Worldly Indeterminacy: A Rough Guide

This paper defends the idea that there might be vagueness or indeterminacy in the world itself---as opposed to merely in our representations of the world---against the charges of incoherence and unintelligibility. First we consider the idea that the world might contain vague PROPERTIES AND RELATIONS; we show that this idea is already implied by certain well-understood views concerning the semantics of vague predicates (most notably the fuzzy view). Next we consider the idea that the world might contain vague OBJECTS; we argue that an object is indeterminate in a certain respect (colour, size, etc.) just in case it is a borderline case of a maximally specific colour (size, etc.) property. Finally we consider the idea that the WORLD AS A WHOLE might be indeterminate; we argue that the world is indeterminate just in case it lacks a determinate division into determinate objects.