Paul Égré: Vagueness, approximation and the Maxim of Quality

Lecture by Paul Egre (École normale supérieure, Paris), organized by the Department of Theoretical Philosophy

Vague expressions of natural language such as "many" or "tall" raise two challenges for a theory of meaning: one is to explain how speakers manage to successfully communicate with them; another is to explain the rationale for the existence of vague expressions as opposed to merely precise ones. On the latter problem, van Deemter (2009) and Frazee & Beaver (2010) have put forward the idea that vague communication is rational in situations in which the speaker is in a state of uncertainty. In this talk, I propose...(continue reading...)