Understanding Vagueness

Understanding Vagueness PDF Author: Petr Cintula
Publisher: Studies in Logic
ISBN: 9781848900370
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Get Book Here

Book Description
Vague language and corresponding models of inference and information processing is an important and challenging topic as witnessed by a number of recent monographs and collections of essays devoted to the topic. This volume collects fifteen papers, the majority of which originated with talks presented at the conference "Logical Models of Reasoning with Vague Information (LoMoReVI)", September 14-17, 2009, in Čejkovice, that initiated a EUROCORES/LogICCC project with the same title. At least two features set the current volume apart from other texts: first, the interdisciplinary nature of the topic is nicely reflected by the wide range of interests of the authors, who include philosophers, linguists, logicians, as well as mathematicians and computer scientists. Secondly, all the papers are accompanied by comments written by other authors and a few outside experts. These comments and corresponding replies by the authors document the very lively ongoing debate on adequate models of vague language.

Understanding Vagueness

Understanding Vagueness PDF Author: Petr Cintula
Publisher: Studies in Logic
ISBN: 9781848900370
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Get Book Here

Book Description
Vague language and corresponding models of inference and information processing is an important and challenging topic as witnessed by a number of recent monographs and collections of essays devoted to the topic. This volume collects fifteen papers, the majority of which originated with talks presented at the conference "Logical Models of Reasoning with Vague Information (LoMoReVI)", September 14-17, 2009, in Čejkovice, that initiated a EUROCORES/LogICCC project with the same title. At least two features set the current volume apart from other texts: first, the interdisciplinary nature of the topic is nicely reflected by the wide range of interests of the authors, who include philosophers, linguists, logicians, as well as mathematicians and computer scientists. Secondly, all the papers are accompanied by comments written by other authors and a few outside experts. These comments and corresponding replies by the authors document the very lively ongoing debate on adequate models of vague language.

Vagueness

Vagueness PDF Author: Timothy Williamson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134770170
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
If you keep removing single grains of sand from a heap, when is it no longer a heap? From discussions of the heap paradox in classical Greece, to modern formal approaches like fuzzy logic, Timothy Williamson traces the history of the problem of vagueness. He argues that standard logic and formal semantics apply even to vague languages and defends the controversial, realist view that vagueness is a form of ignorance - there really is a grain of sand whose removal turns a heap into a non-heap, but we can never know exactly which one it is.

Understanding Vagueness

Understanding Vagueness PDF Author: Amita Chatterjee
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788173070204
Category : Vagueness (Philosophy)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Understanding Vagueness Provides A Comprehensive Analysis Of Philosophical And Logical Issues Centering Around Vagueness. The Main Aim Of The Book Is To Develop An Alternative Logic For Vague Sentences Of Natural Language And To Offer A Solution To The Age-Old Sorites Paradox. The Author Has Drawn Attention To Various Different Perspectives From Which The Problem Area Has Been Studied, Viz., Philosophical, Mathematcal, Semantic, Of All But Has Placed The Problems Within A Much Wider Context. The Book Also Contains An Introduction To Fuzzy Logic, Logic Of Supervaluation And Non-Monotonic Reasoning, Especially, Circumscription. Researchers, Advanced Scholars, And Even Graduatestudents In The Fields Of Philosophy, Mathematics, Cognitive Science And Artificial Intelligence Will Be Benefited By The Work.

Vagueness as Arbitrariness

Vagueness as Arbitrariness PDF Author: Sagid Salles
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030667812
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 206

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book proposes a new solution to the problem of vagueness. There are several different ways of addressing this problem and no clear agreement on which one is correct. The author proposes that it should be understood as the problem of explaining vague predicates in a way that systematizes six intuitions about the phenomenon and satisfies three criteria of adequacy for an ideal theory of vagueness. The third criterion, which is called the “criterion of precisification”, is the most controversial one. It is based on the intuition that a predicate is vague only if it is imprecise. The author considers some different definitions of linguistic imprecision, proposing that a predicate is imprecise if and only if there is no sharp boundary between objects to which its application yields some particular truth-value and objects to which its application does not yield that truth-value. The volume critically reviews the current theories of vagueness and proposes a new one, the Theory of Vagueness as Arbitrariness, which defines a vague predicate as an arbitrary predicate that must be precisified in order to contribute to a sentence that has truth-conditions. The main advantages of this theory over the current alternatives are that it satisfies all three criteria and systematizes the relevant intuitions.

Vagueness in Psychiatry

Vagueness in Psychiatry PDF Author: Geert Keil
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198722370
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
Blurred boundaries between the normal and the pathological are a recurrent theme in almost every publication concerned with the classification of mental disorders. Yet, systematic approaches that take into account discussions about vagueness are rare. This volume is the first in the psychiatry/philosophy literature to tackle this problem.

Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives

Semantics - Lexical Structures and Adjectives PDF Author: Claudia Maienborn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311062639X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 577

Get Book Here

Book Description
Discover vital research on the lexical and cognitive meanings of words. In this exciting book from a team of world-class researchers, in-depth articles explain a wide range of topics, including thematic roles, sense relation, ambiguity and comparison. The authors focus on the cognitive and conceptual structure of words and their meaning extensions such as coercion, metaphors and metonymies. The book features highly cited material – available in paperback for the first time since its publication – and is an essential starting point for anyone interested in lexical semantics, especially where it meets other cognitive and conceptual research.

Vagueness

Vagueness PDF Author: Kit Fine
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197514952
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 121

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The book is about the problem of vagueness. It begins by discussing some of the existing views on vagueness and then explains why they have not been thought to be satisfactory. It then outlines a new account of vagueness, based upon the general idea that vagueness is a global rather than a local phenomenon.. In other words, the vagueness of an expression or object is not an intrinsic feature of the object or an expression but a matter of how it relates to other objects and expression. The development of this idea leads to a new semantics and logic for vagueness. The semantics and logic are then applied to a number of issues, including the sorites paradox, the transparency of mental states, and personal identity. It is shown that the view allows one to hew to a much more intuitive position on these various issues"--

Cuts and Clouds

Cuts and Clouds PDF Author: Richard Dietz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199570388
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 599

Get Book Here

Book Description
Vagueness is a deeply puzzling aspect of the relation between language and the world. Is it a feature of the way we represent reality in language, or a feature of reality itself? How can we reason with vague concepts? Cuts and Clouds presents the latest work towards an understanding of these puzzles about the nature and logic of vagueness.

Vagueness and Thought

Vagueness and Thought PDF Author: Andrew Bacon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198712065
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Vagueness is the study of concepts that admit borderline cases. The epistemology of vagueness concerns attitudes we should have towards propositions we know to be borderline. On this basis Andrew Bacon develops a new theory of vagueness in which vagueness is fundamentally a property of propositions, explicated in terms of its role in thought."--

Vagueness and Degrees of Truth

Vagueness and Degrees of Truth PDF Author: Nicholas J. J. Smith
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191552712
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Vagueness and Degrees of Truth, Nicholas Smith develops a new theory of vagueness: fuzzy plurivaluationism. A predicate is said to be vague if there is no sharply defined boundary between the things to which it applies and the things to which it does not apply. For example, 'heavy' is vague in a way that 'weighs over 20 kilograms' is not. A great many predicates - both in everyday talk, and in a wide array of theoretical vocabularies, from law to psychology to engineering - are vague. Smith argues, on the basis of a detailed account of the defining features of vagueness, that an accurate theory of vagueness must involve the idea that truth comes in degrees. The core idea of degrees of truth is that while some sentences are true and some are false, others possess intermediate truth values: they are truer than the false sentences, but not as true as the true ones. Degree-theoretic treatments of vagueness have been proposed in the past, but all have encountered significant objections. In light of these, Smith develops a new type of degree theory. Its innovations include a definition of logical consequence that allows the derivation of a classical consequence relation from the degree-theoretic semantics, a unified account of degrees of truth and subjective probabilities, and the incorporation of semantic indeterminacy - the view that vague statements need not have unique meanings - into the degree-theoretic framework. As well as being essential reading for those working on vagueness, Smith's book provides an excellent entry-point for newcomers to the era - both from elsewhere in philosophy, and from computer science, logic and engineering. It contains a thorough introduction to existing theories of vagueness and to the requisite logical background.