Vagueness and Contradiction [Hardcover]

Roy Sorenson offers a unique exploration of an ancient problem: vagueness. Did Buddha become a fat man in one second? Is there a tallest short giraffe? According to Sorenson's epistemicist approach, the answers are yes! Although vagueness abounds in the way the world is divided, Sorenson argues that the divisions are sharp; yet we often do not know where they are. Written in Sorenson'e usual inventive and amusing style, this book offers original insight on language and logic, the way world is, and our understanding of it.

Introduction
1. Absolute Borderline Cases
2. Intellectual Embarrassment without Vagueness
3. Forced Analytical Errors
4. Inconsistent Machines
5. Sainsbury's Spectra and the Penrose Triangle
6. Does Apriority Agglomerate?
7. Analytic Sorites and the Cheshire Cat
8. Believing the Impossible
9. Reason Demands Belief in Infinitely Many Contradictions
10. The Viral Theory of Inconsistency
11. Truthmaker Gaps
References, Index

Sorensen's book is well worth reading. His version of epistemicism is a more robust version than Williamson's, and his arguments for being rationally compelled towards inconsistency are important and interesting in themselves... Anyone working in the philosophy of language will benefit from reading the book; and anyone working on the paradoxes must read the book. I strongly recommend the book as a central text for classes in the philosophy of language (at either the undergraduate or graduate level). --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews