I argue for a deflationary answer to the question, “What is it to be a woman?” Prior attempts by feminist theorists to provide a metaphysical account of what all and only women have in common have all failed for the same reason: there is nothing women have in common beyond being women. Although the social kinds man and woman are primitive, their existence can be explained. I say that human sex difference is the material ground of systems of gender; gender (...) systems serve to enable male control of female reproductive capacities. This explains the fact that most women are female, but it does not entail that all women are female or that all females are women. To clarify my position, I draw an analogy between the kind woman and the kind parent. While it is difficult to come up with necessary and sufficient conditions for being a parent, it is clear that the social institution or practice of parenting has its material ground in the biological facts about human reproduction together with facts about infantile dependency. Saying this does not entail that all and only biological progenitors are parents. (shrink)

Supporting the rational suicide of a patient with a terminal disease is opposed by a majority of German doctors, whereas assistance in such patients’ hastening their death by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking is predominantly judged to be acceptable. Are these two positions compatible? It is argued that the normative differentiation cannot be justified by the fact that the assistance in active suicide is itself active, whereas assistance in VSED is merely passive. Even in "letting die" a patient from hastening (...) death by refusing nutrition and hydration there is an active element in the doctor's/the palliative care team's assurance that they will provide palliative support in case of need. Nor can the difference in evaluation be justified by relevant differences in the causal situation. Enabling a patient to perform VSED and assisting a patient's active suicide under the same circumstances are, as far as causal relevance is concerned, on a par. This holds, at least, on a condition view of causality in the tradition of John Stuart Mill. Finally, the paper discusses whether there are other morally relevant dimensions by which actively and passively supporting a patient suicide under the relevant circumstances differ, again with a negative result. (shrink)

Jennifer Hornsby has defended the Reasons-Knowledge Thesis : the claim that \-ing because p requires knowing that p, where the ‘because’ at issue is a rationalising ‘because’. She defends by appeal to the thought that it provides the best explanation of why the subject in a certain sort of Gettier case fails to be in a position to \ because p. Dustin Locke and, separately, Nick Hughes, present some modified barn-façade cases which seem to constitute counterexamples to and undermine Hornsby’s (...) way of motivating it by rendering their alternative Reasons-Explanation Thesis a better explanation of Hornsby’s datum. This paper defends and Hornsby’s argument for it against those objections. First, I point out that their supposedly intuitive verdict about the relevant barn-façade cases is not as intuitive as they think. Second, I point out that even if we share the intuition: we have strong reason to doubt the verdict anyway. And finally, I point out that since is independently implausible, the two problems can be tackled anyway. (shrink)

Empiricist models explain delusional beliefs by identifying the abnormal experiences which ground them. Recently, this strategy has been adopted to explain the false body size beliefs of anorexia nervosa patients. As such, a number of abnormal experiences of body size which patients suffer from have been identified. These oversized experiences convey false information regarding the patients’ own bodies, indicating that they are larger than reality. However, in addition to these oversized experiences, patients are also exposed to significant evidence suggesting their (...) bodies are in fact thin. This situation poses a conundrum: why do patients appear strongly influenced by the former kinds of evidence while the latter has little effect? To solve this conundrum, I suggest a two-factor account. First, I discuss research on the biases patients exhibit in how they gather, attend to and interpret evidence related to their own body size. Such biases in evidence treatment, I suggest, cause oversized experiences to be sought out, attended to and accepted, while veridical body size experiences are ignored or explained away. These biases constitute the second factor for this empiricist model, accounting for the unwarranted conviction with which these beliefs are held. Finally, in line with recent research into self-deception, I propose that, paradoxically, these biases in evidence treatment arise from patients’ own desires. (shrink)

This paper examines what it takes to be the intrinsic human goods of knowledge and achievement and argues that they are at many points parallel. Both are compounds, and of parallel elements: belief, justification, and truth in the one case, and intentional pursuit, competence, and success in the other. Each involves a Moorean organic unity, so its full presence or value requires a connection between its elements: an outside-in connection, where what makes a belief true helps explain why it’s justified, (...) for knowledge, and an inside-out connection, where what makes a pursuit competent helps explain its success, for achievement. The features that determine the degrees of value of instances of the two goods, or make some truths more worth knowing and some goals more worth achieving, are also similar, turning in both cases largely on two forms of generality. And more specific goods that follow from valuing generality, such as integrated understanding and complex, difficult achievement, mirror each other structurally. Taken together, these many parallels suggest that knowledge and achievement may both instantiate a more abstract value of rational connection to reality. With or without that deeper unification, the parallels strengthen the claims of both to be genuine goods. (shrink)

Reductive representationalist theories of consciousness are yet to produce a satisfying account of pain’s affective component, the part that makes it painful. The paramount problem here is that that there seems to be no suitable candidate for what affective experience represents. This article suggests that affective experience represents the Darwinian fitness effects of events. I argue that, because of affective experience’s close association with motivation, natural selection will work to bring affect into covariance with the average fitness effects of types (...) of event, and that this covariance makes fitness effects a promising candidate for what affect represents. I also argue that this account is to be preferred to Cutter and Tye’s recent proposal that affect represents harmfulness, and answer an objection that Aydede and Fulkerson recently offered against representational accounts of affect. (shrink)

I will analyse Floridi’s rejection of digital ontologies and his positive proposal for an informational structural realism. I intend to show that ISR is still fundamentally a digital ontology, albeit with some different metaphysical commitments to those that Floridi rejects. I will argue that even though Floridi deploys the method of levels of abstraction adapted from computer science, and has established a Kantian transcendentalist conception of both information and structure, ISR still reduces to a discretised binary, and therefore digital, ontology. (...) The digital ontologies that Floridi rejects are John Wheeler’s “It from Bit” conception and computational metaphysics. They’re rejected predominantly on the basis that they rely upon a false dichotomy between digital discrete and continuous metaphysics. ISR involves a Kantian transcendentalist conception of de re relations that is intended to avoid this false dichotomy. However, I’ll argue that the binary, discrete, digital component of digital ontology is retained in ISR, and therefore ISR is still a digital ontology since its conception of information reduces to binary discrete de re relations. As such, ISR comes down on one side of the rejected ontic dichotomy of digital metaphysics, and so an informational metaphysics that is not a digital ontology is still a promissory note in the philosophy of information. (shrink)

Omissions are metaphysically puzzling: Are they something or are they nothing? This paper develops and defends the constitution view of omissions, according to which a correct analysis of a person’s omission has the form “S omitted to X by Y-ing,” where her Y-ing is what constitutes her not-X-ing. The paper explains why the constitution view should be preferred to other views of omissions and defends the view against objections.

Agents can think using concepts they do not fully understand. This paper investigates the question “Under what conditions does a thinker fully understand, or have mastery of, a concept?” I lay out a gauntlet of problems and desiderata with which any theory of concept mastery must cope. I use these considerations to argue against three views of concept mastery, according to which mastery is a matter of holding certain beliefs, being disposed to make certain inferences, or having certain intuitions. None (...) of these attitudes is either necessary or sufficient for mastery. I propose and respond to objections to my own recognition view of the conditions under which a thinker has mastery of a concept. (shrink)

The paper focusses on two claims about metaphysical structure: Atomism and Fundamentalism. The first of these claims says that there are mereological atoms, i.e. minimal elements in the mereological structure of reality. The second says that there are fundamental truths, i.e. minimal elements in the grounding structure of reality. A philosopher who defended both of these claims was Bernard Bolzano; the present paper is an exploration of his views on the matter.

The Self-Intimation thesis has it that whatever justificatory status a proposition has, i.e., whether or not we are justified in believing it, we are justified in believing that it has that status. The Infallibility thesis has it that whatever justificatory status we are justified in believing that a proposition has, the proposition in fact has that status. Jointly, Self-Intimation and Infallibility imply that the justificatory status of a proposition closely aligns with the justification we have about that justificatory status. Self-Intimation (...) has two noteworthy implications. First, assuming that we never have sufficient justification for a proposition and for its negation, we can derive Infallibility from Self-Intimation. Interestingly, there seems to be no equivalently simple way to derive Self-Intimation from Infallibility. This asymmetry provides reason for thinking that bottom-level justification rather than top-level justification drives the explanation for why the levels of justification align. Second, Self-Intimation suggests a counterintuitive treatment of information concerning what justificatory status a proposition has. It follows from Self-Intimation that we always have justification for the truth about whether a proposition is justified for us, and therefore, that higher-order evidence could change what we should believe on this matter only by misleading us. This permits forming beliefs about whether a proposition is justified for us without regard to higher-order evidence, and thus reveals a reason for thinking that top-level justification is evidentially inert. (shrink)

We investigate the issue of aggregativity in fair division problems from the perspective of cooperative game theory and Broomean theories of fairness. Paseau and Saunders proved that no non-trivial theory of fairness can be aggregative and conclude that theories of fairness are therefore problematic, or at least incomplete. We observe that there are theories of fairness, particularly those that are based on cooperative game theory, that do not face the problem of non-aggregativity. We use this observation to argue that the (...) universal claim that no non-trivial theory of fairness can guarantee aggregativity is false. Paseau and Saunders’s mistaken assertion can be understood as arising from a neglect of the games approach to fair division. Our treatment has two further pay-offs: for one, we give an accessible introduction to the games approach to fair division, whose significance has hitherto not been appreciated by philosophers working on fairness. For another, our discussion explores the issue of aggregativity in fair division problems in a comprehensive fashion. (shrink)

Weber argues that causal modelers face a dilemma when they attempt to model systems in which the underlying mechanism operates according to some set of differential equations. The first horn is that causal models of these systems leave out certain causal effects. The second horn is that causal models of these systems leave out time-dependent derivatives, and doing so distorts reality. Either way causal models of these systems leave something important out. I argue that Weber’s reasons for thinking causal modeling (...) is limited in this domain are lacking. (shrink)

While ideal interventions are acknowledged by many as valuable tools for the analysis of causation, recent discussions have shown that, since there are no ideal interventions on upper-level phenomena that non-reductively supervene on their underlying mechanisms, interventions cannot—contrary to a popular opinion—ground an informative analysis of constitution. This has led some to abandon the project of analyzing constitution in interventionist terms. By contrast, this paper defines the notion of a horizontally surgical intervention, and argues that, when combined with some innocuous (...) metaphysical principles about the relation between upper and lower levels of mechanisms, that notion delivers a sufficient condition for constitution. This, in turn, strengthens the case for an interventionist analysis of constitution. (shrink)

The tendency to draw mind-brain dichotomies and evaluate mental disorders dualistically arises in both laypeople and mental health professionals, leads to biased judgments, and contributes to mental health stigmatization. This paper offers a theory identifying an underlying source of these evaluations in social practice. According to this theory, dualistic evaluations are rooted in two mechanisms by which we represent and evaluate the beliefs of others in folk psychology and theory of mind: the doxastic conception of mental disorders and doxastic voluntarism. (...) Tracing these origins contributes to our understanding of mental state representation in cognitive science and philosophy of psychiatry, the concept of belief in philosophy of mind, and may help improve patient experience and treatment in light of social stigmatization and bias toward mental illness. (shrink)

Propositional quantifiers are added to a propositional modal language with two modal operators. The resulting language is interpreted over so-called products of Kripke frames whose accessibility relations are equivalence relations, letting propositional quantifiers range over the powerset of the set of worlds of the frame. It is first shown that full second-order logic can be recursively embedded in the resulting logic, which entails that the two logics are recursively isomorphic. The embedding is then extended to all sublogics containing the logic (...) of so-called fusions of frames with equivalence relations. This generalizes a result due to Antonelli and Thomason, who construct such an embedding for the logic of such fusions. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a new account of linguistic presuppositions, on which they are ancillary speech acts defined by constitutive norms. After providing an initial intuitive characterization of the phenomenon, I present a normative speech act account of presupposition in parallel with Williamson’s analogous account of assertion. I explain how it deals well with the problem of informative presuppositions, and how it relates to accounts for the Triggering and Projection Problems for presuppositions. I conclude with a brief discussion of (...) the consequences of the proposal for the adequacy of Williamson’s account of assertion. (shrink)

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay (...) examines a troubling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary physics. (shrink)

Belief revision theories aim to model the dynamics of epistemic states. Besides beliefs, epistemic states comprise most importantly justificational structures. Typically, belief revision theories, however, model the dynamics of beliefs while neglecting justificational structures over and above logical relations. Despite some awareness that this approach is problematic, how devastating the consequences of this neglect are has not yet been fully grasped. In this paper, I argue that taking justificational structures into account could solve four well-known problems of belief revision.

I argue that intentionalist theories of perceptual experience are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. I begin by describing what is involved in explaining phenomenal character, and why it is a task of philosophical theories of perceptual experience to explain it. I argue that reductionist versions of intentionalism are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience because they mischaracterize its nature; in particular, they fail to recognize the sensory nature of experience’s phenomenal character. I argue (...) that nonreductionist versions of intentionalism are unable to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experience because, although they recognize its sensory nature, they mislocate it. (shrink)

According to logical inferentialists, the meanings of logical expressions are fully determined by the rules for their correct use. Two key proof-theoretic requirements on admissible logical rules, harmony and separability, directly stem from this thesis—requirements, however, that standard single-conclusion and assertion-based formalizations of classical logic provably fail to satisfy :1035–1051, 2011). On the plausible assumption that our logical practice is both single-conclusion and assertion-based, it seemingly follows that classical logic, unlike intuitionistic logic, can’t be accounted for in inferentialist terms. In (...) this paper, I challenge orthodoxy and introduce an assertion-based and single-conclusion formalization of classical propositional logic that is both harmonious and separable. In the framework I propose, classicality emerges as a structural feature of the logic. (shrink)

Philosophers often state that the persistence of objects in vision is experienced differently than the persistence of sounds in audition. This difference is expressed by using metaphors from the metaphysical endurantism/perdurantism debate. For instance, it is claimed that only sounds are perceived as “temporally extended”. The paper investigates whether it is justified to characterize visually experienced objects and auditorily experienced sounds as different types of entities: endurants and perdurants respectively. This issue is analyzed from the perspective of major specifications of (...) the endurance/perdurance distinction connected, inter alia, with the notions of temporal parts and temporal localization. It is argued that it is unjustified to characterize visually experienced objects and auditorily experienced sounds as different types of entities in respect of how they persist. On the other hand, the apparent difference in the way of persisting can be explained by the presence of contingent differences between typical visual and auditory experiences. (shrink)

The question of what exists is often seen as one of the metaphysician’s primary concerns—an ontological stance is a central and basic component of a great many positions in metaphysics. Consider, in particular, the debate surrounding the metaphysics of time: the question of whether non-present entities exist is typically thought of as one of the fundamental issues at stake in the debate, with each position on the nature of time consisting in part of an answer to this question of ontology. (...) My purpose in this paper will be to raise some worries about this focus on ontology, and to sketch an alternative approach to conceptualizing the debate—one that I think can help us get a clearer and deeper understanding of the fundamental issues at stake. I’ll focus in particular on the case of time and the ontology of non-present objects, but the framework I present is ultimately meant to apply more broadly to a range of debates involving ontology. On the framework I propose, the basic question at stake in this and other analogous debates is the following: Of the various perspectives we might adopt on reality, which perspective is fundamental? I’ll explain what this means and how it can help us reconceptualize the relevant metaphysical issues. (shrink)

I argue that the best interpretation of the general theory of relativity has need of a causal entity, and causal structure that is not reducible to light cone structure. I suggest that this causal interpretation of GTR helps defeat a key premise in one of the most popular arguments for causal reductionism, viz., the argument from physics.

Arguments, the story goes, have one or more premises and only one conclusion. A contentious generalisation allows arguments with several disjunctively connected conclusions. Contentious as this generalisation may be, I will argue nevertheless that it is justified. My main claim is that multiple conclusions are epiphenomena of the logical connectives: some connectives determine, in a certain sense, multiple-conclusion derivations. Therefore, such derivations are completely natural and can safely be used in proof-theoretic semantics.

Kuhn’s account of scientific change is characterized by an internal tension between a naturalist vein, which is compatible with the revolutionary perspective on the historical development of science, and an aprioristic or Kantian vein which wants to secure that science is not an irrational enterprise. Kuhn himself never achieved to resolve the tension or even to deal with the terms of the problem. Michael Friedman, quite recently, provided an account which aspires to reconcile the revolutionary and the aprioristic elements of (...) the Kuhnian historiography by placing the latter in the neo-Kantian philosophical framework. In this paper, I suggest that Friedman manages to provide a convincing description of the structuration of scientific knowledge and, further, to present science as a rational enterprise. I argue that despite these virtues Friedman’s account faces a major problem with regard to the context of transcendental idealism which he is not willing to abandon. I also argue that discarding transcendental idealism in the way the philosophical perspective of John McDowell does, we can dispose of the flaws of Friedman’s account while retaining its virtues. (shrink)

In virtue of what do things persist through time? Are there criteria of their identities through time? Anti-criterialists say no. One prominent challenge to anti-criterialism comes in two steps. The first step is to show that anti-criterialists are committed specifically to the claim that there are no informative metaphysically sufficient conditions for identity through time. The second step is to show that this commitment yields absurd results. Each step of this challenge is open to objection. However, in what follows, I (...) will refortify this challenge to anti-criterialism by offering new reasons to take each step. (shrink)

Presentism is the view that only presently existing things exist. Actualism is the view that only actually existing things exist. Although these views have much in common, the position we take with respect to one of them is not usually thought to constrain the position that we may take toward the other. In this paper I argue that this standard attitude deserves further scrutiny. In particular, I argue that the considerations that motivate one common objection to presentism—the grounding objection—threaten to (...) give rise to an analogous grounding objection to actualism. Those who are moved by grounding considerations to give up presentism should either be moved by analogous considerations to give up actualism as well or be prepared to undertake quite a bit of further work in order to defend their position. (shrink)

In the history of external information systems, the World Wide Web presents a significant change in terms of the accessibility and amount of available information. Constant access to various kinds of online information has consequences for the way we think, act and remember. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have recently started to examine the interactions between the human mind and the Web, mainly focussing on the way online information influences our biological memory systems. In this article, we use concepts from the (...) extended cognition and distributed cognition frameworks and from transactive memory theory to analyse the cognitive relations between humans and the Web. We first argue that while neither of these approaches neatly capture the nature of human-Web interactions, both offer useful concepts to describe aspects of such interactions. We then conceptualize relations between the Web and its users in terms of cognitive integration, arguing that most current Web applications are not deeply integrated and are better seen as a scaffold for memory and cognition. Some highly personalised applications accessed on wearable computing devices, however, may already have the capacity for deep integration. Finally, we draw out some of the epistemic implications of our cognitive analysis. (shrink)

In the history of external information systems, the World Wide Web presents a significant change in terms of the accessibility and amount of available information. Constant access to various kinds of online information has consequences for the way we think, act and remember. Philosophers and cognitive scientists have recently started to examine the interactions between the human mind and the Web, mainly focussing on the way online information influences our biological memory systems. In this article, we use concepts from the (...) extended cognition and distributed cognition frameworks and from transactive memory theory to analyse the cognitive relations between humans and the Web. We first argue that while neither of these approaches neatly capture the nature of human-Web interactions, both offer useful concepts to describe aspects of such interactions. We then conceptualize relations between the Web and its users in terms of cognitive integration, arguing that most current Web applications are not deeply integrated and are better seen as a scaffold for memory and cognition. Some highly personalised applications accessed on wearable computing devices, however, may already have the capacity for deep integration. Finally, we draw out some of the epistemic implications of our cognitive analysis. (shrink)

I offer a novel account of temporal passage. According to this account, time passes in virtue of there being events in progress. I argue that such an account of temporal passage can explain the direction and whoosh of temporal passage. I also consider two prominent accounts of temporal passage and argue that they amount to special versions of the thesis that time passes in virtue of there being events in progress.

Varied evidence confirms more strongly than less varied evidence, ceteris paribus. This epistemological Variety of Evidence Thesis enjoys widespread intuitive support. We put forward a novel explication of one notion of varied evidence and the Variety of Evidence Thesis within Bayesian models of scientific inference by appealing to measures of entropy. Our explication of the Variety of Evidence Thesis holds in many of our models which also pronounce on disconfirmatory and discordant evidence. We argue that our models pronounce rightly. Against (...) a backdrop of failures of the Variety of Evidence Thesis, the intuitive case for the Variety of Evidence Thesis emerges strengthened. Our models do however not support the general case for the thesis since our explication of it fails to hold in certain cases. The parameter space of this failure is explored and an explanation for the failure is offered. (shrink)

In this paper I show that Elga’s argument for a restricted principle of indifference for self-locating belief relies on the kind of mistaken reasoning that recommends the ‘staying’ strategy in the Monty Hall problem.

In this paper I propose an interpretation of classical statistical mechanics that centers on taking seriously the idea that probability measures represent complete states of statistical mechanical systems. I show how this leads naturally to the idea that the stochasticity of statistical mechanics is associated directly with the observables of the theory rather than with the microstates (as traditional accounts would have it). The usual assumption that microstates are representationally significant in the theory is therefore dispensable, a consequence which suggests (...) interesting possibilities for developing non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and investigating inter-theoretic answers to the foundational questions of statistical mechanics. (shrink)

Open futurism is the indeterministic position according to which the future is ‘open’, i.e., there is now no fact of the matter as to what future contingent events will actually obtain. Many open futurists hold a branching conception of time, in which a variety of possible futures exist. This paper introduces two challenges to branching-time open futurism, which are similar in spirit to a challenge posed by Fine to tense realism. The paper argues that, to address the new challenges, open (...) futurists must adopt an objective, non-perspectival notion of actuality and subscribe to an A-theoretic, dynamic conception of reality. Moreover, given a natural understanding of “actual future”, it is perfectly sensible for open futurists to hold that a unique, objectively actual future exists, contrary to a common assumption in the current debate. The paper also contends that recognising the existence of a unique actual future helps open futurists to avoid potential misconceptions. (shrink)

Several arguments attempt to show that if traditional, acquaintance-based epistemic internalism is true, we cannot have foundational justification for believing falsehoods. I examine some of those arguments and find them wanting. Nevertheless, an infallibilist position about foundational justification is highly plausible: prima facie, much more plausible than moderate foundationalism. I conclude with some remarks about the dialectical position we infallibilists find ourselves in with respect to arguing for our preferred view and some considerations regarding how infallibilists should develop their account (...) of infallible foundational justification. In particular, I provide an account of how propositions that moderate foundationalists claim are foundationally justified derive their epistemic support from infallibly known propositions. This is possible when a foundational proposition is coarsely-grained enough to correspond to determinable properties exemplified in experience or determinate properties that a subject insufficiently attends to; one may have inferential justification derived from such a basis when a more finely-grained proposition includes in its content one of the ways that the foundational proposition could be true. (shrink)

Many philosophers working on personal identity and ethics say that personal identity is constituted by stories: narratives people tell or would tell about their lives. Most of them also say that this is personal identity in the ‘characterization sense’, that it is the notion people in ordinary contexts are interested in, and that it raises the ‘characterization question’. I argue that these claims are inconsistent. Narrativists can avoid the incompatibility in one of two ways: They can concede that their view (...) is not about the constitution but the epistemology of personal identity. Or they can say that it is not about personal identity at all. (shrink)

This paper intends to further the understanding of the formal properties of (higher-order) vagueness by connecting theories of (higher-order) vagueness with more recent work in topology. First, we provide a “translation” of Bobzien's account of columnar higher-order vagueness into the logic of topological spaces. Since columnar vagueness is an essential ingredient of her solution to the Sorites paradox, a central problem of any theory of vagueness comes into contact with the modern mathematical theory of topology. Second, Rumfitt’s recent topological reconstruction (...) of Sainsbury’s theory of prototypically defined concepts is shown to lead to the same class of spaces that characterize Bobzien’s account of columnar vagueness, namely, weakly scattered spaces. Rumfitt calls these spaces polar spaces. They turn out to be closely related to Gärdenfors’ conceptual spaces, which have come to play an ever more important role in cognitive science and related disciplines. Finally, Williamson’s “logic of clarity” is explicated in terms of a generalized topology (“locology”) that can be considered an alternative to standard topology. Arguably, locology has some conceptual advantages over topology with respect to the conceptualization of a boundary and a borderline. Moreover, in Williamson’s logic of clarity, vague concepts with respect to a notion of a locologically inspired notion of a “slim boundary” are (stably) columnar. Thus, Williamson’s logic of clarity also exhibits a certain affinity for columnar vagueness. In sum, a topological perspective is useful for a conceptual elucidation and unification of central aspects of a variety of contemporary accounts of vagueness. (shrink)