Epistemicism and vagueness

Abstract

Gradable vague predicates such as “tall,” “expensive,” “bald” etc. have raised serious problems in the philosophy of language and logic. A basic problem is the Sorites Paradox, which in turn gives rise to some other semantic, epistemological and psychological problems. In response, some philosophers have chosen an epistemic approach to vagueness. According to epistemicism, the extensions of vague predicates have exact boundaries, but we don’t know where those boundaries lie. Epistemicism is perhaps the most plausible solution to the Sorites Paradox, but no one has yet offered a precise and plausible explanation of our ignorance of cutoff points (the epistemological question) and also our inclination to reject their existence in the first place (the psychological question). This essay suggests a contextual proposal that does exactly that.