Big Ideas Event: What Can We Do About Vagueness?
28 May 2008 – 7:56 am by The Big Ideas TeamIf we study logic, we begin by learning that truth is a black or white matter. In particular we know that either a given claim is true or it isn’t; it can’t be both and it can’t be neither.
Logic is often called the “laws of thought” and we hope that it captures the essential nature of rational deduction. But in real life this kind of thing often seems simplistic and vagueness — a seemingly unavoidable uncertainty about the boundaries of what’s true — creeps in.
At what stage of development, for example, does it become morally wrong to abort a foetus? Unless you consider abortion wrong (or permissible) in all cases it’s hard to find a sharp dividing line, as British MPs recently discovered.
There are many more examples. How much evidence gives us enough grounds to believe a scientific law? How much money do you need to avoid poverty? If it’s safe to drive at 30mph on a particular road, why not at 31? When does a stream become a river? Where precisely is the border of a land-locked country, or the edge of a cloud? At what moment last night did you become drunk? Some of these examples matter a great deal and need practical answers; others are just puzzling.
Big Ideas co-organiser Rich Cochrane will briefly introduce the standard modern account of the problem of vagueness, which aims to capture what’s difficult about all the examples above and plenty of others. We’ll spend the evening working out whether we can do anything about vagueness, if so then what and if not then how we can live with it and whether the very idea of rationality itself comes into question as a result.
As well as addressing a key idea in everyday life, this session offers the rare opportunity of engaging with an open question in current philosophical research to which there’s no widely-accepted answer. You won’t need any prior knowledge about logic, philosophy, maths or anything else to take part.
Where: The upstairs rooms of the Wheatsheaf pub, 5 mins from Tottenham Court Road tube in central London.
When: Monday 16 June 2008, doors open 7:30pm and we’ll start at 8.
The image for this event is based on one by notsogoodphotography.