Posted for Amanda Gargano:
I personally think that Williamson and Warburton turn a very genreral concept into something incredibly confusing. But afterall, isn't that what Philosophy is all about? I can see where Williamson is coming from when he says that everyone has a different belief about what is considered bald, or not, but I also think that everyone can generally spot a bald person when we see one. I personally do not think that a single hair makes a difference as to whether or not someone should be considered bald. When it comes to the heap of sand, I think that in our minds we have a cut off point as to what we may consider to be a heap. If one continuously takes a grain of sand off, then we would probably be able to determine when exactly that pile is to small to be considered a heap or not anymore, whether or not we keep taking a single grain of sand off. Yes, this heap will vary slightly from person to person, but overall everyone will have a general idea of what it should look like.
So, my questions are Do you think that anything in the world can be absolutly positively defined without being considered vague? And, True or False, Did Williamson believe that problems of vagueness often arise when we have to apply rules or instructions?
Our next topic is vagueness. Williamson states that vagueness isn’t uninformativeness or unspecificity like is sometimes confused, but unclarity in the boundaries. I thought it was interesting how he talked about not being able to clearly distinguish between what would be classifies as a person of normal height and one of abnormally tall height, or between a middle class and rich person. Drawing those boundaries are difficult, which is the point Williamson is trying to make. I think determining something like the point at which someone is tall or rich varies greatly from person to person and there can be no clear answer or definition of that. Also, when apply this to my everyday life, I don’t see this issue as very troublesome or debilitating.
ReplyDelete--Williamson says vagueness has to do with what? (borderline cases)
--What, for you, is the point at which you distinguish between, for example average-height and tall? Is any one person’s answer to this reliable? Since Williamson thinks vagueness is important to us in our everyday lives, do you think it is important to have an answer to this?
--Natalie Ricketts
It would seem to me that there is a whole world of mathematics-driven science that is very precise and specific, and not vague at all. 1 foot is 12 inches, there is no vagueness in that, and for certain things we could even for precise, logical answers on things like what it means to be tall. Like perhaps, tall, is one standard deviation of height over the average, and as with anything else, this would have to be agreed upon by some sort of authoritative committee, but especially in a legalistic standpoint, there are definitions of all sorts of thing to eliminate vagueness
ReplyDeleteWe will be talking about vagueness today in class. When it comes to vague situations, is there a distinct true and false answer or are things actually "fuzzy"? Also, when we use vague language to our benefit, are we technically lying (like politicians)? I think that in order to answer these questions, we have to answer a few others first. An important question would be who/what actually decides when one is bald or tall. If you're a Christian, the obvious answer would probably be God. If not, I'm not sure who/what someone thinks makes these decisions. Also, is there even an answer to questions like "What makes a heap a heap?" and "How many hairs must one have lost to be considered bald?"...or have humans just tried to make things like this make sense because of our logical nature? I personally think it's all relative. I think that many things simply don't have an answer because they're not important in the scheme of our universe. We as humans try to make things make sense when there really isn't any sense to them in the first place. Even if there is a right and wrong answer, like Williamson said, we'll never be able to know-- at least on this earth. Also, if humans decided how many hairs on someone's head defined baldness, wouldn't that be a human construct? In other words, any other human could simply say that a different number of hairs would define baldness. Again, it's all relative. The vagueness of laws is a different issue. It could be looked at in a couple different ways. If laws were more clear, (the volume you could turn your radio up in order to not disturb the neighbors), it definitely would make things easier, but then again, it would all differ depending on the thickness of the walls, placement of radio, type of speakers, distance between houses, and so on and so forth. I think humans are meant to be vague. If we knew everything, there would be no creativity, ambiguity,or intuitiveness. Life would be bland. So with all that being said, I'm thankful for vagueness.
ReplyDelete--Haley Weathers
I do believe that it is true that vagueness in some circumstances are true or false. FOr example is when he talks about the number of people at a party. If I say about 20 people then it is informative, but if I say at least 3 people and at most 297then it is uninformative. A factual question would beDid Williamson believe that vagueness is not the same as uninformative or unspecificity? A discussion question would be what is the difference between vagueness and ambiguity
ReplyDeleteVagueness... at first when we started the discussion I didn't think it would be that bad to make a specific name for these vague words such as, tall, or bald, because I guess I have a very logical thinking brain. Now I understand how difficult it would be to communicate with one another if this were so.
ReplyDeleteWell we didn't get to have our group discussion on the topic of "animals". I was looking forward to hearing about what some of the the members thought about this topic, since a few used to be vegetarian.
ReplyDeleteOur next discussion will be on "NON-REALISM ABOUT GOD"
I can't seem to come up with any questions as of now but I am sure we will all have plenty to talk about tomorrow.