This dissertation is a contribution to the philosophy of language. Its central question is: In virtue of which facts do linguistic expressions mean what they do? E.g. why does “apple” mean apple in English? The question receives a systematic answer; in short: Linguistic expressions mean what they do because among their users, there are linguistic conventions and social norms to use and understand them in certain ways. The answer is clarified and defended as a central thesis. For in this form, (...) it is at best a slogan: What is meaning? What is it to use and understand expressions? What are conventions and social norms anyway? How does the use and understanding determine meaning? The goal of the dissertation consists in answering these questions. (shrink)

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. (shrink)