Three-Valued Plurivaluationism and the Higher-Order Vagueness

Sa？etak Plurivaluationism is an approach to solving the Sorites Paradox based on the idea that vague discourse has more than one acceptable interpretation. Since plurivaluationism is a framework which enables one to utilize different underlying logics, three basic versions can be identified – bivalent, many-valued and fuzzy. The aim of this paper is to show how three-valued plurivaluationism, as proposed by Wang, fares against its competitors. In the first and second part, some of the traditional approaches to solving the Sorites Paradox are outlined and are confronted with two objections based on the problem of higher-order vagueness – the so-called location problem and the jolt problem. The third part is dedicated to introducing and evaluating different versions of plurivaluationism, with an emphasis on comparing Wang’s three-valued plurivaluationism to its competitors. While three-valued plurivaluationism is a promising enterprise, I show that some modifications Wang made to his system cause the location problem in plurivaluationism to re-emerge, and it also fails to provide a satisfactory answer to the jolt problem