VAGUENESS: TOLERANCE AND INCOHERENCE

Abstract

In this paper I will argue that to accept the principle of tolerance does not provide us with a good explanation of the phenomena of vagueness. I will be mainly concerned with the incoherentist strategy, which accepts tolerance and the consequent incoherence of vague predicates. In fact, incoherentism seems to be the most plausible way of accepting tolerance. Because of this, the rejection of incoherentism might be seen as a way to rescue the alternative theories from the objection that they do not respect the principle of tolerance as a literal truth about vagueness.Despite this, I will conclude that neither incoherentism nor the main alternatives satisfy the criteria for an ideal theory of vagueness.