Vagueness and Degrees of Truth

Vagueness and Degrees of Truth develops and defends a new position on vagueness. To make the book accessible to non-specialists, Nicholas Smith includes both an introduction to the relevant philosophical literature, and a gentle but thorough introduction to the required logical tools and concepts.

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Nicholas J. J. Smith argues that an adequate account of vagueness must involve degrees of truth. The basic idea of degrees of truth is that while some sentences are true and some are false, others possess intermediate truth values: they are truer than the false sentences, but not as true as the true ones. This idea is immediately appealing in the context of vagueness--yet it has fallen on hard times in the philosophical literature, with existing degree-theoretic treatments of vagueness facing apparently insuperable objections. Smith seeks to turn the tide in favour of a degree-theoretic treatment of vagueness, by motivating and defending the basic idea that truth can come in degrees. He argues that no theory of vagueness that does not countenance degrees of truth can be correct, and develops a new degree-theoretic treatment of vagueness--fuzzy plurivaluationism--that solves the problems plaguing earlier degree theories.