Barnes notes: on chasing one's tail

My goal is to give an account of vague objects without taking a stand on every unresolved question in the vagueness literature. (Because my goal is to give an account of vague objects, and it is beyond the scope of any single project to solve, or take a stand on, every unresolved question in the vagueness literature.)

Barnes's definition of ontic vagueness is what she calls ``negative": it holds simply that ontic vagueness is vagueness which is neither epistemic nor semantic.

This seems unhelpful, but how else to cash out the notion that vagueness is metaphysical? Barnes argues convincingly that she is in a sort of bind.

Arguing for vague objects without a reductive theory of vagueness looks like self-defeating mystery-mongering, especially because we have no clear prior ordinary-language notion of a vague object.

``These [canonical] explanations of vagueness are reductive--they explain vagueness in terms of something more familiar. It's unclear whether the ontic theorist can provide an analogous explanation. A negative definition...certainly doesn't do the job.

But it's far from obvious that the ontic theorist should be expected to provide such explanations. We need a definition of ontic vagueness that's general enough to frame debate...Semantic and epistemic theories can do this reductively. But this is largely because these theories have their reductive ambitions built into them: quite naturally. semantic theories reduce to facts about truth and epistemic theories reduce to facts about knowledge. But contrast, the metaphysician has no obvious reductive basis...More importantly, in contrast to rival theories of vagueness it's plausible that ontic vagueness should be taken as a metaphysical primitive--just as some theories maintain that tense or modality are primitive." (Barnes)

Arguing for vague objects with a reductive theory of vagueness is pointless and misleading. This is what I called the ``oblique" reading of the metaphysicalist thesis:

"The best sense that the canonical view can make of the metaphysicalist's position is an oblique reading of her thesis, according to which a ``vague object'' is one which is especially apt or prone to being given a vague name (see for example McGee 1998, ftnote 3). There is something about Rachel Alexandra---namely, her speed---which explains why photographs of her are blurry. But she is not, except in an unhelpfully obscure sense, any kind of `blurry object.'"

This is less than ambitious.

What's needed is to chart the ground between a substantive theory of vagueness and a ``minimal theory" which is acceptable to all parties. Even candidates for minimal theories that claim to be more inclusive than their rivals acknowledge that they rule out metaphysical vagueness out of hand (see esp. Weatherson, VAI.) Can a ``substantive" theory be nonreductionist? Surely Lewis shows the way!...

Forbes writes in his review of PL that

``There is a significant problem which might be called `the problem of the analysis of modality', but it seems not to be one which is addressed in the present dispute; this is the problem of what makes something possible or necessary. If one asks, `What makes it necessary that there are no married bachelors?', Lewis's answer, `Because in no world is there a married bachelor', is rather unilluminating...If the latter [explanation] should be in agreement with the definition [of the word ``bachelor"], that would seem to be a kind of accident. So if what I would regard as being the real problem about the analysis of modality--what grounds the truth of a true modal statement?--is being addressed at all, it seems to me not to be well-addressed."

Lycan is harsher, arguing that when Lewis accuses ersatzisms of relying on notions of primitive modality, he is hoisted by his own petard.

``The question of primitive modality is tricky. I know of no actualist who has been able to dispense with it (my own modal primitive is `compatible' as applied to pairs of properties.) But, if every actualist is stuck with some modal primitive, so, I would say, is Lewis. The flesh-and-bloodiness of his worlds might be thought to relieve him of the need for the sort of abstraction indulged in by actualists, and so it does; but Lewis mobilizes a modal primitive nonetheless. It is `world.' `World' for him has to mean `possible world' since the very flesh-and-bloodiness aforementioned prevents him from admitting impossibilia. Some sets of sentences describe `worlds' and so do not; but Lewis cannot make that distinction in any definite way without dragging in some modal primitive or other."