ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a diagnosis which does not blame the Sorites paradox on the incoherence of certain vague predicates, and which allows it to be literally true that an object is green. It considers some other reactions to Michael Dummett's argument. Crispin Wright has suggested that one possible reaction to Dummett's argument is to say that the paradox establishes the following conditional conclusion: if philosophers regard understanding an expression as grasping certain kinds of rules which are to govern its use, then these vague observational predicates are incoherent. Mark Platts has also reacted to Dummett's argument. Platt says that "philosophers grasp the use of a vague predicate at least in part through a group of paradigm exemplars of them." It is sometimes suggested that the Sorites paradox can be neutralized by making proper use of the point that vague predicates are predicates of degree: it can be that one thing is red to a greater degree than another.
