Vagueness and Subjective Attitudes

Abstract

I explore the thesis that vague sentences akin to Jones is tall are attitude dependent. Af-ter I situate attitude dependence in the setting of semantic theories that Gottlob Frege influenced, I show how to formulate attitude dependence in terms of two contemporary approaches. While con-textualists claim that attitudes contribute to a sentence's content, relativists claim that they merely contribute to its truth or falsity. I turn to subjective attitude ascriptions akin to Charlie finds Sam amusing, and I investigate whether compositionality considerations with respect to subjective atti-tude ascriptions support an attitude-dependent approach to vagueness. From a compositionality perspective, felicity considerations about subjective attitude ascriptions with vague complements are a crucial motivation for the thesis that vague sentences are attitude dependent. Since some atti-tude ascriptions with vague complements are infelicitous, we should worry about the composition-al motivation for an attitude-dependent approach to vagueness.