Allow me to introduce my cat, Pinky.
The metaphysical question at hand is this: Is the semi-detached hair a part of Pinky or not?
Any way you slice it, there’s some vagueness here. The more usual thought in philosophy is that the world is perfectly unvague — the world is utterly precise (the loose hair either does or does not belong to Pinky), everything just is whatever it is, and whatever vagueness humans encounter is simply a matter of human imprecision. Either our knowledge-generating faculties or our language faculties (or both, if there’s a difference), are imperfect, and incapable of discovering/representing the perfection of the world.
But there’s another possibility: The world itself is a vague place, and, even if we had perfect knowledge-generating faculties, we’d still struggle with issues of vagueness, because those issues are embedded in the fabric of nature.
So, let’s agree that there is indeed some vagueness at play, and ask: Is this vagueness actually in the world, or is it in our language/thoughts about an unvague world?
Unvague Cats; Vague Language/Thought
If the vagueness is just in our language, and not in the world, then there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not Pinky has that loose hair as a part of itself. If Pinky does indeed own that hair, then “Pinky” picks out the cat-like mass along with the loose hair.
As Michael Morreau sees it, this actually generates a metaphysical problem:
If vagueness is all a matter of representation, there is no vague cat. There are just the many precise cat candidates that differ around the edges by the odd whisker or hair. Since there is a cat,… and since orthodoxy leaves nothing else for her to be, one of these cat candidates must then be a cat. But if any is a cat, then also the next one must be a cat; so small are the differences between them. So all the cat candidates must be cats. The levelheaded idea that vagueness is a matter of representation seems to entail that wherever there is a cat, there are a thousand and one of them, all prowling about in lockstep or curled up together on the mat. That is absurd. Cats and other ordinary things sometimes come and go one at a time.
If the world is not vague, then both of these are perfectly unvague cat objects, and if one is a cat then there’s every reason to say that they both are. In fact there are thousands (billions? trillions?) of cats here, all walking around in one lump. So on the world-is-not-vague side, we have the repercussion of “Pinky” picking out one specific cat out of many taking up mostly the same space; Winky, Glinky, Zinky, Inky, Kinky, etc.
Vague Cats
So, let’s try the world-is-vague approach instead. On the world-is-vague side, there’s just one cat, but that cat is itself vague. There’s no metaphysical fact of the matter as to whether or not that loose hair counts as a part of Pinky. But that loose hair doesn’t suddenly create two unvague cats: Pinky and Blinky.
What would be problematic about a vague world like this?
Perhaps the biggest problem would be representational. If Pinky is a vague cat, then we have no chance of ever compiling the perfect representation of him. (The perfect representation would include a representation of that loose hair, if it’s a part of Pinky; and it would not include that hair if it’s not a part of Pinky. But if it’s vaguely attached to Pinky, our representations will fail in one direction or the other.) Those prone to thinking that representations should strive for perfection will be most unhappy with this state of affairs.
A related problem crops up in the philosophy of language. Language philosophers like to think that names (like “Pinky”) pick out unique, unvague objects (like Pinky). But if Pinky is himself vague, then the name “Pinky” can’t unambiguously refer to Pinky. This is particularly problematic for anyone harboring vestiges of a description theory — if that loose hair may or may not belong to Pinky, then we have a problem coming up with a complete description, wherein that hair plays a part (or not).
What would be the payoff for accepting vague cats into our ontologies? The non-proliferation of tightly bound brother cats to Pinky, for one thing. (There is no need, if Pinky is vague, to posit the existence of Blinky, Winky, Glinky, et al, existing in nearly the same space as Pinky.)
It also buys us a platform to talk intelligibly about such metaphysical conundrums as the Sorites paradox. If, similar to cats, heaps are vague, as opposed to just our knowledge of heaps being vague, we can escape some of the problems inherent with talking about heaps changing over time.
We’ll be talking about the Sorites paradox in a future post.
For now, take some comfort in the idea that your knowledge of the world isn’t inherently imperfect. The world itself is inherently imperfect.
Of course, knowing that might make you uncomfortable again. Sorry.
References
Morreau, Michael. “What Vague Objects Are Like,” Journal of Philosophy 99, 2002.