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Can we specify something vague, e.g. without a boundary, with a definite time?

I am more satisfied with the idea that I became bald sometime in my 20s, I guess, than I am with the claim that I will "die" at some vague time in the future.

Can we specify that something vague begins at some specific time, or kinda vice versa (some specific time occurs for something vague)? More generally, is existential time - the time of my "death" - definite?

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    the amusing thing is that i want to claim apodictic or at least mystic intuition into both those claims haha –  Jul 28 '23 at 22:34
  • *Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits* — Wittgenstein. Did W also describe baldness??? Dunno! – Rushi Jul 28 '23 at 22:48
  • that's one way of putting something @Rushi but you still need to factor in existence at least imvho –  Jul 28 '23 at 22:50
  • Do you mean to exclude re-defining the drawn-out gradual event as a series of more brief events? e.g. we could describe you going bald in terms of failing hair follicles, or haircuts before you decide you're better off with a shave? – g s Jul 29 '23 at 02:52
  • @gs dunno. i guess that if we are saying that there is no instant i become bald, then there may be one that i lose my last hair, because that is not indeterminate: i cannot map vague concepts onto precise boundaries. –  Jul 29 '23 at 07:09

2 Answers2

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At 5:43 PM, a tall man will knock at your door.

Mr. John Smith will see you in the morning.

My best shot ... nice game, kudos.

Agent Smith
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  • great, thanks... –  Jul 29 '23 at 02:54
  • so why doesn't that will work heaps and baldness? –  Jul 29 '23 at 02:58
  • Short answer, I don't know. Long answer, if you don't know whether x = 2 xor x =/= 2 then, you have to find a y such that y =/= 2. If x = y then, x =/= 2. – Agent Smith Jul 29 '23 at 03:31
  • hmm confusing haha. i feel like junk. any ideas if i'm being followed? –  Jul 29 '23 at 03:32
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    Yeah, confusing @doot_s. You're just fine mon ami. Junk come in heaps ... in the junkyard. – Agent Smith Jul 29 '23 at 03:35
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    yeah. i'm gonna disengage with this paranoid fantasy. it was just hurting me the whole time, and now with relish. so what if it's sad for them? –  Jul 29 '23 at 03:38
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    i think you are right. no paradox and there is no afterlife! hah i said it –  Jul 29 '23 at 04:27
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Sorenson describes the boundaries of vague terms as an ¶epistemic blindspot·: a proposition which is wholly consistent yet inaccessible to us.9 It is merely our ignorance to the limits of vague words· referents which gives the illusion of a paradox. Critics might object that the claim we cannot know the boundaries to vague terms suggests these sharp boundaries do not exist in the first place.10 Given sufficient time and effort, we would surely be able to figure out where the borders to vague terms lie³if they are real. It seems more probable, then, that vague terms do not draw mysterious precise boundaries, but rather the limits of their application are also vague.

https://philpapers.org/archive/COLOTB.pdf

If vague terms do not draw "precise boundaries", and existential times are exactly that, then the time of "death" cannot end consciousness-as-such (or begin its absence). So there's three claims there, and maybe wriggle room anyway. I suppose you could try saying "death" is a precise boundary or limit, and somehow intuit that consciousness lacks these, but it seems like an amusing exercise in question begging.