Unruly words a study of vague language

UNRULY WORDS Raffman230513OUS.indd i 10/26/2013 12:49:47 AM Raffman230513OUS.indd ii 10/26/2013 12:49:47 AM UNRULY WORDS A Study of Vague Language Diana Raffman 1 Raffman230513OUS.indd iii 10/26/2013 12:49:47 AM 3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 © Oxford University Press 2014 All rights reserved.

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Unruly words : a study of vague language / Diana Raffman. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–991510–1 (hardcover : alk. Language and languages—Philosophy.43—dc23 2013010506 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Raffman230513OUS.indd iv 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM In Memory of Rita, Relly, Joe, Memère, Dorothy, Robert, Mary, Ellie, and Ruth Raffman230513OUS.indd v 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM Raffman230513OUS.indd vi 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM CONTENTS Preface xi 1.

Introduction and Fundamentals 1 1. Whirlwind Tour of Competing Theories of Vagueness 7 1. Initial Observation 1: Blurred Boundaries, Sharp Boundaries, and Stopping Places 13 1. Initial Observation 2: Vagueness and Gradability 16 1.

Initial Observation 3: Vagueness and Soriticality 18 1. Initial Observation 4: Vagueness and Context-Sensitivity 19 1. Vagueness and Rule-Following 20 1. Two Policies and a Caution 22 1.

The In’s and Out’s of Borderline Cases 25 2. Lay of the Land 25 2. The Standard Analysis 26 vii Raffman230513OUS.indd vii 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM CONTENTS 2. The Incompatibilist Analysis 33 2.

Objections and Replies 44 2. Replies to the Four Arguments, and Some Advantages of the Incompatibilist Analysis 60 2. Independently Fishy Features of Higher-Order Borderlines 64 2. Framework for a Semantics of Vagueness 72 3.

Vagueness and Indexicality 73 3. Two Ingredients of Sense for Vague Words 76 3. Refinement: Intended Contexts, Not Contexts of Utterance 84 3. The Multiple Range Theory of Vagueness 91 4.

Vagueness and Reference 92 4. Why Ranges of Application Are Not Precisifications 102 4. Progress Report and a Criterion of Vagueness 103 4. Solving the Sorites 121 4.

Verdicts on Some Specific Predicates 124 4. Vagueness, V-index-sensitivity, Soriticality, Gradability, Borderlines, and Indeterminacy: Relatives or Just Friends? 130 4. Looking Ahead 134 viii Raffman230513OUS.indd viii 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM CONTENTS 5. The Competent Use of Vague Words 136 5.

Testing for Hysteresis 146 5. Nonperceptual Hysteresis: Does Our Hypothesis Generalize? 156 5. Meaning and Use: Implementing the Multiple Range Semantics 164 5. An Etymological Speculation 170 5.

The Truth About Tolerance 172 5. Looking Back: Rules, Reasons, and the Governing View 175 Appendix 181 Notes 187 Bibliography 205 Index 213 ix Raffman230513OUS.indd ix 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM Raffman230513OUS.indd x 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM PREFACE In my first work on vagueness (e., Raffman, 1994, 1996), I argued that linguistic vagueness was a form of contextual sensitivity and that certain psychological factors entered crucially into the contexts relative to which vague words are applied. I thought that insofar as language is vague, semantics could not be divorced from psychol- ogy in the way most philosophers of language have supposed. Those early papers received some attention but also met with skepticism.

I was told that I didn’t understand the difference between a seman- tic theory and a theory of use, or worse, that I wasn’t doing philoso- phy: I was telling an interesting but merely psychological story. I have since come to believe that vagueness has nothing essen- tially to do with context-sensitivity (though the two often appear together). The competent application of a vague word is variable, both inter- and intrasubjectively, in roughly the way I initially had in mind, but not because of any contextual sensitivity. In fact, I now think it is of the essence of vagueness that the competent application of a vague word varies even when the operative context is held fixed.

And while the psychological factors I originally cited do play a role, I now see them as explaining certain features of the competent use of xi Raffman230513OUS.indd xi 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM P R E FA C E a vague word, as distinct from its semantics strictly speaking. (I have also learned that some linguists find a distinction between semantics and use nonsensical. I guess there is no pleasing all of the people all of the time.) On my present view, in the broadest terms, vagueness is a form of multiple reference, and the competent use of a vague word is characterized by arbitrary divergences among competent speakers’ applications of it. In the pages that follow, I develop and defend this different, noncontextualist approach.

The list of people and institutions who helped me to write this book is too long to enumerate here. I will mention only some of them and hope that the others will accept my implicit thanks. I am grateful to Jonas Akerman, Nick Asher, Chris Barker, Simon Blackburn, Susanne Bobzien, Scott Brewer, Tyler Burge, Lynda Burns, Elizabeth Cohen, Daniel Dennett, James Davies, Imogen Dickie, Richard Dietz, Paul Egré, Daniel Farrell, Graeme Forbes, Patrick Greenough, Katherine Hawley, Benj Hellie, Terry Horgan, Don Hubin, Mari Riess Jones, Hans Kamp, Chris Kennedy, Bill Ladusaw, Eve LaPlante, Mike Martin, Mohan Matthen, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Jennifer Nagel, Caroline Palmer, George Pappas, Chris Potts, Geoff Pullum, Greg Ray, Giuseppina Ronzitti, Mark Sainsbury, Barbara Scholz, George Schumm, Phil Serchuk, Allan Silverman, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Barry Smith, Roy Sorensen, Jason Stanley, William Taschek, Sergio Tenenbaum, Neil Tennant, Michael Tye, Jonathan Vogel, Michael Watkins, Jefferson White, Tim Williamson, Jessica Wilson, Crispin Wright, Elia Zardini, and a very wise anonymous referee for Oxford University Press. Ruth Barcan Marcus advised and encouraged me from 1980 to the time of her death in 2012.

My family and friends have put up with years of holiday breaks interrupted or obliterated altogether by my obsession with this material. They know who they are, and I hope they know how grateful I am. xii Raffman230513OUS.indd xii 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM P R E FA C E I also received a lot of helpful feedback from audiences at Dartmouth College; Columbia University; the Institut Jean-Nicod; the Institute for Philosophy at the University of London; the North American Summer School for Logic, Language, and Information at Stanford; Northwestern University; The Ohio State University; the Society for Exact Philosophy; Tufts University; UCLA; UC Santa Cruz; the University of St Andrews; the University of Texas at Austin; the University of Toronto (especially the students in my two gradu- ate seminars on vagueness); and Washington University in St Louis. For funding and/or the use of facilities, I am indebted to the Arché Centre at the University of St Andrews, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, The Ohio State University, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the University of Toronto.

OUP editor Peter Ohlin, associate editor Lucy Randall, and the production team were wonderful to work with. My greatest debt is to Stewart Shapiro, Del Lindsey, and Angela Brown, my former colleagues at Ohio State University. Shapiro, author of an important book on vagueness (Vagueness in Context, Oxford University Press, 2007), has educated me and influenced my views at virtually every step of the way, and our conversations about vagueness over the years have been one of the great joys of my philo- sophical life. Psychologists Lindsey and Brown designed and, with me as gofer, ran an experiment to test a hypothesis of mine about how competent speakers apply vague words.

I was exceptionally lucky to connect with these two fine scientists willing to spend their time and energy investigating questions that must have seemed to them bizarre at best. Philosophers rarely get the chance to test their empirical hypotheses, and I am deeply grateful to Lindsey and Brown for enabling me to do so. As will become clear in chapter 5, our exper- imental results form the evidential basis of the theory of vagueness presented in this book. xiii Raffman230513OUS.indd xiii 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM Raffman230513OUS.indd xiv 10/26/2013 12:49:48 AM UNRULY WORDS Raffman230513OUS.indd xv 10/26/2013 12:49:49 AM Raffman230513OUS.indd xvi 10/26/2013 12:49:49 AM Chapter 1 Introduction and Fundamentals Abraham stood yet before the LORD.

And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?. And the LORD said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And Abraham answered and said. Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.

And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty’s sake. And he said unto him, Oh let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.

And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the LORD: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty’s sake. And he said, Oh let not the LORD be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake.

And the LORD went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Abraham. Genesis 18: 22–33 King James Bible 1 Raffman230513OUS.indd 1 10/26/2013 12:49:49 AM U N R U LY W O R D S Perhaps the only point on which all theorists of vagueness agree is that vagueness is a form of unclarity—specifically, an unclarity about the boundaries of things. In language, vagueness concerns the extent of a term’s application: There is no clear or definite bound- ary between the items to which the term applies and the items to which it does not., Tye 1996, Hawley 2002, Maddy 2007, Barnes 2010) think that objects in the mind-indepen- dent, language-independent world also can be vague: Where does the mountain end and the valley begin? But the primary locus of vagueness is natural language, and linguistic vagueness is what I will be talking about. ‘Tall’, ‘blue’, ‘heap’, ‘rich’, and ‘old’ are prime examples of vague words: No clear line divides the tall people from the above aver- age, or the blue objects from the green, or the old people from the middle-aged.

In contrast, people who are precisely 6 feet tall are clearly divided from people of any other height, and objects that reflect light of precisely 475 nanometers are clearly divided from objects of any other reflectance.