Paul Egré will give a series of FOUR lectures on topic related to the semantics of vagueness and gradability.  A fifth lecture may eventually be scheduled if there is enough interest from philosophically minded individuals. (Please contact Dominique Sportiche if interested)

Wednesday, February 29th - 11-1pm in Bunche 2174

Friday, March 2nd, 2-4pm in Campbell 2122 (as Syntax and Semantics)

Wednesday, March 7th, 11-1pm in Bunche 2174

Friday, March 9th, 2-4pm in Campbell 2122 (as Syntax and Semantics

The first three lectures in particular are intended as a course and will be focused on the presentation of the framework of strict-tolerant semantics developed jointly with P. Cobreros, D. Ripley and R. van Rooij to deal with the semantics and pragmatics of vague predicates. The fourth lecture, which does not presuppose this framework, will be on the norm-sensitivity of the vague quantifier `many’.

Lecture 1: Three-valued approaches to vagueness: s’valuationism vs.

truth-functional approaches.The sorites and higher-order vagueness.

Lecture 2: The strict-tolerant framework (1). Semantical and logical aspects.

Lecture 3: The tolerant-strict framework (2). Applications to the psychology of vague predicates and comparisons with alternative frameworks.

Lecture 4: Moral asymmetries and the semantics of `many’.

A fifth lecture of interest also to philosphers, wold discuss applications of the strict-tolerant framework to the semantic paradoxes.

Lecture 5: Strict-Tolerant truth and the semantic paradoxes.

Please welcome Paul Egré:

Paul Egré is a CNRS ResearchFellow and a member of Institut Jean‐Nicod since 2005 (PhD in
philosophy in 2004). His research interests lie at the intersection of philosophical logic,
semantics and epistemology. Paul Egré has done work on several topics in these areas, in
particular on embedded questions, conditionals, epistemic logic, and the theory of
vagueness. From 2008 to 2011, Paul Egré directed the ANR (French NSF) research program
‘Cognitive Origins of Vagueness’. He has published several papers in the context of this
project, in particular on the semantics of gradable expressions, the logic of vague predicates,
the epistemic theory of vagueness, as well as on the relation between vagueness, perceptual
ambiguity and the theory of conceptual spaces. Some of his recent publications include
“Vagueness: A Conceptual Spaces Approach” (coauthored with I. Douven, R. Dietz and L.
Decock, Journal of Philosophical Logic 2011), “Tolerant, Classical, Strict” (coauthored with P.
Cobreros, D. Ripley and R. van Rooij, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 2010) and the volume
“Vagueness and Language Use”, coedited with N. Klinedinst (Palgrave Macmillan 2011).
Since 2011, Paul Egré is also Editor‐in‐Chief of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, a
peer‐reviewed journal published by Springer.