Amber and Gus watch a documentary on the Antipodeans. In one scene, one Antipodean is seen to berate another in a town square for arriving late saying, ‘I told you to be here at neen and it’s now quarter past neen.’
The narrator explains that there is only one minute in the day known to the Antipodeans as ‘neen’. Further, it is considered to be very rude by Antipodeans to be imprecise. So, when an Antipodean says to be there at neen, they mean not the minute before neen nor the minute after neen but neen and neen alone. Amber and Gus observe the shadows apparent in the scene and agree that neen must be some time within a few minutes of their noon.
The following day, at 12:15 p.m. local time, Amber and Gus are waiting for a plumber. Gus arranged the plumber. Amber asks him, ‘What time did you say the plumber was coming? I thought you said she was coming at noon.’
Gus answers, ‘She said she was coming at neen.’
Amber laughs unconvincingly and then says, ‘No, seriously, what time did she say she was coming?’ (Amber guesses correctly that the plumber knows little to nothing concerning the Antipodeans and their language.)
Gus does not remember the words the plumber used, but it was something to the effect of, ‘I’ll be there at about noon.’ Before Gus answers Amber, he had better consider what is relevant to her. If the plumber had said, ‘I’ll be there at twelve fifteen,’ and Gus reports that he said, ‘I’ll be there at quarter past twelve,’ Amber is unlikely to consider that she was misled by Gus when she later finds out he had paraphrased what the plumber had said, but preserved the relevant information (the same de re meaning).
Neither Amber nor Gus know precisely what the relation is between neen and noon. Further, they each know that they each don’t know the precise relation. Yet, ‘I’ll be there at neen’ does not provide a sufficient paraphrase for ‘I’ll be there at noon-ish,’ or ‘I’ll be there at about noon,’ when Amber wants to know, not only what time the plumber said she was coming but, also, whether she had made a precise commitment or a vague commitment to that time. Notwithstanding the partial knowledge they each have of the application of ‘neen’, the meaning expressed by the term is of a precise committment rather than a vague one.
This would seem to show that the use of a term concerning which both the speaker and the hearer do not know the precise meaning is not, of itself, adequate to communicate a vague commitment. The challenge for the epistemicist would be to show why some meanings concerning which we have partial knowledge are insufficient to produce vagueness, while others are sufficient.
NOTE THAT THE ABOVE POST HAS BEEN REWORKED IN THE POST THAT FOLLOWS IT.
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