Conclusion

Abstract

In this book I have taken up a problem in philosophy, making sense of vagueness, extended it to pictures and tracked one particular solution into the world of applied mathematical science, fuzzy set theory. My interest in this problem is twofold. There is the philosophical problem itself, and then there is the problem’s role of laying down lines of communication across divides between philosophical and scientific practices. From some disciplinary distance, these are practices that can share similarly formal and conceptual preoccupations, also an empirical interest in actual human practices such as representation and cognition. The philosophical problem emerges out of an interest in semantic practices in the use of symbolic language, especially in representation and reasoning. Science offers its own symbolic, mathematical, practices to represent vagueness and to apply it in empirical representation of empirical phenomena. Here is a case in which science, mathematics, solves a problem for philosophy and philosophy retrieves it back for further analysis and use. I have also identified explicit problems and sources adopted from more philosophical projects. Science, then, doesn’t conflict with philosophy, nor does it replace it.