Sorites Paradox: a semantic reflection about vagueness

We use vague words and expressions without perceiving or causing strangeness in our interlocutors in everyday language. They are vague predicates, in which the property of being vague may not be so explicit. These predicates are uncertain cases or cases with the semantic boundary make difficult to c...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Behle, Nanashara Fagundes
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:Brasil
Institución:Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS)
Repositorio:letrônica
Idioma:portugués
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br:article/32479
Acceso en línea:https://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/letronica/article/view/32479
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Sorites. Vagueness. Semantics.
Sorites. Vagueza. Semântica.
Descripción
Sumario:We use vague words and expressions without perceiving or causing strangeness in our interlocutors in everyday language. They are vague predicates, in which the property of being vague may not be so explicit. These predicates are uncertain cases or cases with the semantic boundary make difficult to clarify the extension of the predicate itself. Vagueness is assessed in both logic and linguistics studies. In logic, this type of predicate enables the development of the so-called Sorites paradox, whose argument can be constructed by chaining the premises or by mathematical induction. We use in this paper a philosophical study of vagueness and Sorites paradox (PETRILLO, 2005) and also a linguistic study, in semantics based on truth conditions (CHIERCHIA; MCCONNELL-GINET, 1990), to reflect about the way vagueness is treated in language.