This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy bites is available at W.

What does a man who's losing his hair officially become bald?

What hour or minute or second does one become middle aged?

When does a number of grains of sand become a heap?

These questions are all linked to a set of

paradoxes known as sorieties paradoxes. The name sorieties is from the Greek word

Soros meaning heap. They occur because many concepts like Heap are vague. The very definite Tim Williamson,

professor at Oxford University, is a leading expert on vagueness.

Tim Williamson, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Hello.

The topic we're going to focus on today is vagueness,

a topic that philosophers have discussed for several thousand years.

I wonder if we could just open by saying what vagueness is.

Vagueness has to do with borderline cases.

For example, the word red is vague because there are some shades between red and orange where it's just not clear

whether to count them as red or not.

It's not the same thing as un-informativeness or un-specificity. For example, if you

ask me how many people were at a party and I say that there were at least three people and at most two hundred and ninety seven

that's a very un informative answer but it's not really vague because it's quite

clear in what circumstances it's true and in what

circumstances it's false.

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