SCIENCE AND SEMANTICS: THE CASE OF VAGUENESS AND SUPERVALUATION*

Abstract: It is widely assumed that the methods and results of science have no place among the data to which our semantics of vague predicates must answer. This despite the fact that it is well known that such prototypical vague predicates as ‘is bald’ play a central role in scientific research (e.g. the research that established Rogaine as a treatment for baldness). I argue here that the assumption is false and costly: in particular, I argue one cannot accept either supervaluationist semantics, or the criticism of that semantics offered by Fodor and Lepore, without having to abandon accepted, and unexceptionable, scientific methodology.     

ENDURANTISM, DIACHRONIC VAGUENESS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE MANY

Abstract: A plausible desideratum for an account of the nature of objects, at, and across time, is that it accommodate the phenomenon of vagueness without locating vagueness in the world. A series of arguments have attempted to show that while universalist perdurantism – which combines a perdurantist account of persistence with an unrestricted mereological account of composition – meets this desideratum, endurantist accounts do not. If endurantists reject unrestricted composition then they must hold that vagueness is ontological. But if they embrace unrestricted composition they are faced with the problem of the many, and cannot plausibly accommodate vagueness. This paper disambiguates two related sub-problems of the problem of the many, and argues that universalist perdurantism is not superior to universalist endurantism with respect to either of these.     

模糊容忍性：研究回顾、现状与展望

模糊容忍性是个体或群体面对一系列不熟悉的、复杂的、或不一致的线索时,对模棱两可的环境刺激信息进行知觉和加工的方式。基于国内外相关研究,文章回顾了模糊容忍性的概念界定和研究历史,认为当前研究现状集中于模糊容忍性的测量及其与组织、文化、个体认知和其他人格变量之间的关系方面。其中,模糊容忍性与创造性的关系尤其值得关注。文章据此给出了未来开展该领域研究的几点建议。     

THE VAGUENESS ARGUMENT FOR MEREOLOGICAL UNIVERSALISM*

Abstract:  In this paper, I critically discuss one of the more influential arguments for mereological universalism, what I will call 'the Vagueness Argument'. I argue that a premise of the Vagueness Argument is not well supported and that there are at least two good reasons for thinking that the premise in question is false.     

THE EFFECTS OF OBSERVER EXPECTATIONS,TASK AMBIGUITY,AND MEDIUM OF PRESENTATION ON LOW- AND HIGH-INFERENCE JUDGMENTS OF COMMUNICATIVE BEHAVIOR1

This study investigated the effects of observer expectations about a speaker's nonfluency level on nonfluency counts made during a taped speech and on post-performance evaluations of nonfluency, anxiety, central idea, organization, language, delivery, and general effectiveness. The influence of task ambiguity and medium of presentation on expectancy effects was also explored. Results indicate: (a) in a high-ambiguity condition, observers who expected a fluent speaker counted fewer nonfluencies in his speech than observers who expected a nonfluent speaker; (b) fluent-expectation observers rated the speaker more positively on the seven evaluative measures; (c) low task ambiguity eliminated expectancy effects on nonfluency counts and ratings of organization but not on the other six evaluative measures; and (d) auditory and auditory-visual presentations of the speech did not produce significant differences.     

SCHIFFER ON VAGUENESS

Abstract:  I go through, and criticize, Stephen Schiffer's account of vagueness and the sorites paradox. I discuss his notion of a happy-face solution to a paradox, his appeal to vagueness-related partial belief, his claim that indeterminacy is a psychological notion, and his view that the sorites premise and the inference rule of modus ponens are indeterminate.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN RESPONSE STABILITY AND ITEM ENDORSEMENT,SOCIAL DESIRABILITY,AND AMBIGUITY IN THE MMPI AND THE CPI

Relationships between two indices of response stability and item endorsement, social desirability, and seven ambiguity indices were investigated separately within the MMPI, the unique items of the CPI, and two subpools moderate in endorsement and social desirability. Within the two original pools, zero-order correlations and multiple regression analyses revealed that only extremeness of endorsement and social desirability were substantially related to response stability; within the moderate subpools, however, indices of ambiguity-especially item length and ratings of global ambiguity, behavioral reference, and estimated stability-accounted for important degrees of variance individually as well as in combination. Reasons for the moderating effects of endorsement and social desirability are discussed, as are the implications for scale construction.     

汉语双音节同音词词汇歧义消解过程的研究

使用跨通道词汇判断任务和语义启动技术,两个实验分别考察了孤立状态下和句子语境中汉语双音节同音词意义通达的情况,结果发现(1)在孤立状态下,无论ISI为0毫秒还是-150毫秒,与同音词主要或次要意义有关的探测词都受到了促进;(2)当ISI为0毫秒时,在语境一致的条件下,与同音词主要或次要意义有关的探测词均受到了促进,在语境不一致的条件下,则未发现任何促进效应;(3)当ISI为-150毫秒时,只是在语境一致并且探测词与同音词的主要意义有关的条件下才观察到促进效应。     

汉语歧义句的加工

通过两个实验,对汉语歧义句多种解释的意义频率和语境位置在句子歧义解析过程中的效应进行了考察。实验结果表明：（１）前语境为被试提供了某种预期信息,它对句子歧义解析的效应大于后语境;（２）在句子歧义解析过程中,不管有语境或无语境,不管是前语境或后语境,被试提取歧义句的主要意思比提取次要意思快;（３）歧义句的多种解释的激活,有一个时间进程,在短延迟间隔条件下,歧义句的主要意思可以被激活并形成表征,但次要意思的激活和表征则需要较长的时间     

SQUEEZING AND STRETCHING: HOW VAGUENESS CAN OUTRUN BORDERLINENESS

The paper develops a critical dialectic with respect to the nowadays dominant approach in the theory of vagueness, an approach whose main tenet is that it is in the nature of the vagueness of an expression to present borderline cases of application, conceived of as enjoying some kind of distinctive normative status. Borderlineness is used to explain the basic phenomena of vagueness, such as, for example, our ignorance of the location of cut-offs in a soritical series. Every particular theory of vagueness exemplifying the approach makes use, in the vague object language, of a definiteness operator which, however substantially interpreted, unavoidably inherits the vagueness of the expressions on which it operates ('higher-order vagueness'). It is first argued that finite soritical series force a surprising collapse result concerning a particular set of expressions involving the definiteness operator. It is then shown that, under two highly plausible assumptions about higher-order vagueness (the existence of 'absolutely definitely' positive and negative cases and the 'radical' character of higher-order vagueness itself), the collapse result implies the inadequacy of the dominant approach as a theory of vagueness, as its main tenet can be, at best, not absolutely definitely true.     

BLOCKING THE PATH FROM VAGUENESS TO FOUR DIMENSIONALISM*

There is a general form of an argument which I call the ‘argument from vagueness’ which attempts to show that objects persist by perduring, via the claim that vagueness is never ontological in nature and thus that composition is unrestricted. I argue that even if we grant that vagueness is always the result of semantic indeterminacy rather than ontological vagueness, and thus also grant that composition is unrestricted, it does not follow that objects persist by perduring. Unrestricted mereological composition lacks the power to ensure that there exist instantaneous objects that wholly overlap persisting objects at times, and thus lacks the power to ensure that there exists anything that could be called a temporal part. Even if we grant that such instantaneous objects exist, however, I argue that it does not follow that objects perdure. To show this I briefly outline a coherent version of three dimensionalism that grants just such an assumption. Thus considerations pertaining to the nature of vagueness need not lead us inevitably to accept perdurantism.     

汉语同音歧义词歧义消解的过程及其抑制机制

两个实验分别采用词语境或句子语境探讨汉语同音歧义词(homophones)歧义消解的过程。被试为112名大学生。实验通过有计划地比较不同语境偏向条件下有关探测词和无关探测词之间反应时的差异,从而揭示汉语同音歧义词消解过程中,对其适当意义激活以及对其不适当意义抑制的时间进程。两个实验的结果都表明：在同音歧义词加工的早期,语境的作用主要表现为抑制歧义词不适当意义,阻止其激活;随后,语境促进了歧义词适当意义的激活。另外,相对意义频率在同音歧义词歧义消解过程中有其影响。     

PHILOSOPHER OF PRECISION AND SOUL: INTRODUCING WALKER PERCY

This article introduces the work of philosopher‐novelist Walker Percy to the Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science readership. After some biographical and contextual preliminaries, I suggest that the conceptual collecting feature to Percy's work is his critique of abstractionism manifest in a tripartite congruence of Cartesianism, derivatively misapplied science, and social atomism.     

KIERKEGAARD, INDIRECT COMMUNICATION, AND AMBIGUITY

Notoriously, Kierkegaard claims his project to be one of indirect communication. This paper considers the idea that Kierkegaard's distinction between direct and indirect communication is to be accounted for in terms of ambiguity. I begin by outlining the different claims Kierkegaard makes about his method, before examining the textual evidence for attributing such a distinction to him. I then turn to the work of Edward Mooney, who claims that the distinction between direct and indirect communication is to be drawn in just this way. I argue that Mooney misinterprets the type of ambiguity Kierkegaard holds to be involved in indirect communication, and consequently ends up with an unsatisfactory account of Kierkegaard's method. Finally I seek to cast doubt on the very idea that ambiguity might do justice to the claims Kierkegaard makes about his project, and suggest that what is required to do so is a theological interpretation of his work.