Program


Keynote Speakers


Chris Barker (NYU),
'Achieving Clarity'

Why ever assert clarity? If "It is clear that p" is true, reasonable discourse participants already have all the evidence they need to conclude that p, so asserting clarity seems at best superfluous. According to Barker and Taranto (2003) and Taranto (2006), asserting clarity reveals information about the beliefs of the discourse participants, specifically, that they both believe (that they both believe) p. The belief theory of clarity makes a number of accurate predictions, including that "It is clear that p" fails to entail p (perhaps contrary to initial impressions). However, the belief theory is both too weak and too strong: mere belief is not sufficient to guarantee clarity ("It is clear that God exists"), and clarity is possible without belief ("It is reasonably clear that p"). I will suggest that "It is clear that p" means instead (roughly) 'the publicly available evidence justifies concluding that p'. What asserting clarity reveals is information concerning the prevailing epistemic standard that determines whether a body of evidence is sufficient to justify a claim. Thus assertions of clarity constitute declarations about the vague standard for justified belief. If so, the semantics of clarity constitutes a grammatical window into the discourse dynamics of knowledge and skepticism.


Delia Graff Fara (Princeton),
'Context, Content, Interests, and Saying the Same Thing'
Chris Kennedy (Chicago),
'Vagueness and Comparison'
Peter Pagin (Stockholm/LOGOS),
'Vagueness and Domain Restriction'
Agustin Rayo (MIT),
'A Plea for Localism'
Robert van Rooij (ILLC, UvA),
'In Defense of Comparison Classes'
Uli Sauerland (ZAS Berlin), with Penka Stateva,
'Approximating Expressions and Vagueness'

Contributed papers



Matthew Carmody  (Richmond-upon-Thames College, Greater London)
'Vagueness and Communication: a Minimally Contextualist Approach'

Pablo Cobreros  (University College London)
'Borderline, yet not Definitely so'

Ariel Cohen  (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev),  joint w/ Lavi Wolf
'Clarity and Objectivized Belief'

Kevin Connolly  (U. of Toronto)
'Vague Color Predicates and the Richness Argument'

David Etlin  (MIT)
'Vague Desire: The Sorites and the Money Pump'

Emily Fletcher  (U. of Toronto)
'Normative Predicates and Vagueness'

Michael Freund  (ISHA Université Paris IV)  *alternate
'Membership for Constructible Concepts'

Caspar Hare  (MIT)
'Vagueness and Rationality'

Scott Fults  (U. of Maryland, College Park)
'Vagueness, Semantic Representation and Verification'

Daniel Lassiter  (NYU)
'An Interpretive Theory of Vagueness'

Jean-Roch Lauper  (U. of Fribourg)
'Vagueness and Measurement. A new path to explore?'

Dan López de Sa  (LOGOS/Arché)
'Indeterminate Reference'

Ofra Magidor  (Balliol College, Oxford),  joint w/ Stephen Kearns (FSU)
'Epistemicism about Vagueness and Meta-linguistic Safety'

Sebastiano Moruzzi  (U. of Bologna/Arché)
'Borderline Cases and Permissibility'

Rick Nouwen  (OTS, Utrecht University)
'Graded Predication by Evaluation'

Elisa Paganini  (Università degli Studi di Milano)
'Vagueness and Omniscience'

Galit Sassoon  (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
'Vagueness Pertaining to Numerical Degree Constructions'

Osamu Sawada  (U. of Chicago)  *alternate
'Vagueness and Adverbial Polarity Items'

Phil Serchuk  (U. of Toronto),  joint w/ Ian Hargreaves (U. of Calgary) & Richard Zach (U. of Calgary)
'Vagueness, Logic and Use: Some Experimental Results'

Yael Sharvit  (UConn),  joint w/ Natasha Fitzgibbons & Jon Gajewski (UConn)
'Plural Superlatives, Distributivity, and Context-Dependency'

Elia Zardini  (Arché, St. Andrews)
'A Model of Tolerance'

John Zeimbekis  (U. of Grenoble)
'Soritic Series and Phenomenal Types'


Related event



Stephen Schiffer (NYU), presents 'Vagueness, Concepts, and Properties: a Non-Semantic and Non-Psychological Account of Vagueness', as part of a series of invited lectures in the ENS Dept. of Philosophy. time: April 10, 10h30-12h30; place: salle des Résistants (ENS).