Often the factors that determine a phenomenon don't determine it
uniquely. Sometimes this changes the phenomenon itself.
Take language. Plausibly, the meanings of our words are somehow determined by
patterns of use, but these patterns aren't specific enough to fix,
say, a unique extension or intension for our language. There is a
range of precise meaning assignments all of which fit our use equally
well. One might leave it at that and say that it is indeterminate
which of these precise languages we speak. But this misses
something. It misses the fact that we don't speak a precise
language. For example, in a precise language, "Mount Everest has sharp boundaries"
would be true, but in English it is false. The logic of a precise
language would (arguably) be classical, but the logic of English is
not.
Until recently, I thought that there are no quantifiers in ordinary discourse for which a substitutional interpretation is adequate, or helpful. I still think this is true for almost all cases, including quantification over fictional and intentional objects. But here are two cases where a substitutional interpretation looks ok.
First. The world can be completely described in precise vocabulary. There are no vague objects with irreducibly vague bounderies or heights or colours. Rather, for many terms, like "Mount Everest", it is indeterminate exactly which perfectly precise object they denote. But it is very natural to say that Mount Everest has
vague boundaries. Instead of denying it, I'm inclined to offer some kind of reinterpretation, such as: there are different objects slightly differing in their boundaries between which "Mount Everest" is indeterminate; or: for no precise boundaries b is it true that Mount Everest has boundaries b; or: for some precise boundaries b is it indeterminate whether Mount Everest has boundaries b. All these are true, and all of them could be meant by "Mount Everest has vague boundaries".
I need to tidy up this part of my belief space. Once I complained that literal trans-world identity (as opposed to trans-world identity based on similarity) is implausible because it entails that there can be no vagueness about a thing's essential properties (for determinate properties): either the thing has the property at all worlds or not. On the other hand, I also believe that there is no big difference between individuating things as worldbound and individuating them as trans-world fusions of worldbound counterparts. Unfortunately, these two views can't both be correct.
According to the epistemic account of vagueness, there aren't really any vague statements: When we're uncertain whether to call somebody bald that's not because he is a borderline case of baldness. There are no borderline cases. The border between being bald and not being bald is perfectly precise. It's only that we don't quite know were it runs.
Not many people believe in this account. That's surprising, because many people do believe that there are rigid designators -- terms denoting the same thing in every possible world --, and this seems to imply something that looks to me just like (an application of) the epistemic account of vagueness.
Everything is identical to itself, and nothing is identical to
anything except itself. No two things are ever identical. If A and B
are identical then "they" are one, not two.
These are platitudes about identity, or rather about a
somewhat technical use of "identity" common in mathematics and
philosophy.
No doubt there are other uses. For instance, "identity" and its
cognates are often used to express sameness of kind, as in "this
record is the same Jones bought last week". Sometimes, "identity" is
used as a singular term for a thing's characteristc properties or
individual essence, as in "the festival has lost its identity". The conceptual platitudes
above do not apply to these other uses.
Assume some sentence "Fa" is neither determinately true nor
determinately false. This might be due to the fact that
1) It is somewhat indeterminate exactly which object "a" denotes.
or
2) It is somewhat indeterminate exactly which property or condition "F"
expresses.
If neither (1) nor (2), then "a" determinately denotes a certain object A
and "F" determinately expresses a certain condition F. So whence the
indeterminacy? Maybe