Chapter 5 - Moral Indeterminacy and Vagueness

Summary

Moral indeterminacy is not the same thing as moral vagueness. In this chapter, I reserve the term “indeterminacy” for phenomena that are indeterminate but not vague. The term “vagueness” is reserved for entities that are susceptible to a sorites series. The distinction between moral indeterminacy and vagueness mirrors an analogous distinction between two versions of the gradualist hypothesis. According to the first, some acts are somewhat right and somewhat wrong in the indeterministic sense; according to the second, some acts are somewhat right and somewhat wrong because they display moral vagueness. These hypotheses must be kept apart because they sometimes entail different practical verdicts. The first aim of this chapter is to clarify the notions of moral indeterminacy and vagueness that are central to these two versions of the gradualist hypothesis. The second aim is to discuss reasons for believing that morality is vague, or indeterminate but not vague, or both, and whether we should understand all these views as ontic, semantic, or epistemic theories.