Kit Fine – A New Theory of Vagueness

1st keynote @FOIS 2014

His previous theory stated that: if you have a statement with vague terms in it, you should first make all terms very precise and then you say the statement is True if every possible interpretation of the combination of these precise terms is True.

There are other theories and all of them have problems.

2008 – started working on this new version

Predicate is vague = predicate is indetermined

Global indeterminate vs local indeterminate: If a predicate does not work for a range of cases; while the letter says the predicate does not work for a particular case.

There is a temptation of defining global inderterminance based on a couple of local indeterninance. But this should not be the case.

Local indeterminance -> existence of borderline cases

There is a radical view that claims these boarderline cases do not exist so local indeterminance does not exist. For instance, because of the difficulty in differentiating boarderline cases from boarder-boarderline cases and so on.

But indeterminacy exists! – [** he concluded this after some theorethical exploration of logics and some examples. **]

There is a difference between a predicate being partially defined and indetermined.

[** unfortunately, for lack of knowledge on philosophical theories from my side, I could not capture much more on this talk **]