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Logic and Logical Philosophy

Either epistemicism or logic
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Either epistemicism or logic

Authors

  • Piotr Łukowski University of Łódź

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12775/LLP.2008.019

Keywords

vagueness, sorites, tolerant predicate, epistemicism, petitio principi, logical falacies

Abstract

Epistemicism seems to be the most dominating approach to vagueness in the recent twenty years. In the logical and philosophical tradition, e.g. Peirce, vagueness does not depend on human knowledge. Epistemicists deny this fact and contend that vagueness is merely the result of our imperfect mind, our dearth of knowledge, sort of phantom, finally, that it simply does not exist. In my opinion, such a stance not only excludes vagueness comprehended in terms of human knowledge, but which is worse, stems from spurious logical arguments. The part of arguments called Sorensen’s Arguments or even Proofs were the subject of my analysis in the book Paradoksy (2006; in Polish) and in the paper “Epistemicism and Roy Sorensen Arguments” published in the Bulletin of the Section of Logic (2007). Here I shall only briefly refer to these works and focus mainly on the arguments launched by Tymothy Williamson. One of them is to uncover why we are not able to recognize the alleged sharp boundary between positive and negative extensions of any vague predicates. Williamson’s reasoning is based on his margin for error principle. Another argumentation of Williamson aims at the refutation of the principle I know that I know. It should be emphasized that all the aforementioned arguments are fundamental for epistemicism and all of them are fallacious because of either formal or false-premise fallacy. There is the circumstance that we cannot deem epistemicism logical. Finally, we show that within the epistemic frame the following thesis is valid: if what epistemicism states is the case, then what epistemicism states is not the case. This immediately implies (by ‘(p → ¬p) → ¬p’) that it is not the case what epistemicism states. So, either epistemicism or logic.

Author Biography

Piotr Łukowski, University of Łódź

Department of Logic and Methodology of Sciences

References

Łukowski, P., Paradoksy, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź, 2006.

Łukowski, P., “Epistemicism and Roy Sorensen arguments”, Bulletin of the Section of Logic 36, 3/4 (2007), 209–219.

Sorensen, R.A., “An argument for the vagueness of “Vague””, Analysis 27 (1985), 134–137.

Sorensen, R.A., Blindspots, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1988.

Sorensen, R.A., “Vagueness implies cognitivism”, The American Philosophical Quarterly, 27, 1 (1990), 1–14. URL = www.dartmouth.edu/~rasoren/papers/vaguenessimpliescog.pdf.

Sorensen, R.A., “A Thousand Clones, symposium: vagueness and sharp boundaries”, Mind 103, 409 (1994), 47–54.

Sorensen, R.A., “Sharp boundaries for blobs”, Philosophical Studies 91 (1998), 275–295.

Sorensen, R.A., “Vagueness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2003 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). URL = plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2003/entries/vagueness.

Williamson, T., “Inexact knowledge”, Mind 101 (1992), 217–242.

Williamson, T., “Vagueness and ignorance”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 66 (1992), 163–177.

Williamson, T., Vagueness, Routledge, London and New York, 1994.

Logic and Logical Philosophy

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Published

2009-03-15

How to Cite

1.
ŁUKOWSKI, Piotr. Either epistemicism or logic. Logic and Logical Philosophy. Online. 15 March 2009. Vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 329-351. [Accessed 7 July 2025]. DOI 10.12775/LLP.2008.019.
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Vol. 17 No. 4 (2008)

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