Impasse and Methodology. As is often the case in philosophy, new ideas, or sometimes even old ideas presented in a new way, can create a flurry of activity and a lot of literature. In the philosophical vagueness literature, the last hive of activity began in the 90s, where most of the excitement surrounded epistemicist theories. A whole raft of arguments for and against epistemicism were presented. Some writers stalwartly defended prior treatments of vagueness such as supervaluationism and fuzzy semantics. Others who once defended these approaches, became convinced by the epistemicist arguments and started to argue against their former viewpoint. Now the debate is in something of an impasse. As we have seen, different approaches to vagueness typically start out with the Sorites paradox. The paradox has prompted some to propose far-reaching suggestions about the kinds of things that vague terms can mean, or, at least be used to express. Is it that our words express exact propositions where classical semantics is interpreted literally and some use of a vague term has some specific extension? Perhaps instead we unknowingly express more than one of these propositions? That there is now an impasse should not be surprising. There were likely to be many solutions to the paradox. The question is, which one is right? The answer may depend on a few factors. For example, if classical logic is modified as part of the solution, the new logic may have unsavoury results. Yet, how classical one wants one’s logic to be seems to be a matter of taste, as much as anything else. Some treat logic as a tool, where a different logic can be used for a certain task if it fits the job better. Others see the choice of logic as a commitment to a world view. Another criteria is how well the theory reflects what words mean. Here, however, the general strategy of starting out with the Sorites comes unstuck. If part of the justification for some view of meaning comes from considering solutions to the Sorites, how well a theory models the Sorites paradox is not going to be a good standard of comparison. Furthermore, since different theorists have come up with radically different answers from the same data (the Sorites), it is likely that some pretty fundamentally different assumptions are being made about things like meaning, truth, and the connection between the two. Consensus within the vagueness literature is hard to find, but there is consensus that vagueness is pervasive in natural languages. Fairly unanimo...
