http://www.libertypages.com/cgw/2008/03/24/3-kinds-of-vaguess/ Musings on Science, Religion and Philosophy Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:26:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.libertypages.com/cgw/2008/03/24/3-kinds-of-vaguess/comment-page-1/#comment-125 Clark Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:19:18 +0000 http://www.libertypages.com/cgw/2008/03/24/3-kinds-of-vaguess/#comment-125 The Peircean way to address this problem which he feels avoids the traditional idealist/realist dichotomy is to posit an ideal community of inquirers who, in the future, will have consensus. There are some problems about this (primarily related to the indecision's about #1) but it really is quite useful. It's realist since truth doesn't depend upon what you, I or any finite group of people believe. It's idealist since it is still related to mind. The Peircean way to address this problem which he feels avoids the traditional idealist/realist dichotomy is to posit an ideal community of inquirers who, in the future, will have consensus. There are some problems about this (primarily related to the indecision’s about #1) but it really is quite useful. It’s realist since truth doesn’t depend upon what you, I or any finite group of people believe. It’s idealist since it is still related to mind.

]]> http://www.libertypages.com/cgw/2008/03/24/3-kinds-of-vaguess/comment-page-1/#comment-121 Jacob Wed, 26 Mar 2008 05:09:25 +0000 http://www.libertypages.com/cgw/2008/03/24/3-kinds-of-vaguess/#comment-121 I think you are correct to point to a social community which establishes its own notions of truth (and therefore what constitutes vagueness). Wittgenstein: "the meaning of a word is its use in the language." Defining vagueness here would be a specific use of an imprecise predicate in a particular context. Wittgenstein famously discourses in his "Remarks on Colour" that when we reflect on the nature of color ("is that bicycle white or light gray?") we conclude that our conceptualizations of "color" are integrated into the indeterminateness of our concept of the sameness of color. We generate a paradox or an imprecision ourselves when we insist that color should be determinate (determinative of their extensions in all possible cases). I think you are correct to point to a social community which establishes its own notions of truth (and therefore what constitutes vagueness). Wittgenstein: “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” Defining vagueness here would be a specific use of an imprecise predicate in a particular context. Wittgenstein famously discourses in his “Remarks on Colour” that when we reflect on the nature of color (“is that bicycle white or light gray?”) we conclude that our conceptualizations of “color” are integrated into the indeterminateness of our concept of the sameness of color. We generate a paradox or an imprecision ourselves when we insist that color should be determinate (determinative of their extensions in all possible cases).

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