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Title: Vagueness by Timothy Williamson ISBN: 0-415-13980-5 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: May, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: Mr Williamson forgot (or ignored) his Wittgenstein
Comment: If you want to learn how not to do philosophy, read this book (if you can). In his later work genius Ludwig Wittgenstein taught that philosophical problems only appear when a writer is cavalier with the meaning and usage of words. Mr Williamson can only write about "the philosophical problem of vagueness" by ignoring Wittgenstein's dictum.
Suppose I stand in front of a pile of sand and someone removes grains a teaspoonful at a time. I am asked "When does it cease to be a pile?" How to answer this? The answer would have to be something like this. After a certain quantity of sand has been removed I might say "Maybe it is reaching the point where someone could question whether it is a pile or not." More sand removed..."I am not sure whether it is a pile or not." More sand removed... "I think many people would not call this a pile." More sand removed ..."Definitely not a pile now."
To ask "Exactly when does it cease to be a pile?" is to ignore the linguistic conventions and contexts concerning the phrase "a pile of sand." It is to be careless with language. So taught Wittgenstein more than fifty years ago.
According to Mr Williamson, vagueness is an epistemic phenomenon. "In cases of unclarity, statements remain true or false, but speakers of the language have no way of knowing which." Consider what this means. Some people say Pluto is a planet in the solar system. Others say Pluto is too small to be a planet, it is merely an asteroid. Thus according to Mr Williamson, the statement "Pluto is a planet" must either be true or false but we do not know which. Mr Williamson then correctly writes that such a view of vagueness appears incredible.
How does Mr Williamson create such a pickle? The answer is found in the first sentence of Chapter 9 where we read the incredible statement that "Words are objects;". Let me give the definitions of word and object in my dictionary. Word : "An articulate sound or combination of sounds uttered by the human voice or written, printed etc, expressing an idea or ideas..." Object : "Anything presented to the senses or the mind, especially anything visible or tangible; a material thing..." Mr Williamson uses object in the sense of material thing whether it be piles of sand, heads with few hairs, or Europe. So Mr Williamson creates his philosophical problem by wrongly stating that a sound (or written word) is the same as a material object. He has been cavalier with the meanings of words as given in the dictionary. He has made a very elementary error that most school children would not make. However this error is the postulate behind three hundred pages of dense argument leading to the so-called epistemic view of vagueness which Mr Williamson admits is, at first sight, incredible.
You would think that if Mr Williamson reaches a conclusion that appears incredible, he might wish to enquire if there is an elementary error in his postulates. However Mr Williamson embarks on no such enquiry.
My edition has a blurb on the cover by Mr Adam Morton who writes in Philosophical Books "Not for a long time have I read anything which was at the same time so easy and pleasant to read and so stimulating." Don't you believe it! I'd like to see Mr Morton stand up and say this under oath in a court of law; he would be prosecuted for perjury!
Wittgenstein once told a prospective philosophy student to forget philosophy and go and study an honest subject like medicine. In this spirit I give the book one star only.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Standard Text on Sorites Problems
Comment: If you took grains of sand away from a pile of sand, when would it cease to be a pile? The paradox of the sorites goes back to early Greek philosophers, and recent metaphysicians have revived the debate after a couple thousand years of philosophers ignoring it. According to Timothy Williamson, there is an exact point when every pile ceases to be a pile, and we could never know what that point is. If a man loses a certain number of hairs, he will be bald, and just one hair makes the difference. Williamson's epistemic view of vagueness has now come to occupy the front stage. Everyone wants to show why such a wacky view just can't be right, but no one seems to have a convincing reply to his arguments. His book covers the main views for dealing with problems of vagueness, and it goes through basic reasons deriving just from standard logic, showing why the other views are seriously inadequate unless they revise our standard logic to the point of absurdity. This book isn't easy even for trained philosophers, but it's well worth it for anyone who wants to delve into this fundamental issue in metaphysics and philosophy of language.
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Title: Vagueness: A Reader by Rosanna Keefe, Peter Smith ISBN: 0262611457 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 29 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: Knowledge and Its Limits by Timothy Williamson ISBN: 019925656X Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Paradoxes by R. M. Sainsbury ISBN: 0521483476 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 11 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics by Alfred Tarski ISBN: 091514476X Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Pub. Date: January, 1983 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2 : The Age of Meaning by Scott Soames ISBN: 0691115745 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 03 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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