (J Philos Logic, 2012) suggest a pragmatic account of the acceptability of borderline contradictions. We show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong truth conditions for some examples with disjunction. As a remedy, we propose a semantic analysis instead. The analysis is close to a variant of fuzzy (...) logic, but conjunction and disjunction are interpreted as intensional operators. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to shed some light on a certain type of sentence, which I call a borderline contradiction. A borderline contradiction is a sentence of the form F a ∧ ¬F a, for some vague predicate F and some borderline case a of F , or a sentence equivalent to such a sentence. For example, if Jackie is a borderline case of ‘rich’, then ‘Jackie is rich and Jackie isn’t rich’ is a (...) borderline contradiction. Many theories of vague language have entailments about borderline contradictions; correctly describing the behavior of borderline contradictions is one of the many tasks facing anyone offering a theory of vague language. Here, I first briefly review claims made by various theorists about these borderline contradictions, attempting to draw out some predictions about the behavior of ordinary speakers. Second, I present an experiment intended to gather relevant data about the behavior of ordinary speakers. Finally, I discuss the experimental results in light of several different theories of vagueness, to see what explanations are available. My conclusions are necessarily tentative; I do not attempt to use the present experiment to demonstrate that any single theory is incontrovertibly true. Rather, I try to sketch the auxiliary hypotheses that would need to be conjoined to several extant theories of vague language to predict the present result, and offer some considerations regarding the plausibility of these various hypotheses. In the end, I conclude that two of the theories I consider are better-positioned to account for the observed data than are the others. But the field of logically-informed research on people’s actual responses to vague predicates is young; surely as more data come in we will learn a great deal more about which (if any) of these theories best accounts for the behavior of ordinary speakers. (shrink)

John Broome has argued that value incommensurability is vagueness, by appeal to a controversial about comparative indeterminacy. I offer a new counterexample to the collapsing principle. That principle allows us to derive an outright contradiction from the claim that some object is a borderline case of some predicate. But if there are no borderline cases, then the principle is empty. The collapsing principle is either false or empty.

This paper explores the idea that vague predicates like “tall”, “loud” or “expensive” are applied based on a process of analog magnitude representation, whereby magnitudes are represented with noise. I present a probabilistic account of vague judgment, inspired by early remarks from E. Borel on vagueness, and use it to model judgments about borderline cases. The model involves two main components: probabilistic magnitude representation on the one hand, and a notion of subjective criterion. The framework is used to represent (...) judgments of the form “x is clearly tall” versus “x is tall”, as involving a shift of one’s criterion, and then to derive observed patterns of acceptance for borderline contradictions, namely sentences of the form “x is tall and not tall”, relative to the acceptance of their conjuncts. (shrink)

If ‘F’ is a predicate, then ‘Fer than’ or ‘more F than’ is a corresponding comparative relational predicate. Concerning such comparative relations, John Broome’s Collapsing Principle states that, for any x and y, if it is false that y is Fer than x and not false that x is Fer than y, then it is true that x is Fer than y. Luke Elson has recently put forward two alleged counter-examples to this principle, allegedly showing that it yields contradictions (...) if there are borderline cases. In this paper, I argue that the Collapsing Principle does not rule out borderline cases, but I also argue that it is implausible. (shrink)

Recent experiments have shown that naive speakers find borderline contradictions involving vague predicates acceptable. In Cobreros et al. we proposed a pragmatic explanation of the acceptability of borderline contradictions, building on a three-valued semantics. In a reply, Alxatib et al. show, however, that the pragmatic account predicts the wrong interpretations for some examples involving disjunction, and propose as a remedy a semantic analysis instead, based on fuzzy logic. In this paper we provide an explicit global pragmatic (...) interpretation rule, based on a somewhat richer semantics, and show that with its help the problem can be overcome in pragmatics after all. Furthermore, we use this pragmatic interpretation rule to define a new consequence-relation and discuss some of its properties. (shrink)

This paper proposes an experimental investigation of the use of vague predicates in dynamic sorites. We present the results of two studies in which subjects had to categorize colored squares at the borderline between two color categories (Green vs. Blue, Yellow vs. Orange). Our main aim was to probe for hysteresis in the ordered transitions between the respective colors, namely for the longer persistence of the initial category. Our main finding is a reverse phenomenon of enhanced contrast (i.e. negative (...) hysteresis), present in two different tasks, a comparative task involving two color names, and a yes/no task involving a single color name, but not found in a corresponding color matching task. We propose an optimality-theoretic explanation of this effect in terms of the strict-tolerant framework of Cobreros et al. (J Philos Log 1–39, 2012), in which borderline cases are characterized in a dual manner in terms of overlap between tolerant extensions, and underlap between strict extensions. (shrink)

This paper considers two “mysteries” having to do with vagueness. The first pertains to existence. An argument is presented for the following conclusion: there are possible cases in which ‘There exists something that is F’ is of indeterminate truth-value and with respect to which it is not assertable that there are borderline-cases of “being F.” It is contended that we have no conception of vagueness that makes this result intelligible. The second mystery has to do with “ordinary” vague predicates, (...) such as ‘tall’. An argument is presented for the conclusion that although there are people who are “tall to degree 1”—definitely tall, tall without qualification—, no greatest lower bound can be assigned to the set of numbers n such that a man who is n centimeters tall is tall to degree 1. But, since this set is bounded from below, this result seems to contradict a well-known property of the real numbers. (shrink)

This paper considers two mysteries having to do with vagueness. The first pertains to existence. An argument is presented for the following conclusion: there are possible cases in which ‘There exists something that is F’ is of indeterminate truth-value and with respect to which it is not assertable that there are borderline-cases of being F. It is contended that we have no conception of vagueness that makes this result intelligible. The second mystery has to do with ordinary vague predicates, (...) such as ‘tall’. An argument is presented for the conclusion that although there are people who are tall to degree 1 —definitely tall, tall without qualification—, no greatest lower bound can be assigned to the set of numbers n such that a man who is n centimeters tall is tall to degree 1. But, since this set is bounded from below, this result seems to contradict a well-known property of the real numbers. (shrink)

Vague predicates, those that exhibit borderline cases, pose a persistent problem for philosophers and logicians. Although they are ubiquitous in natural language, when used in a logical context, vague predicates lead to contradiction. This paper will address a question that is intimately related to this problem. Given their inherent imprecision, why do vague predicates arise in the first place? I discuss a variation of the signaling game where the state space is treated as contiguous, i.e., endowed with a metric (...) that captures a similarity relation over states. This added structure is manifested in payoffs that reward approximate coordination between sender and receiver as well as perfect coordination. I evolve these games using a variation of Herrnstein reinforcement learning that better reflects the generalizing learning strategies real-world actors use in situations where states of the world are similar. In these simulations, signaling can develop very quickly, and the signals are vague in much the way ordinary language predicates are vague—they each exclusively apply to certain items, but for some transition period both signals apply to varying degrees. Moreover, I show that under certain parameter values, in particular when state spaces are large and time is limited, learning generalization of this sort yields strategies with higher payoffs than standard Herrnstein reinforcement learning. These models may then help explain why the phenomenon of vagueness arises in natural language: the learning strategies that allow actors to quickly and effectively develop signaling conventions in contiguous state spaces make it unavoidable. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends a definition of vagueness, compares it favourably with alternative definitions, and draws out some consequences of accepting this definition for the project of offering a substantive theory of vagueness. The definition is roughly this: a predicate 'F' is vague just in case for any objects a and b, if a and b are very close in respects relevant to the possession of F, then 'Fa' and 'Fb' are very close in respect of truth. The definition (...) is extended to cover vagueness of many-place predicates, of properties and relations, and of objects. Some of the most important advantages of the definition are that it captures the intuitions which motivate the thought that vague predicates are tolerant, without leading to contradiction, and that it yields a clear understanding of the relationships between higher-order vagueness, sorites susceptibility, blurred boundaries, and borderline cases. The most notable consequence of the definition is that the correct theory of vagueness must countenance degrees of truth. (shrink)

This book examines philosophical approaches to linguistic vagueness, a puzzling feature of natural language that gives rise to the ancient Sorites paradox and challenges classical logic and semantics. -/- The Sorites, or Paradox of the Heap, consists in three claims: (1) One grain of sand does not make a heap. (2) One billion grains of sand do make a heap. (3) For any two amounts of sand differing by at most one grain: either both are heaps of sand, or neither (...) one is. The third claim is rendered plausible by an initial conviction that vague predicates like ‘heap’ tolerate small changes. However, the repeated application of a tolerance principle to the second claim yields the further proposition that one grain of sand does make a heap – which contradicts claim number one. Consequently, many philosophers reject or modify tolerance principles for vague predicates. -/- Inga Bones reassesses prominent responses to the Sorites and defends a Wittgensteinian dissolution of the paradox. She argues that vague predicates are, indeed, tolerant and discusses how this finding relates to the paradox itself, to the notion of validity and to the concept of a borderline case . (shrink)

From immemorial time, many Tyrrhenian places of ancient Sicily and Italy were identified with the main stages of the return of Ulysses. Some Hellenistic critics assumed that it was from the various ancient and pre-Homeric myths that Homer drew inspiration, in the same way that he did with the myth of the Trojan War, which certainly occurred before him. Thus, the voyage of Ulysses, after his losing the course because of the storm at Cape Malea, had to be located in (...) those sites. But how can one explain the fact that Homer places the voyage from Circe to the Hades over the Ocean? Is it only a pseudogeographic poetic touch, aimed to magnify the exploit? Crates of Mallus did not think so: in his opinion, only some of the numerous adventures had taken place in the Tyrrhenian Sea, whereas Homer had purposefully placed some other exactly on the Atlantic Ocean, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. Whichever of the two models one chooses, the route of Ulysses seems to be completely unlikely, both from the point of view of objective reality and from the point of view of poetic imagination. It appears to be a senseless coming and going that takes the shape of some sort of a labyrinth. Furthermore, the navigation times suggested by the text do not accord at all with the distances among the real sites. For this reason, Eratosthenes held that, from Cape Malea onwards, Ulysses switched from the real world to that of fantasy, or better still to the world of some narrative fable that does not heed geography at all. The modern critics are inclined to agree with him and this thesis is nowadays the most popular one. Yet, a very serious objection can be raised here: the myth and the epos, are strictly linked to the geography and the topography as well – they are radically refractory to a narrative fable that totally contradicts the then realities of time and space. Why should Ulysses plunge from Cape Malea onwards straight into the Neverland kingdom? If we combine Odyssey’s data with those we can reconstruct for the earliest form of the Argonautic saga, then we get the solution that neither the ancient nor the modern critics have guessed correctly: up to around the middle of the 8th century B.C., the Greeks thought the Ocean to flow just after the Sicily Channel, essentially coinciding with the so-called Tyrrhenian Sea, still completely unknown at that time. This new perspective can well justify the objective disorder of Ulysses’ route. Above all, it also bears a deeper poetic sense: the Hero had the chance to know and to experience not only some far and exotic countries in general terms, but he also met the very boundaries of the surfacing lands and the rushing waters which encircle the terrestrial disc, bordering the external cosmic abyss. Ulysses came back home alive. He was able to tell the stories about the lands where no human being could ever sail. This borderline that geographically is clearly located marks at the same time the insurmountable chasm between the physical and the meta-physical world. (shrink)

The present offers a pragmatic solution of the Heap Paradox, based on the idea that vague predicates are “indexical” in the sense that their denotation does not only depend on the context of their use, but it is a function of the context. The analysis is based on the following three claims. The borderlines of vague terms are undetermined in the sense that though they may be determined in some contexts, they may differ from one context to the next. Vagueness (...) serves the important communicative function, enabling speakers to identify entities as objects (as things we can talk about) in terms of some quantitative differences between the “object” and its background in the context. Thus, in some contexts we can naturally partition the group of men uniquely so as to distinguish the bald from the not-bald. Whether a man with a given hair number is among the bald in a given context depends not only on his own hair number but also on the hair number of others in that context. This provides the background for the claim that when we assert that John is bald, we presuppose that there is a unique demarcation to the bald in that context. I consider the truth of the Paradox’s statements in contexts where the presupposition is true and in contexts where it is false. The analysis yields that the contradiction is avoided because though each of the statements is often true, never are all the sentences in the Paradox true together. (shrink)

Vague predicates, on a paraconsistent account, admit overdetermined borderline cases. I take up a new line on the paraconsistent approach, to show that there is a close structural relationship between the breakdown of soritical progressions, and contradiction. Accordingly, a formal picture drawn from an appropriate logic shows that any cut-off point of a vague predicate is unidentifiable, in a precise sense. A paraconsistent approach predicts and explains many of the most counterintuitive aspects of vagueness, in terms of a more (...) fundamental inconsistency. (shrink)

My goal is to defend the indeterminist approach to vagueness, according to which a borderline vague utterance is neither true nor false. Indeterminism appears to contradict bivalence and the disquotational schema for truth. I agree that indeterminism compels us to modify each of these principles. Kit Fine has defended indeterminism by claiming that ordinary ambiguous sentences are neither true nor false when one disambiguation is true and the other is false. But even if Fine is right about sentences, his (...) point does not seem to generalize to utterances. What the indeterminist needs -- and what ordinary ambiguity does not provide -- is an ambiguous utterance where what is being said is indeterminate between two different propositions. I will show that such cases exist. These cases imply that the modifications that indeterminism makes to bivalence and the disquotational schema are required independently of indeterminism, in fact independently of vagueness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Explode and Die!A Fat Woman’s Perspective on Prenatal Care and the Fat Panic EpidemicJennifer HansenClassifying obesity as a disease provides more ammunition for the “war on obesity.” I gather that this is supposed to be a good thing. The problem is that obesity isn’t a germ or a crime; it’s a word applied to a particular kind of body—and thus to the person inhabiting it.From a fat person’s perspective, (...) the “war on obesity” is a war on fat people. It’s a license to bully, shame, and ostracize fat people and deny us employment, medical care, and even ordinary family life because we don’t look right. Fat people, proclaimed by medical authority to be the enemy and identifiable on sight as outsiders, are made into targets for all kinds of free–floating anger. For example, I am apparently sucking away people’s tax dollars via my fat, and it’s also my fault that men expecting to fantasize about every woman they see on the street encounter my distasteful fatness instead. But no matter how many times we get told that we are wrong just for existing, we go on existing, in public even. How dare we? The answer, obviously, is to keep at us. If we would just admit that we have no right to exist, then we would all either vanish or become socially acceptably thin, and then the whole world would be unicorns and butterflies and everyone would be rich and nobody would get old. Or something like that. If obesity is a disease, then phrenology is a science.Of course, we get a lot of well–meaning flak along with the bullying; after all, concentrating on weight loss can only be good for us, because fat people are always about to explode and die. This assumption has definitely affected my relationship with the only medical practice I can reach that’s in my network. During the 20–plus years since I became visibly obese, I have gotten used to the constant drone of “You’re fat, you’re fat, you’re about to explode and die, we don’t care about what you actually came in for because it’s vitally important that we bug you yet again about your pants size,” but some things can still shock me. For example, during all three of my pregnancies, I never had a result that was even borderline for gestational diabetes (GD). And yet, some time after my last baby was born, someone wrote “HISTORY OF GESTATIONAL DIABETES” in my file. I first heard about it during my annual checkup, when the doctor referred to it when talking about my increased risk of Type 2 diabetes due to age (unavoidable), my first–ever non–whitecoat–syndrome borderline blood pressure (BP) reading (taken with a standard cuff, gee how could it possibly have been inaccurate), and GD (gosh, I felt so safe and supported at this fine reality–based practice). And of course my weight.Whoever wrote that felt free to make things up because I’m fat. To repeat, somebody with access to my file at my only source for affordable health care felt free to write things in it that were completely contradicted by the facts just a few sheets below. There’s no need to fact–check your assumptions when you can tell by looking at her that she’s F–A–T, and everybody knows what they are. They’ll explode and die, every last one of them. Better medicate them now before they inevitably break down!Speaking of which, there’s a particular OB at the practice who I’ll call Doctor Eeyore. At every appointment, Doctor Eeyore would take measurements, stare, and say, “Hmm … tch.” If I asked him to tell me what he had found, he would say, “Too big,” or, “Too small,” or indicate some other inadequacy in his glum, word–miserly way. He only bothered to produce complete sentences when he enthusiastically told me that I would die if I didn’t give birth with an IV in place to administer the life–saving drugs for my inevitable cardiac event... (shrink)

What is it to share the same concept? The question is an important one since sharing the same concept explains our ability to non-accidentally coordinate on the same topic over time and between individuals. Moreover, concept identity grounds key logical relations among thought contents such as samesaying, contradiction, validity, and entailment. Finally, an account of concept identity is crucial to explaining and justifying epistemic efforts to better understand the precise contents of our thoughts. The key question, then, is what psychological (...) and social facts could play these roles? Elsewhere, we have argued for a specific relational model of concept identity, the connectedness model (e.g. Schroeter 2012, Schroeter and Schroeter 2014, 2015). Our aim in this chapter is to further explain the motivations behind that account, to address worries about transitivity and vagueness, and to contrast our approach with closely related accounts of concept identity developed by François Recanati and Simon Prosser. -/- What’s distinctive of our approach is that we seek to vindicate the first-person epistemic perspective of concept users. Concepts, on our account, play a crucial normative role in setting regulative ideals for the representational practices in which individual subjects participate. This focus on the normative role of concepts – as opposed to a purely causal explanatory role – motivates our approach to concept identity and our toleration of vagueness and borderline cases. (shrink)

In my paper I argue that a successful theory of vagueness should be able to account for faultless disagreement concerning borderline cases.Firstly, I claim that out of the traditional conceptions of vagueness the best equipped to account for faultless disagreement areparaconsistent solutions. One worry concerning dialetheism is that it seems to allow not only for faultless disagreements between different speakers, but also for such ‘disagreements’ between the given speaker and himself. Another worry, at least for some people, is that (...) subvaluationism and dialetheism account for faultless disagreements by allowing contradictions. Next, I go on to argue that contextual conceptions, which are free from this latter worry, are equally well able to account for such disagreements. To this aim I offer a new account of the usage of personal taste predicates and suggest that we model the usage of all vague predicates on them. The idea is that in clear cases “a is F” means “a is F simpliciter”, whereas in borderline cases it means “a is F-to-me”. Since the boundary between borderline and nonborderline cases depends on context, my solution weds content-contextualism with truth-contextualism. (shrink)

Theories of personality and personality disorders need, from time to time, to be revised and updated according to new empirical and conceptual developments. Such development has taken place in the realms of affective neuroscience, evolution and social cognition. In this article we outline a new personality theory which claims that phenomena we usually ascribe to the concept personality are best understood by postulating a web consisting of three major constituents: Temperament (mainly primary emotions), attachment and self-consciousness (mentalizing). We describe these (...) constituents, their neurobiological underpinnings, the subjective experiences they evoke and their behavioral implications. We discuss the relevance of the espoused theory for the field of personality disorders with references to borderline, narcissistic and avoidant personality disorders as well as the DSM-5 Alternative Model. Implications for social psychology, psychotherapy and common-sense self-understanding are outlined. The theory aims to bridge previous contradictions between natural sciences and hermeneutics by its propositions of the evolution of self-consciousness. (shrink)

Commonplace things such as hawks and handsaws pose philosophical problems at least as imposing as those presented by abstract objects such as numbers and divine beings. Van Inwagen's metaphysic of material beings emerges from what he perceives to be the proper answer to the Special Composition Question, which is, roughly, the following: Under what conditions do various things compose a single thing? The first eight sections of the book address and dismiss various extreme and moderate proposals for resolving this question. (...) Van Inwagen argues vigorously for the view that our world contains, aside from mereologically "simple" entities, only living organisms, the activity of whose various parts constitutes a life. Strictly speaking, there are no tables, chairs, ships, or handsaws. A handsaw is merely a "virtual" and not a genuine object, whereas my cat is a genuine and not merely a virtual object. Felines and humans and other macroscopic individuals are composed of various cells, which themselves are composed of simples, whereas the nonentity that is my bicycle is merely virtually composed of various macroscopic and microscopic virtual objects. Van Inwagen argues that none of this contradicts our ordinary beliefs about the world we inhabit. Although there are, strictly speaking, no inanimate objects other than simples, there are various simples that are arranged bicycle-wise and still other simples arranged ship-wise. It is a corollary of van Inwagen's answer to the Special Composition Question that such simples compose nothing. Since there is nothing such simples compose, there really are no such things as bicycles and ships. Artisans do not create in the sense of causing things to exist, but only rearrange simples in ship-like and table-like ways. The situation is different when we consider biological conception and the emergence of a human life. In this case, but not in artifact cases, a new individual arrives on the cosmic stage. Van Inwagen argues that conception leaves us with "a new individual" which itself perishes when it divides. You were never a zygote, since you presently exist, although your zygote--the zygote from which you developed--does not. It is argued that lives are "infected with vagueness at both ends." In various borderline cases, there are simples such that there is simply no correct yes or no answer to the question, Does the activity of these simples constitute a life? Accordingly there is no determinate answer to the question, Do these simples compose something? Van Inwagen argues against the Linguistic Theory of Vagueness and offers a detailed defense of the vagueness of identity. In cases of vague diachronic identity, there is a sense in which the transitivity of identity principle fails. Starting with premises that are half-truths, this principle may in certain cases license a false conclusion. (shrink)

Madness and Modernism is undoubtedly one of the most profound and perspicacious treatments of an illness that is utterly baffling to most laypersons and academics alike. Sass artfully brings together two obscure, complex, and unnerving realms -- the schizophrenic and the modern and postmodern aesthetic -- into mutual enlightenment. The comparisons between schizophrenic symptoms such as loss of ego boundaries, perspectival switching, and world catastrophe with modern literature and art is so adroit that it is almost eerie. The reader finds (...) herself peering into a borderline incomprehensible realm with increasing levels of clarity, by which she gains insight into the utterly chaotic, confused, and bizarre. The lucidity Sass brings to the obscure and confused is a reflection of the many contradictions he introduces to his readers as being entirely paradigmatic of both madness and modernism: that of desiring human contact but also shunning it entirely, of being both afflicted by disease but also exercising a sort of agency, and indeed, an ideal intellectual freedom within the confines of such an affliction, of moving both towards an objectifying materiality of the external world and a total subjectivization of perception, of the tendency towards the hyperabstract and the utterly concrete (between being too "far away" or "too close," respectively). Sass is able to make sense of a world in which these contradictions exist side by side simultaneously, and the disconcerting confusion this causes is palpable to the reader. Sass demonstrates not only his penetrating intellect, but also his unwavering patience and empathy, both in the treatment of the subject matter and the treatment of the subjects suffering from this extraordinary illness. The book is required reading for anyone interested in phenomenological psychiatry, or even psychiatry more generally. (shrink)

These remarks, which span the last eighteen months of Wittgenstein’s life, extend several of his well known themes from his so-called "later" writings. One such theme, which occurs as a unifying leitmotiv in this work, is that philosophical puzzlement arises from a failure to realize the indefiniteness and complexity of our concepts. Herein it takes the form of the claim that we have not one but several concepts of color. In fact, we have as many concepts of color as we (...) have different methods for determining sameness of color. "The indefiniteness in the concept of color lies, above all, in the indefiniteness of the concept of the sameness of colors, i.e., of the methods of comparing colors". E.g., when I say of two objects that they have the same color I could mean, among other things, that they visually appear to be similar or that their surfaces are painted with similarly tinted paints. Another prominent theme, which runs throughout all of his writings, both early and late, is the employment of a linguistic or grammatical theory of necessity for the purpose of refuting claims to have synthetic a priori knowledge. Herein it is phenomenology which is put in its place, its claims turning out to be only an "analysis of concepts that can neither agree with nor contradict physics". The indefiniteness in our concept of color helps spawn the illusion of such exalted knowledge, because it enables us to use a single sentence, on some occasions, to express a norm or convention of language and, on others, to report experience. "Sentences are often used on the borderline between logic and the empirical, so that their meaning changes back and forth and they count now as expressions of norms, now as expressions of experience". Considerable space is devoted to showing that the sentence "A body cannot seem to be both white and transparent" is used in the former way. While Wittgenstein succeeds in saying many interesting and original things about color, his remarks do not give any further clarification to the underlying themes, such as the two above, which he deploys in this area.—R.M.G. (shrink)

This classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalism harbors the seeds of its downfall, particularly by effecting a certain cultural tendency among its most successful subjects that is bound to corrode its very foundations. As such, it is a conservative critique employing cultural concerns precisely where Marx prioritized economic ones.

This article explores two central notions of ‘dialectics’ and ‘dialogics’ based on the work of Vygotsky and Bakhtin respectively, as well their varying interanimations within Stalin-Marxist Russian societyIt is proposed that these two positions are incommensurably located alongside one another in contemporary education. I argue that Bakhtin offers diametrically oppositional educational provocations to those of Vygotsky.The implications of these interpretations will be explored with consideration of their underlying philosophical incompatibilities and contradictions, as well as the opportunities such a consideration (...) pose for educational practice today. (shrink)

What is it to believe something might be the case? We develop a puzzle that creates difficulties for standard answers to this question. We go on to propose our own solution, which integrates a Bayesian approach to belief with a dynamic semantics for epistemic modals. After showing how our account solves the puzzle, we explore a surprising consequence: virtually all of our beliefs about what might be the case provide counterexamples to the view that rational belief is closed under logical (...) implication. (shrink)

This paper portrays the later Wittgenstein’s conception of contradictions and his therapeutic approach to them. I will focus on and give relevance to the Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, plus the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. First, I will explain why Wittgenstein’s attitude towards contradictions is rooted in: a rejection of the debate about realism and anti-realism in mathematics; and Wittgenstein’s endorsement of logical pluralism. Then, I will explain Wittgenstein’s therapeutic approach towards contradictions, and why (...) it means that a contradiction is not a problem for logic and mathematics. Rather, contradictions are problematic when we do not know what to infer from them. Once a meaning is established through a new rule of inference, the contradiction becomes a usable expression like many others in our inferential apparatus. Thus, the apparent problem is dissolved. Finally, I will take three examples of dissolved contradictions from Wittgenstein to clarify further his notion. I will conclude considering why his position on contradictions led him to clash with Alan Turing, and whether the latter was convinced by the Wittgensteinian proposal. (shrink)

Twenty years ago our great teacher and leader Chairman Mao published "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People," an epoch-making piece of Marxist literature. In this brilliant piece, Chairman Mao applied the fundamental law of the universe, the law of the unity of opposites, to sum up comprehensively the historical experience of China's socialist revolution and construction and the international Communist movement and to analyze profoundly the nature, peculiarities and laws of socialist society. He was the first (...) in the history of the development of Marxism to point out clearly that the fundamental contradictions of socialist society are still the contradiction between the productive forces and production relations and the contradiction between the superstructure and the economic base. He was the first to demonstrate clearly that even after the system of ownership of the means of production has been transformed into that of a socialist country there still exist classes, class struggle, and the danger of capitalist restoration. He was the first to indicate clearly that there exist two different kinds of contradictions in socialist society which must be rigorously distinguished and correctly handled, for which he established the great theory of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the basis of the unity of theory and practice, he resolved the issue of preventing and combating revisionism, consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat, and stymied the threat of capitalist restoration. It was an important essay for our time concerning carrying the cause of socialist revolution through to the end, a great enrichment and development of Marxism-Leninism. To study this brilliant essay by Chairman Mao is of the greatest significance for China's current investigation and criticism of the Wang-Chang-Chiang-Yao "gang of four" anti-Party clique. (shrink)

Stratified properties such as ‘happy unhappiness’, ‘ungrounded ground’, ‘fortunate misfortune’, and evidently ‘true falsity’ may generate dialetheias (true contradictions). The aim of the article is to show that if this is the case, then we will have a special, conjunctive, kind of dialetheia: a true state description of the form ‘Fa and not Fa’ (for some property F and object a), wherein the two conjuncts, separately taken, are to be held untrue. The particular focus of the article is on (...) happy unhappiness: people suffering from (or enjoying) happy unhappiness (if there is some situation or state of mind of this kind) cannot be truly said ‘happy’ or ‘unhappy’, but we can say they are both. In the first section three cases of conjunctive stratification are presented; in the second section the logic of stratified contradictions is explored. The last section focuses on eudemonistic ascriptions: stated that a is happy to be unhappy (or unhappy to be happy), should we say a is happy? unhappy? both? neither? (shrink)

The geography of contemporary bohemia is integral to Richard Florida’s thesis of the rise of a new creative class in the USA. The strong correlation between the presence of bohemians and innovative high-tech industries in a number of American cities stands in sharp contrast to the historical image of a bohemian subculture of artists and intellectuals, defined by their antagonistic relationship to bourgeois society. Rather than a sign of social marginality, bohemian life-styles have now become a marker of the ‘new (...) economy’, variously labeled the creative, the cultural or the aesthetic economy. In my paper I want to compare and contrast these two opposed images of bohemia – the 19th-century idea of bohemia as the libertarian other of liberal-bourgeois society and the new, highly topical economic geography of bohemia – with the following questions in mind: How and why does the 19th-century artistic critique of capitalism mutate into an expression of the new spirit of capitalism? Does this change from an antagonistic to an affirmative relationship signal the emergence of a new spirit of art that can be related to the new spirit of capitalism? (shrink)

The previous three articles have discussed scientific ontology, resolving the contradictions between quantum mechanics and relativity using the cosmic origin philosophical framework, and interpreting the principles of natural philosophy through physics. Aristotle established material philosophy and material science, relegating the philosophical concepts of cosmic ontology and the cosmic origin to metaphysics and theology. As a result, philosophy was divided into first philosophy and second philosophy as scientific considerations. When material science developed into the ontology of the universe, able to (...) explain the cosmic origin principle, a major issue arose: after 2500 years of development, humanity has only grasped the meaning of “matter.” Yet, what are “energy” and “information”? We still haven’t figured that out. Modern physics has brought both benefits and contradictions to humanity. To resolve these contradictions, we need to redefine the scientific consideration of “philosophy” and its philosophical concepts. This article continues to explore the contradictions between quantum mechanics and relativity using the principles of cosmic origin, reflecting on the basic concepts of philosophy and human thought. (shrink)

In his 1939 Cambridge Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein proclaims that he is not out to persuade anyone to change their opinions. I seek to further our understanding of this point by investigating an exchange between Wittgenstein and Turing on contradictions. In defending the claim that contradictory calculi are mathematically defective, Turing suggests that applying such a calculus would lead to disasters such as bridges falling down. In the ensuing discussion, it can seem as if Wittgenstein challenges (...) Turing's claim that such disasters would occur. I argue that this is not what Wittgenstein is doing. Rather, he is scrutinizing the meaning and philosophical import of Turing's claim—showing how Turing is wavering between making an empirical prediction and a logical observation, and that it is only through this wavering that Turing can believe that he has provided a proper explanation of why contradictory calculi are mathematically defective. (shrink)

It will be argued that, by reading Marx’s theory of value not as an explanation of capitalist development but as anthropology of capitalism’s moral implications, certain ethical contradictions of HRM can be identified. The main areas of conflict are seen in HRM’s pretence to equitable exchange relations in the workplace, its propensity to replace material with symbolical recognition through corporate culture and ideology, and in its tendency to lay claim not only on the employee’s labour power but on his (...) or her whole personality. (shrink)

Anyone who is accustomed to the view that contradictions cannot be true, and cannot be accepted, and who reads texts in the Buddhists traditions will be struck by the fact that they frequently contain contradictions. Just consider, for example.

This paper analyses rhetorics of scientific and corporate enthusiasm surrounding nanotechnology. I argue that enthusiasts for nanotechnologies often try to have it both ways on questions concerning the nature and possible impact of these technologies, and the inevitability of their development and use. In arguments about their nature and impact we are simultaneously informed that these are revolutionary technologies with the potential to profoundly change the world and that they merely represent the extension of existing technologies. They are revolutionary and (...) familiar. In debates surrounding possible regulation of these technologies it is claimed both that their development is inevitable, so that regulation would be fruitless, and that increased research funding and legislative changes are necessary in order that we can enjoy their benefits. That is, they are inevitable and precarious. An increased awareness of these rhetorical contradictions may allow us better to assess the likely impact and future of nanotechnology. (shrink)

These comments raise two main points based on Walschots’s response to Kleingeld’s ‘volitional’ interpretation of the contradiction involved in Kant’s Formula of Universal Law. The first concerns Walschots’s claim that, contrary to Kleingeld’s own account, her interpretation must in fact assume at least one essential purpose of the will, namely happiness. While Walschots characterises happiness as a necessary end of all rational beings, I clarify on textual grounds that, for Kant, happiness can be safely assumed as an actual end of (...) all rational finite beings. The second point regards Walschots’s claim that Kleingeld’s interpretation should be clearer on the two ways in which a volitional self-contradiction can arise. Drawing on Walschots’s instructive discussion, and on Timmermann’s conservative defence of a more traditional interpretation of the Formula against Kleingeld’s innovative proposal, I cautiously suggest that Kleingeld might end up having to accommodate three contradictions: the traditional contradictions in conception and in the will, and her volitional self-contradiction. (shrink)

Scientists have always attempted to explain the world in terms of a few unifying principles. In the fifth century B.C. Democritus boldly claimed that reality is simply a collection of indivisible and eternal parts or atoms. Over the centuries his doctrine has remained a landmark, and much progress in physics is due to its distinction between subjective perception and objective reality. This book discusses theory reduction in physics, which states that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its (...) parts: the properties of things are directly determined by their constituent parts. Reductionism deals with the relation between different theories that address different levels of reality, and uses extrapolations to apply that relation in different sciences. Reality shows a complex structure of connections, and the dream of a unified interpretation of all phenomena in several simple laws continues to attract anyone with genuine philosophical and scientific interests. If the most radical reductionist point of view is correct, the relationship between disciplines is strictly inclusive: chemistry becomes physics, biology becomes chemistry, and so on. Eventually, only one science, indeed just a single theory, would survive, with all others merging in the Theory of Everything. Is the current coexistence of different sciences a mere historical venture which will end when the Theory of Everything has been established? Can there be a unified description of nature? Rather than an analysis of full reductionism, this book focuses on aspects of theory reduction in physics and stimulates reflection on related questions: is there any evidence of actual reduction? Are the examples used in the philosophy of science too simplistic? What has been endangered by the search for (the) ultimate truth? Has the dream of reductionist reason created any monsters? Is big science one such monster? What is the point of embedding science Y within science X, if predictions cannot be made on that basis? (shrink)

The philosophical Framework of modern physics puts forward a philosophical solution to the contradiction between relativity theory and quantum mechanics theory, aiming to break through the restriction of material philosophy on human thought and solve the artificial contradiction generated by material philosophy. This scheme is the physical principle of natural philosophy. Newton discovered the mathematical principles of natural philosophy, he expressed the principles of the universe’s natural philosophy through mathematics, discovering universal gravitation, the mutual perception and motion of material mass. (...) This line of thought continued with the discovery of electromagnetism by Faraday and Maxwell, and quantum mechanics by Einstein, Planck, Born, Bohr, and Dirac many scientists. This represents the completion of the great natural theology of the universe, a credit to these great scientists. However, we have not recognized this as natural theology. Newton and Leibniz jointly discovered absolute space, but due to insufficient scientific information, we lost an opportunity. Today, modern physics has given us another chance; by combining scientific information with the Cosmic origin principles left by our ancestors, we can understand absolute space. Starting with an analysis of the “theoretical contradictions” in quantum mechanics and relativity, reflecting on the concept and essence of physics, and recognizing the Cosmic origin principle is the natural philosophy principle of physics. (shrink)

In The Borderline Culture: Intensity, Jouissance, and Death, Željka Matijašević examines contemporary culture through psychological borderline theory.