Additional Remarks Concerning the Foundations of Timothy Williamson's Epistemicism

As a supplement to Gelbart's A Unified Epistemological Framework for Understanding Epistemicism (2025), this separate but brief account examines the grounds on which Timothy Williamson develops his epistemic theory of vagueness as presented in Vagueness (1994). Williamson's account approaches the Sorites paradox by arguing that vague terms such as 'heap' or 'thin' possess sharp yet unknowable boundaries, thereby preserving bivalence for vague terms and their use in logical propositions. This essay begins not as a polemical account but rather one concerned with how Williamson's inquiry came to be justified through Bertrand Russell's account of vagueness in Vagueness (1923). This essay suggests that a charitable reading of Russell's position, specifically his discussion of logical connectives, such as disjunctions, are not consistent with Williamson's interpretation. I contend Williamson's interpretation is a much stronger position than what Russell stated. What Russell intended was a discussion surrounding the limitations of logic as it concerns vague predicates. Russell's essay is primarily an account about the issue of logic connectives and logical propositions becoming subject to vagueness through vague predicates; not that logical operators themselves are vague. This is an important distinction which I argue Russell makes clear. Prompted by these findings, which supplement my own position on why Epistemicism fails on epistemic grounds, I present this essay to examine foundational arguments as put forward by Williamson in his 1994 work, Vagueness.