In this paper, I analyze Kit Fine's account of the logic and semantics of vagueness. The overall aim of Fine's project is to develop an account of the logic and semantics of vague language which accommodates distinctive characteristics of vagueness including penumbral connections and higher-order vagueness. I begin Chapter 1 with a discussion of what vagueness is and is not. Next, I trace the development of supervaluationism, and summarize Kit Fine's supervaluationism and specification space approach to vagueness. I also discuss the more salient features of vagueness and I discuss them in relation to specification space models. I close with a look at the logic of vagueness and the logic of higher-order vagueness. Chapter 2 deals with penumbrae and penumbral connections. I analyze Fine's account of penumbral connections before arguing that his characterization of penumbral connections is too broad. Fine mistakenly identifies logically valid formulae and their instances as though they exhibited penumbral connections. After arguing that Fine's misidentification of penumbral connections results in an analysis of penumbral connections which is built for too wide a notion of penumbral connections, I suggest a more refined characterization of penumbral connections. I take up higher-order vagueness in Chapter 3. I begin with an overview of some characterizations of higher-order vagueness. Next, I revisit Fine's accounts of the D operator and higher-order vagueness. Lastly, I argue that higher-order vagueness is not a distinct feature of the vagueness of natural language, but, rather, it is an artifact resulting from the analysis of the vagueness of natural language. / Master of Arts

According to orthodoxy the study of the Soritical and semantical paradoxes belongs to the domain of the philosophy of language. To solve these paradoxes we need to investigate the nature of words like `heap' and `true.' In this thesis I criticise linguistic explanations of the state of ignorance we find ourselves in when confronted with indeterminate cases and develop a classical non-linguistic theory of indeterminacy in its stead. The view places the study of vagueness and indeterminacy squarely in epistemological terms, situating it within a theory of rational propositional attitudes. The resulting view is applied to a number of problems in the philosophy of vagueness and the semantic paradoxes.

According to the dominant approach in the theory of vagueness, the nature of the vagueness of an expression ‘F’ consists in its presenting borderline cases in an appropriately ordered series: objects which are neither definitely F nor definitely not F (where the notion of definiteness can be semantic, ontic, epistemic, psychological or primitive). In view of the various problems faced by theories of vagueness adopting the dominant approach, the thesis proposes to reconsider the naive theory of vagueness, according to which the nature of the vagueness of an expression consists in its not drawing boundaries between any neighbouring objects in an appropriately ordered series. It is argued that expressions and concepts which do present this feature play an essential role in our cognitive and practical life, allowing us to conceptualize—in a way which would otherwise be impossible—the typically coarse-grained distinctions we encounter in reality. Despite its strong initial plausibility and ability to explain many phenomena of vagueness, the naive theory is widely rejected because thought to be shown inconsistent by the sorites paradox. In reply, it is first argued that accounts of vagueness based on the dominant approach are themselves subject to higher-order sorites paradoxes. The paradox is then solved on behalf of the naive theory by rejecting the unrestricted transitivity of the consequence relation on a vague language; a family of logics apt for reasoning with vague expressions is proposed and studied (using models with partially ordered values). The characteristic philosophical and logical consequences of this novel solution are developed and defended in detail. In particular, it is shown how the analysis of what happens in the attempt of surveying a sorites series and deciding each case allows the naive theory to recover a "thin" notion of a borderline case.

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