Vagueness as Semantic Indecision: Metaphysical Vagueness vs Indeterminate Reference Dan López de Sa # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract After presenting a negative characterization of metaphysical vagueness and the main tenets of the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, the paper critically discusses the objection that such a view requires that at least some vagueness not be just constituted by semantic indecision—but rather by the metaphysical vagueness of some semantic relations themselves submitted by Trenton Merricks and, more recently, Nathan Salmon. Keywords Vagueness . Semantic indecision . Metaphysical vagueness . Indeterminacy According to a prominent view about the nature of vagueness, vagueness just is semantic indecision. As David Lewis once famously put it: The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it in our thought and lan- guage. The reason it’ s vague where the outback begins is not that there’ s this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word ‘outback.’ Vagueness is semantic indecision (Lewis 1986, p. 213). The salient contrast is with metaphysical vagueness—a view according to which some vagueness could possibly have a source other than semantic indecision: some non-representational items of reality—objects, properties, states of affairs—could themselves be vague. There is a long, venerable tradition of attempts to elaborate on the charge of ultimate lack of intelligibility of the view that there could be such vagueness in rebus, notably in the vicinity of the infamous Evans’ argument—as well as contrast- ing attempts to provide accounts that would vindicate such intelligibility, on the face of the strength of the skeptical challenge. The focus of this paper is not given by these, however, but rather by what can be seen as an interesting indirect line of thought to the effect that there is a certain sort of inherent instability in such charge of lack of intelligibility on part of the defender of the view of vagueness as semantic indecision. For the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, the thought has it, turns Int Ontology Metaphysics DOI 10.1007/s12133-013-0121-6 D. López de Sa (*) Departament de Lògica, Història i Filosofia de la Ciència and LOGOS, Universitat de Barcelona, Montalegre 6, 08001 Barcelona, Spain e-mail: dlopezdesa@ub.edu