Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.26362/20190108
Three-Valued Plurivaluationism and the Higher-Order Vagueness
Jan Štěpánek
orcid.org/0000-0002-2218-4512
; Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Arne Nováka 1, 602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Abstract
Plurivaluationism is an approach to solving the Sorites Paradox based on the idea that vague discourse has more than one acceptable interpretation. Since plurivaluationism is a framework which enables one to utilize different underlying logics, three basic versions can be identified – bivalent, many-valued and fuzzy. The aim of this paper is to show how three-valued plurivaluationism, as proposed by Wang, fares against its competitors. In the first and second part, some of the traditional approaches to solving the Sorites Paradox are outlined and are confronted with two objections based on the problem of higher-order vagueness – the so-called location problem and the jolt problem. The third part is dedicated to introducing and evaluating different versions of plurivaluationism, with an emphasis on comparing Wang’s three-valued plurivaluationism to its competitors. While three-valued plurivaluationism is a promising enterprise, I show that some modifications Wang made to his system cause the location problem in plurivaluationism to re-emerge, and it also fails to provide a satisfactory answer to the jolt problem.
Keywords
Fuzzy logic, many-valued logic, plurivaluationism, sorites paradox, three-valued logic, vagueness.
Hrčak ID:
237868
URI
Publication date:
27.12.2019.
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