NDLI: When Vague Sentences Inform: A Model Of Assertability

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Kyburg, Alice
Copyright Year	2000
Abstract	A speaker often decides whether or not to saysomething based on his assessment of the impact itwould have on his hearer's beliefs. If he thinks itwould bring them more in line with the truth, he saysit; otherwise he does not. In this paper, I developa model of these judgments, focusing specifically onthose of vague sentences. Under the simplifyingassumption that an utterance only conveys a speaker'sapplicability judgments, I present a Bayesian model ofan utterance's impact on a hearer's beliefs. Fromthis model I derive a model of a speaker's judgment ofwhether or not an utterance would be informative. Iillustrate it with several examples of judgments ofvague and non-vague sentences. For instance, I showthat it models the common judgment that assertingeither ``George is tall'' or ``George is not tall'' wouldbe misleading if George were borderline tall, butasserting ``George is tall and he isn't tall'' would notbe.
Starting Page	175
Ending Page	191
Page Count	17
File Format	PDF
ISSN	00397857
Journal	Synthese
Volume Number	124
Issue Number	2
e-ISSN	15730964
Language	English
Publisher	Kluwer Academic Publishers
Publisher Date	2000-01-01
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Philosophy Epistemology Logic Metaphysics Philosophy of Language
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Philosophy Social Sciences

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When Vague Sentences Inform: A Model Of Assertability