Supervaluationism, Indirect Speech Reports, and Demonstratives

Abstract

Abstract Can supervaluationism successfully handle indirect speech reports? This chapter considers and rejects Schiffer's claim that they cannot. One alleged problem with indirect speech reports is that the truth of ‘Carla said that Bob is tall’ implausibly requires that Carla said all of a huge number of precise things (i.e. that Bob was over n feet tall, for values of n corresponding to precisifications of ‘tall’). This chapter shows why the supervaluationist is not committed to this. It argues that vague singular terms are no particular problem for supervaluationism within indirect speech reports, but there remain some issues surrounding certain vague demonstratives. The supervaluationist has good responses available, however, and any remaining questions face all theories of vagueness and are more appropriately addressed within a theory of demonstratives rather than a theory of vagueness.