God’s silence

Authors: Elisa Paganini

Publish Date: 2010/11/12

Volume: 157, Issue: 2, Pages: 287-298

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Abstract

Vagueness manifests itself among other things in our inability to find boundaries to the extension of vague predicates A semantic theory of vagueness plans to justify this inability in terms of the vague semantic rules governing language and thought According to a supporter of semantic theory the inability to find such a boundary is not dependent on epistemic limits and an omniscient being like God would be equally unable Williamson Vagueness 1994 argued that cooperative omniscient beings adequately instructed would find a precise boundary in a sorites series and that for this reason the semantic theory misses its target while Hawthorne Philosophical Studies 1221–25 2005 stood with the semantic theorists and argued that the linguistic behaviour of a cooperative omniscient being like God would clearly demonstrate that he does not find a precise boundary in the sorites series I argue that Hawthorne’s definition of God’s cooperative behaviour cannot be accepted and that contrary to what has been assumed by both Williamson and Hawthorne an omniscient being like God cannot be a cooperative evaluator of a semantic theory of vaguenessThe title was suggested to me by Paolo Casalegno who discussed this paper with me on many occasions I presented this work at different stages of its elaboration during the following events 2006 SIFA Conference in Cesano Maderno 2008 Conference ‘Vagueness and Language Use’ in Paris 2008 Seminar on analytic philosophy in Bologna 2008 Eidos Metaphysics Conference in Geneva 2008 ECAP6 in Krakow and 2009 Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society and the Mind Association in Norwich I would like to thank everyone who attended my presentations and raised objections or questionsLet us imagine a sorites series of women the first woman is 2 m tall the last is 1 m tall and there is a very small difference in height between each woman and the following one Let us suppose moreover that all the women have a similar physical constitution If any competent speaker were asked to individuate the last tall woman in the series she would not be able to Suppose now that a competent speaker is forced to answer the question ‘Is this woman tall’ for each woman in the series starting from the woman who is 2 m tall and going on through all the series she will answer ‘yes’ when confronted with the first woman but she will not go on answering ‘yes’ right to the end she will stop saying ‘yes’ somewhere Different people would stop saying ‘yes’ when confronted with different women in the series and if the same person is forced to do the experiment more than once she may stop saying ‘yes’ when confronted with a different woman each timeAccording to a semantic theory of vagueness the inability to find a specific boundary in the sorites series does not depend on any ignorance on the part of a competent speaker According to such a theory vagueness depends on the rules that govern language and thought and it is because of these rules that the extension of vague predicates is without boundaries The theory is committed to maintaining that even an omniscient being would be equally unable to individuate a specific boundary in any sorites seriesNow the philosophical issue under consideration is the following do the semantic theories of vagueness account for such a boundaryless extension of vague predicates In order to test a semantic theory the following strategy has been adopted suppose that as any semantic theory holds vagueness depends on the rules of language and thought only and not on any ignorance on the part of human beings consider then how an omniscient being would behave if asked for each object in a sorites series whether it possesses the vague property under consideration For example suppose that the omniscient being is confronted with the sorites series of women previously considered and the question ‘Is this woman tall’ for each woman in the series how would he behaveWilliamson 1994 pp 198–201 argued that if an omniscient being were cooperative and conservative in the use of his discretion he would stop answering ‘yes’ at a precise point in the sorites series and any other omniscient being who were equally cooperative and conservative in the use of his discretion would stop answering ‘yes’ when confronting the same woman So according to Williamson the semantic theory misses its target contrary to what is supposed there is a boundary in the sorites series known to any omniscient beingRecently Hawthorne 2005 argued in support of a semantic theory of vagueness ie supervaluationism The argument is intended to show that if a cooperative omniscient being ie God were confronted with the experiment considered above he would not stop saying ‘yes’ at any precise point in the sorites series The reason is that Hawthorne’s definition of God’s cooperation is incompatible with any precise linguistic behaviour when confronting a sorites series But what would be the behaviour of a cooperative God when confronted with the experiment in consideration According to Hawthorne a cooperative God would start saying ‘yes’ if asked ‘Is this woman tall’ when confronted with the first woman in the series Then going on through the sorites series with the same question God’s linguistic performances of the word ‘yes’ would change gradually until he would definitely not say ‘yes’ According to Hawthorne in so far as there is no clear boundary in God’s linguistic behaviour this shows that he does not find any boundary in the sorites series because there is none to be foundI will argue that Hawthorne’s definition of God’s cooperation cannot be accepted even by a supporter of supervaluationism and that in general an omniscient being like God cannot be cooperative if a semantic theory of vagueness like supervaluationism is correct Contrary to what has been assumed by both Williamson and Hawthorne I claim that an omniscient being like God cannot serve as an evaluator of a semantic theory I proceed in the following way I introduce some remarks about supervaluationism and higherorder vagueness Sect 1 I present Hawthorne’s definition of God’s cooperation and his justification for it Sect 2 I object to Hawthorne’s argument in support of this definition Sect 3 and I argue that God cannot be cooperative in the experiment described if a semantic theory of vagueness like supervaluationism is correct Sect 4 At the end I add some remarks on the supervaluationist theory and the results presented Sect 5

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