Vagueness
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Vagueness
In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contrast, the word "prime" is not vague since every number is definitively either prime or not. Vagueness is commonly diagnosed by a predicate's ability to give rise to the Sorites paradox. Vagueness is separate from ambiguity, in which an expression has multiple denotations. For instance the word "bank" is ambiguous since it can refer either to a river bank or to a financial institution, but there are no borderline cases between both interpretations. Vagueness is a major topic of research in philosophical logic, where it serves as a potential challenge to classical logic. Work in formal semantics has sought to provide a compositional semantics for vague expressions in natural language. Work in philosophy of language has addressed implications of vagueness for th ...
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Paradox Of The Heap
The sorites paradox (; sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that results from vagueness, vague Predicate (grammar), predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap to become a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains: is it still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap? The original formulation and variations Paradox of the heap The word ''sorites'' ('' grc-gre, wiktionary:σωρείτης, σωρείτης'') derives from the Greek word for 'heap' ('' grc-gre, wiktionary:σωρός, σωρός''). The paradox is so named because of its original characterization, attributed to Eubulides, Eubulides of Miletus. The paradox is as follows: consider a wikt:heap, heap of sand from which grains are removed individually. One might construct the ...
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Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (; sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that results from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap to become a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains: is it still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap? The original formulation and variations Paradox of the heap The word ''sorites'' ('' grc-gre, σωρείτης'') derives from the Greek word for 'heap' ('' grc-gre, σωρός''). The paradox is so named because of its original characterization, attributed to Eubulides of Miletus. The paradox is as follows: consider a heap of sand from which grains are removed individually. One might construct the argument, using premises, as follows: :'' grains of sand is a heap of sand'' (Premise 1) :''A heap of ...
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Sorites Paradox
The sorites paradox (; sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that results from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a single grain does not cause a heap to become a non-heap, the paradox is to consider what happens when the process is repeated enough times that only one grain remains: is it still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap? The original formulation and variations Paradox of the heap The word ''sorites'' ('' grc-gre, σωρείτης'') derives from the Greek word for 'heap' ('' grc-gre, σωρός''). The paradox is so named because of its original characterization, attributed to Eubulides of Miletus. The paradox is as follows: consider a heap of sand from which grains are removed individually. One might construct the argument, using premises, as follows: :'' grains of sand is a heap of sand'' (Premise 1) :''A heap of ...
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Dorothy Edgington
Dorothy Margaret Doig Edgington FBA (née Milne, born 29 April 1941) is a philosopher active in metaphysics and philosophical logic. She is particularly known for her work on the logic of conditionals and vagueness. Life and education Dorothy Edgington was born on 29 April 1941 to Edward Milne and his wife Rhoda née Blair. She attended St Leonards School before going to St Hilda's College, Oxford to read PPE. She obtained her BA in 1964, followed in 1967 by a BPhil at Nuffield College, Oxford. Career Most of Edgington's career was spent at Birkbeck College. Her first academic post in 1968, was as Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck and she remained there until 1996. From 1996 until 2001 she was appointed Fellow of University College, Oxford. This was followed by a professorship at Birkbeck from 2001–03. She was then Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford from 2003 until 2006. She is now Emeritus Professor, and Fellow of Magdalen College, ...
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Philosophy Of Language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought. Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein ('' Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus''), the Vienna Circle, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine. In continental philosophy, language is not studied as a separate discipline. Rather, it is an inextricable part of many other areas of thought, such as phenomenology, structural semiotics, language of mathematics, hermeneutics, existentialism, deconstruction and critical theory. History Ancient philosophy In the West, inquiry into language stretches back to the 5th century BC with Socrates, Plato, Aristotl ...
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Timothy Williamson
Timothy Williamson (born 1955) is a British philosopher whose main research interests are in philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics. He is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford, and fellow of New College, Oxford. Education and career Born on 6 August 1955, Williamson's education began at Leighton Park School and continued at Henley Grammar School (now the Henley College). He then went to Balliol College, Oxford University. He graduated in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class honours in mathematics and philosophy, and in 1980 with a doctorate in philosophy (DPhil) for a thesis entitled ''The Concept of Approximation to the Truth''. Prior to taking up the Wykeham Professorship in 2000, Williamson was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh (1995–2000); fellow and lecturer in philosophy at University College, Oxford (1988–1994); and lecturer in philosophy at Trinity College, ...
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Supervaluationism
In philosophical logic, supervaluationism is a semantics for dealing with irreferential singular terms and vagueness. It allows one to apply the tautologies of propositional logic in cases where truth values are undefined. According to supervaluationism, a proposition can have a definite truth value even when its components do not. The proposition "Pegasus likes licorice", for example, is often interpreted as having no truth-value given the assumption that the name "Pegasus" fails to refer. If indeed reference fails for "Pegasus", then it seems as though there is nothing that can justify an assignment of a truth-value to any apparent assertion in which the term "Pegasus" occurs. The statement "Pegasus likes licorice or Pegasus doesn't like licorice", however, is an instance of the valid schema p \vee \neg p ("''p or not-p''"), so, according to supervaluationism, it should be true regardless of whether or not its disjuncts have a truth value; that is, it should be true in all int ...
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Philosophical Logic
Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophical logic in a wider sense as the study of the scope and nature of logic in general. In this sense, philosophical logic can be seen as identical to the philosophy of logic, which includes additional topics like how to define logic or a discussion of the fundamental concepts of logic. The current article treats philosophical logic in the narrow sense, in which it forms one field of inquiry within the philosophy of logic. An important issue for philosophical logic is the question of how to classify the great variety of non-classical logical systems, many of which are of rather recent origin. One form of classification often found in the literature is to distinguish between extended logics and deviant logics. Logic itself can be defined as the s ...
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Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes i ...
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Journal Of Philosophical Logic
The ''Journal of Philosophical Logic'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of logic. It was established in 1972 and is published by Springer Science+Business Media. The editors-in-chief are Rosalie Iemhoff (Utrecht University), Reinhard Muskens (University of Amsterdam), and Kai Wehmeier (University of California, Irvine). Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in: * Arts and Humanities Citation Index *Current Contents/Arts & Humanities * EBSCO databases *International Bibliography of Periodical Literature * Linguistic Bibliography/Bibliographie Linguistique *Modern Language Association Database *Philosopher's Index * ProQuest databases *Scopus *Zentralblatt MATH zbMATH Open, formerly Zentralblatt MATH, is a major reviewing service providing reviews and abstracts for articles in pure and applied mathematics, produced by the Berlin office of FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastruct ... References ...
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Truth-value
In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (''true'' or '' false''). Computing In some programming languages, any expression can be evaluated in a context that expects a Boolean data type. Typically (though this varies by programming language) expressions like the number zero, the empty string, empty lists, and null evaluate to false, and strings with content (like "abc"), other numbers, and objects evaluate to true. Sometimes these classes of expressions are called "truthy" and "falsy" / "false". Classical logic In classical logic, with its intended semantics, the truth values are ''true'' (denoted by ''1'' or the verum ⊤), and '' untrue'' or '' false'' (denoted by ''0'' or the falsum ⊥); that is, classical logic is a two-valued logic. This set of two values is also called the Boolean domain. Corresponding semantics of log ...
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Patrick Stewart
Sir Patrick Stewart (born 13 July 1940) is an English actor who has a career spanning seven decades in various stage productions, television, film and video games. He has been nominated for Olivier, Tony, Golden Globe, Emmy, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 16 December 1996. In 2010, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to drama. In 1966, Stewart became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stewart made his Broadway theatre debut in 1971 in a production of '' A Midsummer Night's Dream''. In 1979, he received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance in '' Antony and Cleopatra'' in the West End. His first television role was in the ITV series ''Coronation Street'' in 1967. His first major screen roles were in BBC-broadcast television productions ''Fall of Eagles'' (1974), ''I, Claudius'' (1976), and ''Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'' (1979). In 2008 he played King Clau ...
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