It leans heavily on what I learned from [Max Black]?'s Margins of Precision. |
It leans heavily on [Max Black]?'s Margins of Precision. |
Many philosophers and logicians (better prepared than I) have confronted this argument and registered their analysis. |
Many philosophers and logicians have confronted this argument and registered their analysis. |
I believe that the usefulness of language is the consensus we share on the definitions of terms. |
The usefulness of language is the consensus we share on the definitions of terms. |
See also: Logic, Meaning and definitions |
See also: Logic, definition, extension, intension, ambiguity, and vagueness. |
The standard form of this disturbing argument goes something like this.
My attempt to clarify matters goes as follows:
Many of the examples of this argument use words which refer to members of a vaguely defined set with an underlying quantitative scale which can be used to make precise analogs. For example, We could define a p-heap which has at least p grains of sand. We would then have a precise analog for which the Sorites argument would clearly fail because statement 2) above could not be applied to all p-heaps. There would be a least p-heap to which the item could be applied.
Consider the height form of the argument.
And consider this
The Sorites merely illustrates that logical analysis of how we use vague language requires the growth and destruction. It is a fallacy to assume that everybody agrees on the definition of a vague term. We may agree in its application to some but not all members of the universe of discourse.