Vagueness as probabilistic linguistic knowledge
ViC'09 Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Vagueness in communication
ViC'09 Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Vagueness in communication
Vagueness and Order Effects in Color Categorization
Journal of Logic, Language and Information
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The sorites paradox results from two equally plausible constraints on categorization in sorites series: a constraint of category switch between the first and the last items, and a constraint of similarity or consistent judgment for adjacent items. Following the work of D. Raffman [27,28] this paper argues that both constraints can be met if we assume that borderline cases pattern as ambiguous items between opposing categories. I first review some empirical evidence in favor of this view. I then examine how it bears on the tolerance principle, from a descriptive and from a normative viewpoint. In particular, I discuss ways in which the account of tolerance outlined in [6] can be related to Smith's [37] fuzzy account, as well as to the similarity-based semantics for vague predicates proposed by van Rooij [34] and explored in recent work with Cobreros et al. [4].