This unique anthology of new contributed essays offers a range of perspectives on various
aspects of ontic vagueness. It seeks to answer core questions pertaining to onticism the view
that vagueness exists in the world itself. The questions to be addressed include whether vague
objects must have vague identity and whether ontic vagueness has a distinctive logic one that
is not shared by semantic or epistemic vagueness. The essays in this volume explain the
motivations behind onticism such as the plausibility of mereological vagueness and
indeterminacy in quantum mechanics and they offer various arguments both for and against ontic
vagueness onticism is also compared with other competing theories of vagueness such as
semanticism the view that vagueness exists only in our linguistic representation of the world.
Gareth Evans's influential paper of 1978 Can There Be Vague Objects? gave a simple but cogent
argument against the coherence of ontic vagueness. Onticism was subsequently dismissed by many.
However in recent years researchers have become aware of the logical gaps in Evans's argument
and this has triggered a new wave of interest in onticism. Onticism is now widely regarded as
at least a coherent view. Reflecting this growing consensus the present anthology for the
first time puts together essays that are focused on onticism and its various facets and it
fills in the lacuna in the literature on vagueness a much-discussed subject in contemporary
philosophy.
