Study Of Vagueness

Vagueness in meaning remarkably distinguishes itself from other forms of semantic indeterminacy by the fact that vague predicates apparently lack well-defined extensions and there are borderline cases where it is unclear whether or not the predicates apply. Not being able to be totally removed by context, vagueness is thus defined as one of the essential features of language, arousing wide and lasting concern from a great many linguists, philosophers, and logicians. In particular, how logic and semantics should approach the problem of vague expressions and vague concepts has all along been a major challenge in the study of vagueness.The first part of the project is historical.It traces the main theories of the logical approaches to vagueness in terms of their motives, contents and inadequacies. This part is also critical. It argues that in response to classical logic's inability to answer the challenges from vague phenomena, the many-valued logic, the degree theory, the fuzzy sets theory and supervaluationism, all in their attempt to extend the classical logical system, still can't serve as satisfactory theories for vagueness in spite of their practical values, for their resort to abstraction and symbols in the analysis of meaning, not taking the role played by context into account, will inevitably lead to circular argument within the logical system. On the other hand, the epistemic view of vagueness defends the validity of classical logic, proposing that statements still remain true or false even in the case of unclarity, and that vague phenomena emerge only as a result of our ignorance of where the boundary is. This notion, as demonstrated by this paper, is also not convincing.In view of what has been discussed above along with a deep insight into later Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, especially the way how he made a "grammatical investigation"into the nature of language, the thesis of the project is that the study of vagueness shoud be conducted more in the context of ordinary language instead of the mere realm of logic. In light of this, the paper makes a thorough investigation into the core problems concerning the theoretical study of vagueness in terms of its fundamental cause, nature, comprehension, and rule-following problem, concluding that language is not just a semiotic system, a reflection of the outside world, or a categorization of the objects, but rather it is interwined with our life in different ways fulfilling different functions. Therefore, instead of finding out the "essential-accidental" nature of concepts, we should refelct on how they are used. Only in the actual use under the setting of our forms of life can the vagueness in meaning be conveyed and comprehended.