Imagine that you’re just about to sign an important contract – would you prefer it to have been precisely drafted, or would you be happy for it to be “optimally vague” ? Authors Nicola Gennaioli (Bocconi University and IGIER) and Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto (CREI, Pompeu Fabra University, IPEG and Barcelona GSE) suggest not only […]
Tag: vagueness
Governing cyberspace via ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ (and Schrödinger’s cat)
How can the vastness of cyberspace can be ‘governed’ in any practical way? Perhaps some ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ might help resolve such questions? A 2015 thesis by Professor Paul Cornish (Associate Director of Oxford University’s Global Cyber Security Capacity Centre and Research Group Director for Defence, Security and Infrastructure at RAND Europe in Cambridge, UK) suggests […]
Is it a Mug or Cup? Recent Progress in Fuzziness Studies
Where does a cup end and a mug start? And vice versa? Help towards answering this consistently vexing question can be found in an essay by Brett Laybutt entitled A Corpus Study of ‘Cup of [Tea]’ and ‘Mug of [Tea]’ In which he cites the work of scholars who have tried, over the years, to […]
The problem of artificial precision in theories of vagueness
Vincenzo Marra points his finger more or less exactly at a simply difficult question: “The problem of artificial precision in theories of vagueness: a note on the role of maximal consistency,” Vincenzo Marra, arXiv:1306.4369, June 18, 2013. The author is at Universita degli Studi di Milano, Italy. (Thanks to investigator K.P. Hart for bringing this […]
Blobjects – a disambiguation
According to Wikipedia, a Blobject (n.) is: “… a design product, often a household object, distinguished by smooth flowing curves, bright colors, and an absence of sharp edges.” But for philosophers (ontologists in particular), a Blobject can be more, much more, than that … “Imagine a world consisting entirely of gunkish, jello-ish, stuff.” viz., the […]
The Virtue of Vagueness in Vision Statements
Those tasked with running large organisations sometimes have to make major changes to achieve organisational goals. What can be done to help ensure that these changes are effective? One strategy – proposed by professor Dennis A. Gioia and colleagues at the Department of Management and Organization of Penn State University, is to deliberately introduce a […]
A load of vague non-numerical quantifiers
Cross-disciplinary academic progress in vagueness has recently been augmented with a paper from Prof. PhDr. Jarmila Tárnyiková CSc. at Palacký University, in Olomouc, Czech Republic. The professor has authored one of the very few papers to examine and compare English and Czech Non-numerical Vague Quantifiers (also known as Vague Non-numerical Quantifiers – VnQs). Some examples […]