05850285

a

05850285 Lassiter, Daniel Vagueness as probabilistic linguistic knowledge. Nouwen, Rick (ed.) et al., Vagueness in communication. International workshop, ViC 2009, held as part of ESSLLI 2009, Bordeaux, France, July 20--24, 2009. Revised selected papers. Berlin: Springer (ISBN 978-3-642-18445-1/pbk). Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6517. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, 127-150 (2011). 2011 Berlin: Springer EN vagueness probability lexical representation higher-order vagueness

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-18446-8_8

Summary: Consideration of the metalinguistic effects of utterances involving vague terms has led Barker [1] to treat vagueness using a modified Stalnakerian model of assertion. I present a sorites-like puzzle for factual beliefs in the standard Stalnakerian model [28] and show that it can be resolved by enriching the model to make use of probabilistic belief spaces. An analogous problem arises for metalinguistic information in Barker's model, and I suggest that a similar enrichment is needed here as well. The result is a probabilistic theory of linguistic representation that retains a classical metalanguage but avoids the undesirable divorce between meaning and use inherent in the epistemic theory [34]. I also show that the probabilistic approach provides a plausible account of the sorites paradox and higher-order vagueness and that it fares well empirically and conceptually in comparison to leading competitors.