Instructor
Prof.: Delia Graff
Email: d e l i a . g r a f f @ c o r n e l l . e d u
Office: 322 Goldwin Smith Hall
Office Hours: W 2-4
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Course Info
Seminar Time: Thursday 4:30 - 6:30
Location: TBA
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Course Description
| The topic of the seminar will be vagueness and the
sorites paradox. The vagueness of a predicate like 'tall woman'
is metaphorically characterized by saying that there is a "fuzzy
boundary" between the women it applies to and those it
doesn't. The sorites paradox of antiquity (also known as "the
paradox of the heap") arises from thoughts such as, "If I'm tall
before I go to bed then even if I shrink 1mm overnight, I'll
still be tall when I wake up," which, though attractive,
apparently lead to absurdity. We will question what the fuzziness
that's characteristic of vagueness amounts to; what is the
relation between vagueness and perception; how are we to resolve
the sorites paradox; does vagueness require us to abandon
Bivalence and the Law of Excluded Middle; can the epistemological
and metaphysical problems arising from vagueness be adequately
handled by some such revision to classical logic or semantics.
Interested in finding out a bit more about the subject?
Read theStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries on Vagueness and
The Sorites
Paradox.
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