How can natural language be ‘understood’ by computers? Or, more specifically, how can the semantics of a natural language statement be modeled by means of logic in order to facilitate formal reasoning? This perennial problem has many, partly intertwined facets; one of them being the pervasiveness of vagueness in all natural languages. Originally discarded by Frege as a ‘defect’ of ordinary lang...

I am sympathetic with Ms. Burns’ general philosophy of vagueness as a pervasive, multidimensional phenomenon with a variety of sources. I am not, however, all that comfortable with some of the specific arguments she offers in support of this view. In particular, I am uneasy with Burns’ central arguments to the effect that the borderline case variety of vagueness—that which produces the sorites ...

Preference modelling and choice theory are common to many di erent areas including operational research, economics, arti cial intelligence and social choice theory. We consider \vague preferences" and introduce a new technique to model this vagueness with the aim of making a choice at the nal stage. Our basic tools of modelling will be fuzzy relations and interval valued fuzzy sets. Speci cally...

Fuzziness is an inherent property of geographical phenomena and the processes data acquisition, processing, analysis often introduce uncertainty. Existing methods predominantly use fuzzy set (FS) theory to capture fuzziness as spatial objects. However, this approach has a conceptual confusion regarding fuzziness, uncertainty, vagueness, membership degree expressed using accurate values that ign...

We propose that not all such arguments are on a par. The first section of the paper distinguishes dialectically effective from dialectically ineffective arguments against metaphysical vagueness. The second section constructs an argument against metaphysical vagueness – specifically, an argument against objects that are indeterminate in what parts they have – which promises to be dialectically e...

This paper sketches an understanding of conflation and vagueness according to which the latter is a special kind of the former. First, I sketch a particular understanding of conflation. Then, I go on to argue that vague concepts fit directly into this understanding. This picture of vagueness is related, but not identical, to a number of existing accounts.