God’s silence Elisa Paganini

Abstract Vagueness manifests itself (among other things) in our inability to find
boundaries to the extension of vague predicates. A semantic theory of vagueness
plans to justify this inability in terms of the vague semantic rules governing language
and thought. According to a supporter of semantic theory, the inability to find
such a boundary is not dependent on epistemic limits and an omniscient being like
God would be equally unable. Williamson (Vagueness, 1994) argued that cooperative
omniscient beings adequately instructed would find a precise boundary in a
sorites series and that, for this reason, the semantic theory misses its target, while
Hawthorne (Philosophical Studies 122:1–25, 2005) stood with the semantic theorists
and argued that the linguistic behaviour of a cooperative omniscient being like
God would clearly demonstrate that he does not find a precise boundary in the
sorites series. I argue that Hawthorne’s definition of God’s cooperative behaviour
cannot be accepted and that, contrary to what has been assumed by both Williamson
and Hawthorne, an omniscient being like God cannot be a cooperative evaluator of a
semantic theory of vagueness.