On the Characterization of Borderline Cases

Abstract

The chapter takes Schiffer’s central contribution to the study of vagueness to be his treatment of the characterization problem: saying what being a borderline case of a concept expressed by a vague expression consists in. While broadly sympathetic to Schiffer’s approach, the paper takes issue with two aspects of his theory. Schiffer endorses verdict exclusion: the doctrine that a “polar verdict” about a borderline case cannot be an expression of knowledge. This comes at too high a cost: among other things, it conflicts with the entitlement intuition – the intuition that it there will be no point in a sorites sequence at which it is mandatory to return neither of the polar verdicts. The author argues for agnosticism about verdict exclusion (“liberalism”). He also rejects Schiffer’s idea that a special form of belief – vagueness-related partial belief – plays an essential role in characterizing the possession conditions for vague concepts.