The sorites paradox and higher-order vagueness

Burgess, John A.

doi:10.1007/bf00484836

Cited by 65 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…A. Burgess (1990) argues that between clear instances of properties there are indeterminate border areas. The boundaries of these border areas may themselves be indeterminate and may create several hierarchical levels or orders of indeterminate boundaries, which, Burgess argues, actually terminate at a finite level.…”

Section: Notes On Other Arguments For Irreducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reductionism and Antireductionism: Rights and Wrongs

Jones

2004

Metaphilosophy

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Scholars are divided as to whether reduction should be a central strategy for understanding the world. While reductive analysis is the standard mode of explanation in many areas of science and everyday life, many scholars consider reductionism a sign of ''intellectual naı¨vete´and backwardness.'' This article makes three points about the proper status of antireductionism: First, reduction is, in fact, a centrally important epistemic strategy. Second, reduction to physics is always possible for all causal properties. Third, there are, nevertheless, reasons why we want science to discover properties and explanations other than reductive physical ones.

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Section: Notes On Other Arguments For Irreducibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Reductionism and Antireductionism: Rights and Wrongs

Jones

2004

Metaphilosophy

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“…Perhaps only the concept of the heap is vague, while the object itself is sharp since we could possibly measure the number of grains. In spite of arguments such as that of Evans [22] who argues that vague objects are inconsistent, the majority opinion amongst recent writers is that there are indeed such objects [9,76,77,87].…”

Section: The Sorites Paradoxmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sorites paradox and vague geographies

Fisher

2000

Fuzzy Sets and Systems

147

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“…Furthermore, the features are vague in a philosophical sense (Williamson 1994; Sainsbury 1989 1995, 25), which is to say that either the boundary condition is not well defined (semantic vagueness as defined in the sorites paradox or paradox of the heap; Sainsbury 1995), or the class to which a location is allocated may vary with perception (epistemic vagueness). Indeed, mountains in particular have formed one focus for the philosophical literature on vagueness, and the existence of vague objects (Varzi 2001; Burgess 1990; Sainsbury 1989). In essence, those authors pose the question ‘where is Snowdon (Sainsbury 1989) or Everest (Varzi 2001)?’ They argue that no meaningful answer can be clear‐cut, and in the philosophy literature the argument persists as to whether this is due to human perception dividing a landscape into features called mountains, or whether the mountains actually exist as vague objects (Burgess 1990; Sainsbury 1989 1995; Evans 1978).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where is Helvellyn? Fuzziness of multi‐scale landscape morphometry

Fisher

Wood

Cheng

2004

Trans Inst British Geog

191

133

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The landscape in which people live is made up of many features, which are named and have importance for cultural reasons. Prominent among these are the naming of upland features such as mountains, but mountains are an enigmatic phenomenon which do not bear precise and repeatable definition. They have a vague spatial extent, and recent research has modelled such classes as spatial fuzzy sets. We take a specifically multiresolution approach to the definition of the fuzzy set membership of morphometric classes of landscape. We explore this idea with respect to the identification of culturally recognized landscape features of the English Lake District. Discussion focuses on peaks and passes, and the results show that the landscape elements identified in the analysis correspond to well-known landmarks included in a place name database for the area, although many more are found in the analysis than are named in the available database. Further analysis shows that a richer interrogation of the landscape can be achieved with Geographical Information Systems when using this method than using standard approaches. key words fuzzy sets landforms morphometry multi-scale analysis mountains the Lake District

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The sorites paradox and higher-order vagueness

Cited by 65 publications

References 20 publications

Reductionism and Antireductionism: Rights and Wrongs

Reductionism and Antireductionism: Rights and Wrongs

Sorites paradox and vague geographies

Where is Helvellyn? Fuzziness of multi‐scale landscape morphometry

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