The Psychology of Vagueness: Borderline Cases and Contradictions

Alxatib, Sam; Pelletier, Francis Jeffry

doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2011.01419.x

Cited by 70 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…We appeal to an independently motivated pragmatic mechanism (the "strongest meaning hypothesis") that delivers either strict or tolerant interpretations, depending on the context. In this our treatment of assertion agrees with the pragmatic account of vague predicates recently proposed by Alxatib and Pelletier in [1]. In the second part of this section, we relate our framework to the experimental data they obtained, as well as to the earlier findings reported by Ripley in [23] and by Serchuk, Hargreaves and Zach in [25].…”

Section: The Pragmatics Of Vague Predicatessupporting

confidence: 76%

“…To substantiate our discussion, we confront our treatment of penumbral connections with some recent psycholinguistic data on the semantic treatment of vague predicates established independently by [1,23] and [25]. Overall, the data suggest that subjects do not preserve classical logical truths for borderline cases.…”

Section: Psycholinguistic Evidencementioning

confidence: 98%

“…1 We define satisfaction for wff in a substitutional manner, assuming that given a C-model or T-model, every individual d of the domain has a name d. …”

Section: Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Section 3, we enlarge the space of consequence relations and discuss various notions of mixed consequence, in particular van Rooij's consequence from classical to tolerant truth and its kin, and discuss the application of this framework to the sorites paradox. In Section 4, finally, we close this paper with the discussion of some applications of the semantics to the pragmatics and psycholinguistics of vague predicates, in relation to recent experiments by Alxatib and Pelletier [1], Ripley [23] and Serchuk, Hargreaves and Zach [25]. The focus of that section concerns the predictions of tolerant and strict semantics for borderline cases, and in particular the choice between tolerant and strict interpretations for vague predicates.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Tolerant, Classical, Strict

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In this paper we investigate a semantics for first-order logic originally proposed by R. van Rooij to account for the idea that vague predicates are tolerant, that is, for the principle that if x is P, then y should be P whenever y is similar enough to x. The semantics, which makes use of indifference relations to model similarity, rests on the interaction of three notions of truth: the classical notion, and two dual notions simultaneously defined in terms of it, which we call tolerant truth and strict truth. We characterize the space of consequence relations definable in terms of those and discuss the kind of solution this gives to the sorites paradox. We discuss some applications of the framework to the pragmatics and psycholinguistics of vague predicates, in particular regarding judgments about borderline cases.

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Section: The Pragmatics Of Vague Predicatessupporting

confidence: 76%

Section: Psycholinguistic Evidencementioning

confidence: 98%

“…1 We define satisfaction for wff in a substitutional manner, assuming that given a C-model or T-model, every individual d of the domain has a name d. …”

Section: Definitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Tolerant, Classical, Strict

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“…We can see that this can't really be the Objectivist's "fact about reality" by considering some of the actual experimentation that tests this. For example, the fact that subjects will judge a middle-height person as "both tall and not tall" in strong preference both to "tall" and to "not tall" (Alxatib and Pelletier 2011) does not in the least tend to support any theory about the reality of people manifesting contradictory properties.…”

Section: Subjectivist Two-tiered Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compositionality and Concepts—A Perspective from Formal Semantics and Philosophy of Language

Pelletier

2017

Language, Cognition, and Mind

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It's no secret that different of the subfields in cognitive science dispute what the correct solution is to various problems that they each investigate in their separate ways. Sometimes this is due to differing antecedent ideas about what is the appropriate way to investigate the phenomenon, other times it is due to differing antecedent ideas about what principles an adequate solution should embody, and still other times it is due to differing antecedent ideas concerning what the dispute is about. . . as for example when they use the same terminology for different phenomena. This paper is an investigation into these differing antecedent ideas in the realm of meaning and compositionality as they play out in linguistics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy of language. The focus is on the notions of subjective meaning and objective meaning, and a main conclusion is that there needs be a "two-factor semantic theory" to accommodate the overall goals of both sides. Some steps are made towards that end, but various previous attempts are argued to have missed the point. In the end it will be shown that, clearly, more work needs to be done along a number of specified dimensions, especially on the subjective side of the dispute.

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Experimental Philosophical Logic

Ripley

2016

A Companion to Experimental Philosophy

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The purpose of this chapter is to explore the intersection of experimental philosophy and philosophical logic, an intersection I'll call experimental philosophical logic. In particular, I'll be looldng for and sketching some ways in which experimental results, and empirical results more broadly, can inform and have informed debates within philosophical logic. Here's the plan: first, I'll lay out a way of looking at the situation that makes plain at least one way in which we should expect experimental and logical concerns to overlap. Then, I'll turn to the phenomenon of vagueness, where we can see this overlap explored and developed from multiple angles, showing just how intimately related experiment and logic can be. Finally, I'll canvass some other cases where we have similar reasons to expect productive interactions between experimental methods and formal logic, and point to some examples of productive work in those areas. 3 6 .1 Logic, Pure and AppliedLet's open by briefly considering a distinction between pure and applied logic. This distinction is analogous to the one between pure and applied algebra, or between pure and applied topology, or between pure and applied versions of any branch of mathematics. (I don't pretend that any of these distinctions is precise, or that there are no problem cases; the gist is all that matters.) Roughly, pure logic is an exploration of the properties and relations occupied by logical sys-• terns in themselves, without attending to any particular use they may or may not have. Typical questions within pure logic: is proof system X sound and complete for model theory Y?; is suchand-such a logical system decidable? compact? finitely axiomatizable?; is this rule admissible in that system?; and so on. Pure logic is most naturally thought of as a subfield of mathematics, although it is of course also pursued by researchers in philosophy, linguistics, computer science, electrical engineering, and so on, in pursuit of our own varied research interests.

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The Psychology of Vagueness: Borderline Cases and Contradictions

Cited by 70 publications

References 38 publications

Tolerant, Classical, Strict

Tolerant, Classical, Strict

Compositionality and Concepts—A Perspective from Formal Semantics and Philosophy of Language

Experimental Philosophical Logic

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