THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VAGUENESS

Contemporary philosophy is indebted to Peter Unger for reviving the Sorites paradox. Unger argues that few, if any, of the things in our standard ontology really exist. Unfortunately, his arguments have not been taken seriously enough. I suspect that this is because he has been given too extreme an interpretation by some and too trivial an interpretation by others. In proclaiming himself a nihilist, he gives the impression that he believes that nothing exists – all of reality comes to nothing. It would seem that anyone who holds this position is too divorced from perception and reason to be taken seriously. But the Sorites paradox need not commit anyone to this extreme a nihilism. Even Unger is prepared to admit that something exists, but he thinks that in order to find out what that something is, and in order to be able to talk about that which exists in any detail, we must go through a fundamental conceptual change. He asserts that he is not prepared to offer any workable alternative conceptualization, but he does not claim that there could not be one.

On the other hand, Sorites arguments can instead be understood as being relevant only to language and not to reality. It may be admitted that the words ‘heap’ and ‘stone’ and ‘person’ do not apply to anything because of their vagueness. Yet this fact should not lead us to doubt the existence of the things that we had thought we could refer to with the words ‘heap’, ‘stone’, and ‘person’.