Nonetheless, several philosophers feel otherwise and the idea that the world may include vague entities relative to which the parthood relation is not fully determined has received considerable attention in recent literature, from Johnsen (1989), Tye (1990), and van Inwagen (1990: ch.
Less vague than a relative target is an emissions trajectory, which defines how much greenhouse gas the world emits each year going forward.
There are many reasons that the documents, known collectively as advance directives, can fail: people lose or forget them; living wills are too vague to interpret; relatives disagree about what the patient wanted; hospital staff members mistakenly fear prosecution for stopping life support; or doctors overrule the family and refuse to stop treatment.
According to Graff's "interest-relative" account, vague predicates express properties that are interest-relative in the sense that their extensions are determined by what counts as significant for an individual, x, at a time.
For weeks beforehand, we are compelled to bombard every friend, relative and vague acquaintance with creative e-mails and Facebook alerts, polish up our Web sites with suspiciously youthful author photos, and, in an orgy of blogs, tweets and YouTube trailers, attempt to inform an already inundated world of our every reading, signing, review, interview and (well, one can dream!) TV appearance.
The low bidder was a paint-and-paper vet from Canarsie, a garrulous sort who reminded me vaguely of an annoying relative.
In some cases handwritten family labels only vaguely identify the lost relative; an 1830s ring with jet stones around a lock of blond hair arrived at the society a few years ago, with a tag noting that it came from "some old Gardner".
Eliminativists dismiss intentional description as vague, context-sensitive, interest-relative, explanatorily superficial, or otherwise problematic.
Moreover, it is a key aspect of the account that vague predicates express interest-relative properties and, as Stanley (2003) points out, seemingly untoward consequences follow from such a supposition.
He told Edith, vaguely that it was a relative.
