Borderline cases and the collapsing principle

Elson, L. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3013-8030 (2014) Borderline cases and the collapsing principle. Utilitas, 26 (1). pp. 51-60. ISSN 0953-8208 doi: 10.1017/S095382081300023X

Abstract/Summary

John Broome has argued that value incommensurability is vagueness, by appeal to a controversial ‘collapsing principle’ about comparative indeterminacy. I offer a new counterexample to the collapsing principle. That principle allows us to derive an outright contradiction from the claim that some object is a borderline case of some predicate. But if there are no borderline cases, then the principle is empty. The collapsing principle is either false or empty.