Up@dawn 2.0

Thursday, April 4, 2013

14-4 vagueness

What makes a heap of sand? How many grains would you have to add until you have a heap? How many would you have to take away before it is no longer a heap?
Better question: who cares? This idea of vagueness we decided as a group is not a concept we need to be focusing on, but rather vagueness in experience and interactions with others. Our language is always vague and creates problems with people do not specify. Williamson also mentions us interacting with our computers, and how vague language must be understood by them.

Fq: according to willamson, does clarifying and defining terms or concepts eliminate vagueness?
Answer: nope.

1 comment:

  1. We have vagueness in our language for a reason. As you note here and Williamson notes in the text, as humans we have experiences which can't be described in exact terms. Sometimes you simply must be able to use judgement when using or interpreting language. Beyond the use for computers, I don't think we need to even worry about defining exact positions for intentionally vague terms. I'm not even sure he's correct in assuming that computers must be able to define vague terms in order to process vague concepts. If we could build a computer capable of making judgements (something no computer has yet been able to do), would the capability to handle vagueness come with that ability?

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