A Metasemantic Account of Vagueness
This chapter defends a metasemantic account of vagueness, which is based on the following three theses: (1) The meaningfulness of our sentences depends on the prevalence of suitable linguistic conventions; (2) Whether or not a convention prevails in a given population need not be an all-or-nothing matter — it can come in degrees; (3) Whereas conventions about how to use sentences involving only attributions of vague predicates to clear cases are often prevalent to a very high degree, conventions about how to use sentences involving attributions of vague predicates to borderline cases are prevalent, if at all, to lesser degrees.
Keywords: vagueness, convention, metasemantics, semantics, pragmatics
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