ABSTRACT
Multi-valued approaches, including three-valued and degree theories, understand the blurred boundaries of vague words in terms of the assignment of one or more truth-values intermediate between true and false. Degree theories, which recognize infinitely many truth-values, hold that a borderline red hue satisfies ‘red’ to some degree intermediate between 0 and 1—say, 0.4 or 0.5. Degree theorists have responded to the latter criticism by casting degrees of truth as mere idealizations, rather than representations, of the values of sentences containing vague terms. But then it is unclear what the degree theory can tell us about vagueness as a real (“non-ideal”) feature of ordinary speech. The multi-range theorist hypothesizes that this variability in the competent application of a vague term provides evidence of the term’s semantic structure. Specifically, the multiple competent ways of applying a vague predicate (relative to a given context) are reflected in its semantics in the form of multiple ranges of application.
