Vagueness in Context

Stewart Shapiro''s ambition in Vagueness in Context is to develop a comprehensive account of the meaning function and logic of vague terms in an idealized version of a natural language like English. It is a commonplace that the extensions of vague terms vary according to their context: a person can be tall with respect to male accountants and not tall (even short) with respect to professional basketball players. The key feature of Shapiro''s account is that the extensions of vague terms also vary in the course of conversations and that in some cases a competent speaker can go either way without sinning against the meaning of the words or the non-linguistic facts. As Shapiro sees it vagueness is a linguistic phenomenon due to the kinds of languages that humans speak; but vagueness is also due to the world we find ourselves in as we try to communicate features of it to each other.