UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE
COLLOQUIUM
Department of Philosophy
University of Michigan"Vagueness and Truth."
PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 1992.
Abstract in
Dissertation Abstracts International
(December 1992), 53(6A):1949-A.
Abstract: What is one to say
about a sentence like: "The liar sentence is true if
and only if it is not the case that the liar sentence is true." The
underlined sentence is internally inconsistent in a way which precludes
its being correctly called true, yet it seems to be a correct statement of
one thing which is so puzzling about the liar sentence. It is easy to
imagine circumstances where one would use this sentence to convey that the
liar is paradoxical. A very similar puzzle arises for sentences containing
vague predicates.
This thesis explores the puzzling aspects of sentences of this type, by first clarifying a range of phenomena displayed in our use of sentences containing vague predicates. The examination of vague predicates isolates certain normative constraints governing increases in precision, and the speech acts speakers of English employ to enforce these constraints. The outcome of this investigation is that our patterns of use for certain sentences containing vague predicates--including the conditional premises of Sorites paradoxes--are systematically misleading. This account carries over to sentences containing the truth-predicate in a straightforward way.
"Analytic Truth--It's Worse (or Perhaps Better) than You Thought."
Philosophical Topics (Spring 1993), 21(2):233-261.
Issue is on "Philosophy of Logic."
"The Liar and Sorites Paradoxes: Toward A Unified Treatment." Journal of Philosophy (November 1993), 90(11):551-577.
Review of Vann McGee's Truth, Vagueness, and Paradox: An Essay in the Logic of Truth. Philosophical Review (January 1994), 103(1) [525]: 142-144.
"Extending Knowledge and 'Fruitful Concepts': Fregean Themes in the Foundations of Mathematics." Noüs (December 1995), 29(4):427-467.
"Geometry and Generality in Frege Philosophy of Arithmetic." Synthese (March 1995), 102(3):319-361.
"Some Remarks on Vagueness and a Dynamic Conception of Language."
Southern Journal of Philosophy (1995), 33(Supplement):
193-201.
Spindel Conference: Vagueness,
edited by Terry Horgan.
"Metatheory and Mathematical Practice in Frege."
Philosophical
Topics (Fall 1997), 25(2):213-264.
Issue is on "Analytic Philosophy,"
edited by Christopher S. Hill.
"Negation, Denial and Language Change in Philosophical Logic." In Dov M. Gabbay and Heinrich Wansing, eds., What is Negation? pp. 261-298. Applied Logic Series, Vol. 13. Dordrecht & Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1999.