ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author deals with the paradox for ‘looks red’ and shows how her solution works for ‘is red’ and other vague predicates generally. The trouble with vague or tolerant predicates, of course, is that they generate sorites paradoxes. The author considers a series of fifty colored patches, each just noticeably different in color from the next, ordered so as to progress from a clear case of red to a clear case of orange. The vagueness of these predicates goes hand in hand with what Crispin Wright has aptly called their “tolerance”: they tolerate marginal changes in the parameters decisive of their application. The puzzle for ‘heap’ is solved by appeal to the fluid categories heap and non-heap, the puzzle for ‘person’ by appeal to person and non-person. Reflection on ‘person’ may raise a related worry that the brute psychological variability featured in the author's account undercuts the rationality of dispute over the correct application of vague words.
