Vagueness and Granular Partitions

This paper presents an application of the theory of granular partitions proposed in (Smith and Brogaard, to appear), (Smith and Bittner 2001) to the phenomenon of vagueness. We understand vagueness as a semantic property of names and predicates. This is in contrast to those views which hold that there are intrinsically vague objects or attributes in reality and thus conceive vagueness in a de re fashion. All entities are crisp, on de dicto view here defended, but there are, for each vague name, multiple portions of reality that are equally good candidates for being its referent, and, for each vague predicate, multiple classes of objects that are equally good candidates for being its extension. We show that the theory of granular partitions provides a general framework within which we can understand the relation between terms and concepts on the one hand and their multiple referents or extensions on the other, and we show how it might be possible to formulate within this framework a solution to the Sorites paradox.