ABSTRACT
The impression to the contrary derives, in Mark Sainsbury’s view, from the lingering influence of what he styles the ‘classical conception’ of vagueness. The difficulty is then to say something coherent about how the tripartite division can itself be blurred at the edges–so that a merely tripartite distinction is seemingly not enough. It is widely assumed not merely that the Sorites afflicts vague expressions only, but that it is a paradox of vagueness–that vagueness is what gives rise to it. Since almost all expressions in typical natural languages are vague, that belief brings one uncomfortably close to the thought, advocated by such philosophers as Peter Unger, that natural languages, and the conceptual systems which they embody, are typically incoherent. A boundaryless predicate draws no boundary between its positive and negative cases, between its positive cases and its borderline cases, between its positive cases and those which are borderline cases of borderline cases.
