What vague objects are like

Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 99, Issue 7, 2002, Pages 333-361

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EID: 60949463029     PISSN: 0022362X     EISSN: 19398549     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3655512     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. "Vagueness," Australian Journal of Philosophy and Psychology, I(1923): 84-92;
2. reprinted in Rosanna Keefe and Peter Smith, eds., Vagueness: A Reader(Cambridge: MIT, 1997), pp. 61-68.
3. There are versions of this puzzle in Peter Unger, "The Problem ofthe Many," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, v (1980): 411-68;
4. and in Peter Geach, Reference and Generality, third edition (Ithaca:Cornell, 1980), p. 215.
5. Unger does not balk: "There Are No Ordinary Things," Synthese,XLI (1979): 117-54.
6. As David Lewis explains in "Many, But Almost One," in Keith Campbell, John Bacon, and Lloyd Reinhardt, eds., Ontology, Causality, and Mind:Essays on the Philosophy of D.M. Armstrong (New York: Cambridge, 1993), pp.23-42.
7. Others who think that various sorts of things might really be vagueinclude Arthur W. Burks, "Empiricism and Vagueness," this JOURNAL,XLIII, 18 (August 29, 1946): 477-86;
8. Kit Fine, "Vagueness, Truth and Logic," Synthese, XXX (1975):265-300, footnote 10;
9. Mark Sainsbury, "Concepts without Boundaries," in Keefe and Smith, eds., pp. 251-64;
10. Michael Tye, "Vague Objects," Mind, XCIX (1990): 535-57;
11. John A. Burgess, "Vague Objects and Indefinite Identity, "Philosophical Studies, LIX (1990): 263-87;
12. Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings (Ithaca: Cornell, 1990);
13. Eddy Zemach, "Vague Objects," Noûs, XXV (1991): 323-40;
14. Richard Heck, "That There Might Be Vague Objects (So Far as Concerns Logic)," The Monist, LXXXI, 2 (1998): 274-96;
15. and Michael Dummett, "Is Time a Continuum of Instants? "Philosophy, LXXV (2000): 497-515.
16. Vann McGee seems to have thought so. He claims that an argument forunrestricted composition "presupposes" that there is no vagueness inthe world; see his "Kilimanjaro," The Canadian Journal of Philosophy,XXIII (1998): 141-63, p. 163.
17. "Can There Be Vague Objects?" Analysis, XXXVIII (1978): 208.
18. See also Nathan Salmon, Reference and Essence (Princeton: University Press, 1981), pp. 243-46.
19. L.E.J. Brouwer described the construction by means of choice sequences ofwhat one might take to be indefinitely equal real numbers - "Über Definitionsbereiche von Functionen," Mathematische Annalen, XCVII (1927):60-75.
20. As Terence Parsons and Peter Woodruff argue in "Worldly Indeterminacy of Identity," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XCV(1995): 171-91.
21. Sainsbury distinguishes between them in "What Is a Vague Object?" Analysis, XLIX, 2 (1989): 99-112.
22. For example, Francis Jeffrey Pelletier, in "Another Argument against Vague Objects," this JOURNAL, LXXXVI, 9 (September 1989): 481-92.
23. See Helen Morris Cartwright, "Quantities," The Philosophical Review, LXXIX (1970): 25-42.
24. See also Tyler Burge, "Truth and Mass Terms," this JOURNAL,LXIX, 10 (May 18, 1972): 263-82,
25. and Dean Zimmerman, "Theories of Masses and Problems of Constitution," The Philosophical Review, CIV (1995): 53-110.
26. Those who have tried to ground proper function in etiology include Ruth Millikan, in "Biosemantics," this JOURNAL, LXXXVI, 6 (June 1989):281-97;
27. and Karen Neander, in "Functions as Selected Effects: The Conceptual Analyst's Defense," Philosophy of Science, LVIII (1991): 168-84.
28. Paul Griffiths extends their etiological conception of proper functionfrom organisms to artifacts in "Functional Analysis and Proper Functions," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, XLIV (1993):409-22.
29. "Functional Analysis," this JOURNAL, LXXII, 20 (November 20,1975): 741-65.
30. and "Mass Terms, Count Nouns and Change," Synthese, XXXI(1975): 459-78;
31. David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance (Cambridge: Harvard, 1980), pp.30-35;
32. Jonathan Lowe, "The Problem of the Many and the Vagueness of Constitution," Analysis, XLVIII (1982): 27-30;
33. Mark Johnston,"Constitution Is Not Identity," Mind, CI (1992):89-105; and Zimmerman.
34. See, for instance, Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine, "Steps Toward a Constructive Nominalism," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, XII (1947):105-22;
35. see also Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge: MIT, 1960), p. 171.
36. Compare Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge: Harvard, 1980).
37. Compare Lewis, "Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic,"this JOURNAL, LXV, 5 (March 7, 1968): 113-26.
38. See Steven Blamey, "Partial Logic," in D. Gabbay and F.Guenthner, eds., Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Volume 3 (Boston: Reidel,1986), pp. 1-70.
39. Compare Richard Cartwright, "Scattered Objects," in his Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: MIT, 1987), pp. 171-86.
40. Lofti Zadeh, "Fuzzy Sets," Information and Control, VIII(1965): 338-53.
41. Jack Copeland uses them to explain vague identity in "Vague Identityand Fuzzy Logic," this JOURNAL, XCIV, 10 (October 1997): 514-34.
42. Joseph Goguen pioneered them in "The Logic of Inexact Concepts," Synthese, XIX (1969): 325-73.
43. See Hartry Field, "Quine and the Correspondence Theory," The Philosophical Review, LXXXIII (1974): 200-28;
44. Compare Timothy Williamson, Vagueness (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 162.
45. For a full introduction to classical mereology, see Peter Simons, Parts:A Study in Ontology (New York: Oxford, 1987).
46. Compare Nicholas Rescher, "Axioms for the Part Relation, "Philosophical Studies, VI (1955): 8-11.