Enunciati vaghi senza contenuto vero-condizionale?

  • Elisa Paganini

Abstract

Braun and Sider (2007) argued that a semantic theory of vagueness is not committed to calling into question bivalence. They allegedly propose a semantic theory of vagueness which adopts bivalence and which accounts for our use of vague sentences.

My main target is to point out the weakness of their theory. First of all, it is important to note that in order to grant bivalence they are ready to assume that most (if not all) natural language sentences do not express a proposition which is either true or false. As Braun and Sider are ready to admit, a consequence of this crucial assumption is that their theory itself is not true; even though they do not consider it a shortcoming, I will claim that, contrary to their contention, this is hard to swallow. Second, and more importantly, one of the main advantages they advocate for their theory is that it accounts for our use of vague sentences. As a matter of fact, the theory yields undesirable predictions as to how we react to vague sentences and I will argue that they do not overcome the difficulty.

References

BONINI, Nicolao, OSHERSON, Daniel, VIALE, Riccardo e WILLIAMSON, Timothy (1999), «On the psychology of vague predicates», in Mind and Language, vol. 14, n.4, pp. 377–93.

BRAUN, David, SIDER, Theodore (2007), «Vague, So Untrue», in Noûs, vol. 41, pp. 133-156.

FREGE, Gottlob (1892), «Über Sinn und Bedeutung» (trad. di, Picardi Eva), in AA.VV. 2003 (a cura di), Filosofia del linguaggio, Cortina, Milano, pp. 18-41.

FREGE, Gottlob (1986), Scritti postumi (a cura di Eva Picardi), Bibliopolis, Napoli.

GRICE, Paul (1989), Studies in the Ways of Words, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

IACONA, Andrea (2009), «Saying More (or Less) than One Thing», in MORUZZI, Sebastiano, DIETZ, Richard (a cura di), Cuts and Clouds, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 289-303.

LUDWIG, Kirk, RAY, Greg (2002), «Vagueness and the Sorites Paradox», in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 16, pp. 419-461.

RAFFMAN, Diana (2014), Unruly Words, Oxford University Press, New York.

SERCHUK, Phil, HARGREAVES, Ian, ZACH, Richard (2011), «Vagueness, logic and use: Four experimental studies on vagueness», in Mind and Language, vol. 26, n.5, pp. 540-573.

SPERBER, Dan, WILSON, Deirdre (1986), «Loose Talk», in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 86, pp. 153-171.

WILLIAMSON, Timothy (1994), Vagueness, Routledge, London.

Published
2015-09-29
How to Cite
Paganini, E. (2015) “Enunciati vaghi senza contenuto vero-condizionale?”, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 0(2). Available at: http://rifl.unical.it/index.php/rifl/article/view/300 (Accessed: 21November2024).
Section
Sezione 2. Atti linguistici, teoria della proposizione e pragmatica del linguaggio

Most read articles by the same author(s)