Demoting Higher‐Order Vagueness
Higher-order vagueness is widely thought to be a feature of vague predicates that any adequate theory of vagueness must accommodate. It takes a variety of forms. Perhaps the most familiar is the supposed existence, or at least possibility, of higher-order borderline cases: borderline borderline cases, borderline borderline borderline cases, and so forth. A second form of higher-order vagueness, what this chapter calls ‘prescriptive’ higher-order vagueness, is thought to characterize complex predicates constructed from vague predicates by attaching operators having to do with the predicates' proper application. For example, the predicates ‘mandates application of old’ and ‘can competently be called old’ are prescriptively higher-order vague. Higher-order vagueness appears in other guises as well, but these two have been of particular interest to philosophers and are the target here. This chapter exposes some misconceptions about them, and shows that higher-order vagueness is less prevalent and less important theoretically than is usually supposed.
Keywords: vagueness, higher-order vagueness, prescriptive, old
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .