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Referential Indeterminacy with an Ontic Source? – A Criticism of Williams’s

Defense of Vague Objects

Article  in  Metaphysica · January 2015

DOI: 10.1515/mp-2015-0011

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 Metaphysica 2015; 16(2): 167–178

Ken Akiba*
Referential Indeterminacy with an Ontic
Source? – A Criticism of Williams’s Defense
of Vague Objects
DOI 10.1515/mp-2015-0011

Abstract: J. Robert G. Williams argues that referential indeterminacy may arise

as a result of ontic indeterminacy, and that lambda-abstraction is not applicable
to indeterminate identity statements, i.e., statements of the form, ‘it is indeter-
minate whether a is identical with b,’ if they involve such ontically induced
referential indeterminacy; so Evans’s reductio argument against vague objects
does not work. This paper finds fault with Williams’s defense of vague objects
and shows that there is much reason to doubt that the idea of ontically induced
referential indeterminacy plays any significant role in a proper defense of vague
objects against Evans’s argument.

Keywords: onticism, semanticism, ontic indeterminacy, semantic indeterminacy,

vague objects, Evans’s argument, lambda-abstraction.

Introduction
When we agree that John is borderline-bald, or that it is indeterminate
whether John is bald, there can be at least two ways in which this indeter-
minacy may arise. One is referential: we may be semantically undecided what
precise extension ‘is bald’ ought to have; we may be semantically undecided,
in particular, whether the predicate ought to have a precise extension that
includes John. The other way is ontic: ‘is bald’ may denote a unique but
vague property, and may have a unique but vague extension, and it may be
ontically indeterminate whether John has that property or is in that exten-
sion. The views embracing the first and the second possibilities are often
called semanticism and onticism about indeterminacy, respectively.1 In a

1 Yet another possibility is that the indeterminacy arises from our ignorance about the unique
precise extension of ‘is bald’; but the view embracing this possibility, epistemicism (see Williamson
1994), will be set aside in this paper.

*Corresponding author: Ken Akiba, Department of Philosophy, Virginia Commonwealth

University, 915 W. Franklin St., Richmond, VA 23284-2025, USA, E-mail: kakiba@[Link]

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168 K. Akiba

series of papers (Williams 2008a, 2008b; Barnes and Williams 2009), J.

Robert G. Williams sets forth a brand of onticism, but maintains that it is a
mistake to identify the view embracing referential indeterminacy with seman-
ticism, for referential indeterminacy may arise not as a result of our semantic
indecision about how to use the relevant words, but as a result of ontic
indeterminacy that exists in the world itself.
Gareth Evans (1978) gave an influential argument against onticism. He
contends that the existence of a vague object, say a, implies the truth of certain
indeterminate identity statements involving a, i.e., statements of the form ‘it is
indeterminate whether a is identical with b.’ However, those statements, under-
stood ontically, cannot be true, for if they were, we could apply λ-abstraction to
them and derive a contradiction. Therefore, there cannot be vague objects. As
David Lewis (1988) pointed out, those statements can be true if the indetermi-
nacy involved is not ontic but referential, because in that case λ-abstraction is
not applicable. Williams contends that the statements in question can be true
because of referential indeterminacy resulting from ontic indeterminacy; in that
case λ-abstraction is not applicable, and Evans’s argument does not go through,
but that’s because of the underlying ontic indeterminacy and not because of our
semantic indecision. So Evans’s argument failed to show that there cannot be
vague objects, Williams concludes.
This paper criticizes Williams’s defense of vague objects on two points: First,
the indeterminate identity statements Williams is originally concerned with do not
support his blocking of Evans’s argument, because even though they themselves
may involve referential indeterminacy, we can extract from his example a different
indeterminate identity statement which does not involve referential indeterminacy
even on Williams’s own account, and that statement will lead to a contradiction
via λ-abstraction. Second, Williams’s defense is misguided because Evans’s argu-
ment can be formalized in a way in which linguistic expressions such as names
and sentences are not mentioned, as in Nathan Salmon’s version of the argument.
In such a version, questions about reference simply do not arise. Though the idea
of ontically induced referential indeterminacy has gained some traction on philo-
sophers (see, e.g., Lowe 2001; Darby 2014; Curtis and Noonan 2014), there is thus
much reason to doubt that it plays any significant role in a proper defense of
vague objects against Evans’s argument.
In the next section, Evans’s argument is summarized and Williams’s (2008a)
refutation is presented. The refutation is then criticized and dismissed in the section
following. Salmon’s argument is then examined, followed by the conclusion.2

2 Elizabeth Barnes has coauthored papers with Williams on the subject of ontic vagueness (Barnes
and Williams 2009, 2011), and has expressed views similar to Williams’s (see Barnes 2010). Barnes

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 Referential Indeterminacy with an Ontic Source? 169

Evans’s argument and Williams’s defense

In his reductio argument, Evans tries to refute the possibility of vague objects, i.-
e., individuals that have vague mereological and/or spatiotemporal boundaries. He
maintains that if there were such an object, say a, then there should be another
object, b, precise or at least less vague, which coincides with a except for some of its
indeterminate parts. For such b, it is indeterminate whether a is identical with b (or

a ¼ b in symbols, where
reads ‘it is indeterminate whether’). This assumption,
however, leads to a contradiction. For then, by λ-abstraction, a must have the
property being indeterminately identical with b, i.e., λx:
x ¼ b. But b does not
have this property because b is determinately identical with itself, i.e., :
b ¼ b.
Since a has a property b does not have, by Leibniz’s Law they are distinct from each
other, after all.
As Lewis (1988) points out, Evans’s argument is meant to show that onticism –
or the idea of vague objects, in particular – is incoherent, and semanticism is
immune to the argument. This is because semanticism interprets the initial claim ‘it
is indeterminate whether a is identical with b’ de dicto, as follows:

The statement ‘a is identical with b’ is indeterminate in truth value (i.e., is neither

determinately true nor determinately false).

You cannot infer from this that there is a single object, a, which has the
property being indeterminately identical with b, for just because the names ‘a’
and ‘b’ are referentially indeterminate and may but may not refer to one and
the same object, it does not follow that there is a single object denoted by ‘a.’
The application of λ-abstraction in Evans’s argument, thus, is illegitimate and
the argument does not go through on the semanticist interpretation.
Unlike many other onticists, Williams (2008a) does not contend with
Evans’s and Lewis’s points.3 He argues, instead, that the application of
λ-abstraction in Evans’s argument is illegitimate not only for semanticism but
also for onticism because referential indeterminacy may arise as a result of ontic
indeterminacy. Williams illustrates this point with an example he introduces.

(2009), however, sets forth a refutation of Evans’s argument different from Williams’s. We shall, thus,
attribute the targeted argument only to Williams and not to Barnes; however, no slight to Barnes is
intended if she also embraces the argument. Barnes (2009) will be examined briefly at the end of the
section dealing with Salmon’s argument.
3 See Williams (2008b, Sec. 5.2) for his assessment of Evans’s argument as well as references to
other onticists’ responses.

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170 K. Akiba

In his example, Williams considers the following situation:

Suppose a particular amoeba, Sue, splits into two ‘daughter’ amoebas, Sally and Sandy. After
the fission, Sally wanders off to the [east] and Sandy to the [west].4 (Williams 2008a, 151)

Sue, by definition, is the amoeba that survives past the fission. It is, however,
indeterminate whether Sue survives as Sally and wanders off to the east or
survives as Sandy and wanders off to the west: in one scenario (or possible
world),5 Sue is identical with Sally and wanders off to the east, and in another,
Sue is identical with Sandy and wanders off to the west. This, at first glance,
seems to be a simple instance of ontic indeterminacy.
Williams contends, however, that this is in fact a case of referential inde-
terminacy induced by ontic indeterminacy. According to Williams,

The name ‘Sue’ suffers no referential indeterminacy. In each case, it refers to the surviving
amoeba. However, ‘Sally’ picks out the surviving amoeba in one world, and the newly
minted amoeba in the other. The name ‘Sandy’ suffers exactly analogous referential
indeterminacy. (Williams 2008a, 151)

This situation is depicted in Figure 1, Case 1 below, where the two possible
scenarios are presented side by side.6 Since the situations for Sally and
Sandy are totally symmetric, we shall focus on Sue and Sandy, setting Sally
aside.
Keep in mind that in Williams’s story,

Sue1 ¼ df the amoeba that survives past the fission,

and that the name ‘Sue,’ thus introduced, does not involve referential indeter-
minacy, according to Williams; it determinately refers to the vague object, Sue1 .
(‘Sue1 ’ means ‘Sue in Case 1.’)
This, however, is not the end of the story. In response to a referee’s comments,
Williams concedes that the situation can be different from what he initially conceived:

4 Here ‘east’ and ‘west’ are reversed from Williams’s original writing. There is some confusion
in Williams about the direction in which Sally and Sandy are supposed to go. Originally
Williams says that Sally goes to the west while Sandy goes to the east, but in his later
discussion he assumes the other way around. We shall adopt his assumption in the later
discussion, reversing the original assumption.
5 Possible worlds of this sort are often called (ontic) precisifications. Each precisification
represents what can be the case in reality, where ‘can’ here is understood not as metaphysical
possibility but as ontic indeterminacy.
6 Basically the same figure is presented in Williams (2008a, 151).

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 Referential Indeterminacy with an Ontic Source? 171

Figure 1: Case 1.

Alternative assumptions about transworld identities are no doubt possible. For example,
we could assume that in each case the amoeba which wanders west is the same, and that
the amoeba which wanders east is the same. In this scenario, different names are referen-
tially indeterminate: ‘Sue’ is referentially indeterminate, while ‘Sandy’ and ‘Sally’ are each
referentially determinate. (Williams 2008a, 152)

This situation, Case 2, is depicted in Figure 2:

In this story,

Sandy2 ¼ df the amoeba that wanders off to the west,

and the name ‘Sandy,’ thus introduced, does not involve referential indeterminacy; it
determinately refers to the vague object, Sandy2 (i.e., Sandy in Case 2).
Williams continues:

The fundamental point is that no matter how transworld identities are assigned, the result
will never be a vague identity statement where both the terms flanking the identity are
referentially determinate. (Williams 2008a, 152)

Figure 2: Case 2.

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172 K. Akiba

Thus, in either case, the statement ‘it is indeterminate whether Sue is identical
with Sandy’ is true. In Case 1, you can apply λ-abstraction to the statement and
derive the statement ‘Sue has the property being indeterminately identical with
Sandy.’ However, you cannot apply λ-abstraction to the statement ‘It is not
indeterminate whether Sandy is identical with Sandy’ and derive the statement
‘Sandy does not have the property being indeterminately identical with Sandy,’
for ‘Sandy’ is referentially indeterminate and does not refer to a single object. So
you cannot derive the conclusion that Sue is not identical with Sandy. In Case 2,
you cannot apply λ-abstraction to the true statement ‘it is indeterminate whether
Sue is identical with Sandy’ and derive the statement ‘Sue has the property
being indeterminately identical with Sandy,’ for ‘Sue’ is referentially indetermi-
nate and does not refer to a single object (even though you can apply λ-abstrac-
tion to the statement ‘It is not indeterminate whether Sandy is identical with
Sandy’ and derive the statement ‘Sandy does not have the property
being indeterminately identical with Sandy’). So you cannot derive the contradic-
tion that Sue is identical with Sandy in Case 2, either. Either way, Williams
concludes, Evans’s argument does not go through even for onticism.

Criticism of Williams’s defense

Unfortunately, Williams’s argument does not hold up under scrutiny. Among
other things, Williams is incorrect in stating that there ‘will never be a vague
identity statement where both the terms flanking the identity are referentially
determinate.’ In fact, Williams’s examples imply the existence of one such
identity statement, to which Evans’s argument is applicable.
Let us examine Williams’s two cases a little more carefully. Consider the
following statements, where the subscripts indicate the relevant amoebas in the
two cases:

(1) It is indeterminate whether Sue1 is identical with Sandy1 .

(2) It is not indeterminate whether Sandy1 is identical with Sandy1 .
(3) It is indeterminate whether Sue2 is identical with Sandy2 .
(4) It is not indeterminate whether Sandy2 is identical with Sandy2 .

All these statements are true, according to Williams. Furthermore, again,

λ-abstraction is applicable to (1) and (4), resulting in the truth statements ‘Sue1
has the property being indeterminately identical with Sandy1 ’ and ‘Sandy2 does
not have the property being indeterminately identical with Sandy2 ,’ whereas
λ-abstraction is not applicable to (2) and (3). This is because ‘Sue1 ’ and

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 Referential Indeterminacy with an Ontic Source? 173

‘Sandy2 ’ determinately refer to the vague objects Sue1 and Sandy2 , whereas
‘Sue2 ’ and ‘Sandy1 ’ involve referential indeterminacy.
But, then, think about the following pair of statements:

(5) It is indeterminate whether Sue1 is identical with Sandy2 ;

(6) ( ¼ (4)) It is not indeterminate whether Sandy2 is identical with Sandy2 ;

where ‘Sue1 ’ and ‘Sandy2 ’ are introduced and used in the same way as above:

Sue1 ¼ df the amoeba that survives past the fission.

Sandy2 ¼ df the amoeba that wanders off to the west.

See Figure 3 below.

Figure 3: Case 3.

Clearly, (5) is true if (1) to (4) are, but it does not involve referential indetermi-
nacy. As we saw, (6), i.e., (4), does not involve referential indeterminacy, either.
So we can apply λ-abstraction to both and derive ‘Sue1 has the property
being indeterminately identical with Sandy2 ’ and ‘Sandy2 does not have the prop-
erty being indeterminately identical with Sandy2 .’ From this Evans will conclude
that (5) is not true.7 His reductio is completed. Thus, if (1) to (4) were true, (5)
would be true, too; but since it is not, (1) to (4) could not be true, either. Evans’s
reductio reaches back even to (1) to (4).

7 As a matter of fact, what is derived so far is only : Sue1 ¼ Sandy2. This is not yet contradictory
to (5), ∇Sue1 ¼ Sandy2 ( ¼ : ΔSue1 ¼ Sandy2 ^ : Δ : Sue1 ¼ Sandy2, where Δ reads ‘determi-
nately’). But a formal contradiction is derivable from these if modal axiom B: : p → Δ : Δp is
accepted, and it is indeed accepted by Williams, who maintains that the logic of ‘determinately’ Δ is
S5, a modal system that includes B. Thus, Williams cannot escape the reductio. For more details
about the logic of ‘determinately’ and Evans’s argument, see Akiba (2014).

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174 K. Akiba

Contrary to Williams’s assertion that there ‘will never be a vague identity

statement where both the terms flanking the identity are referentially determi-
nate,’ (5) is such a statement. This destroys Williams’s defense of vague objects.
Williams needed an example which leads to a true identity statement involving
ontically induced referential indeterminacy but does not at the same time lead to
an identity statement involving ontic indeterminacy. This is because Evans’s
argument would deny the legitimacy of the example by showing that such a
statement with ontic indeterminacy is inconsistent, and this will spread to the
original statement involving ontically induced referential indeterminacy. Thus,
Williams’s defense fails.
It should be noted that there is a small gap in the above argument. One could,
possibly, argue that statement (5) cannot be made true from the beginning (even in a
coherent picture in which (1) to (4) are true). The possible reason is that our proper
ontology should not accept the existence of indeterminately colocational objects
such as Sue1 and Sandy2 . (By ‘indeterminately colocational’ objects we mean two
objects which are totally, not partially, overlapping in one possible world but not so
in another possible world.) If such an ontology is correct, Sue1 and Sandy2 , though
each can exist in the absence of the other, cannot exist at the same time in cases like
(3). So either ‘Sue1 ’ or ‘Sandy2 ’ fails to refer in statement (5) (though it is difficult to
say which). Thus, (5) cannot be set forth as a truth from the beginning even
according to Williams’s picture.
Against this contention two things may be said. First, Williams never
discusses such an ontological constraint; so at the very least he should be
faulted for his oversight.8 But second and more important, such an ontologi-
cal constraint is independently implausible. Granted, determinately coloca-
tional objects, i.e., a pair of objects that are colocational in all possible
worlds, may be difficult to accept, for they seem totally indistinguishable.
But there is no similar problem with indeterminately colocational objects such
as Sue1 and Sandy2 , for they are clearly distinguishable in the worlds in
which they are not collocated; thus, they are distinguishable as a whole. At
least, (the hypothetical) Evans has no reason to withhold his response to
Williams given above.
It seems that Williams’s initial oversight, pointed out by the referee, has
never been appropriately corrected. If Williams is to succeed in his defense of
vague objects along his original lines, he must come up with another example

8 Barnes and Williams (2009) correctly point out that Evans’s argument relies on some
significant ontological assumptions, without which the argument does not go through.
However, the ontological assumptions they discuss do not include the possibility or impossi-
bility of indeterminate colocation.

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 Referential Indeterminacy with an Ontic Source? 175

which has the following feature: it generates true indeterminate identity state-
ments involving referential indeterminacy that results from the existence of
vague objects, but it cannot generate true indeterminate identity statements
that only involve determinate references to those vague objects. We have no
idea how such an example is possible.

Salmon’s argument
Of course, one’s lack of imagination for coming up with an appropriate example
is generally no proof that such an example does not exist. But in this case, there
is a further reason for us to think that Williams’s project is ill-conceived and
wrong-headed. A brief look at Nathan Salmon’s (1981) version of Evans’s argu-
ment will reveal this point.
Salmon’s argument is often considered basically the same as Evans’s argu-
ment; thus the name ‘the Evans–Salmon argument’ is often used. But there is
one crucial difference: Salmon uses quantification and variables where Evans
uses singular terms. Thus, the ambiguity between the de re and de dicto read-
ings of ‘it is indeterminate whether a is identical with b,’ which exists in the
original Evans argument, does not exist in the Salmon argument; the argument
must be understood de re. Specifically, Salmon argues,

For suppose that there is a pair of entities x and y … such that it is vague … whether they are
one and the very same thing. Then this pair hx; yi is quite definitely not the same pair as
hx; xi, since it is determinately true that x is one and the very same thing as itself. It
follows that x and y must be distinct. (Salmon 1981, 243)

This argument can be formalized as follows, where Δ reads ‘it is determinate

that.’ (Thus,
x ¼ y, i.e., it is indeterminate whether x ¼ y, can be defined as
:Δx ¼ y ^ :Δ:x ¼ y, i.e., it is not determinate that x ¼ y and it is not determi-
nate that :x ¼ y.)

(a) "x x ¼ x Law of identity

(b) "x"y(x ¼ y ! "P(Px ! Py)) Leibniz’s Law
(c) :Δx ¼ y ^:Δ:x ¼ y Reductio premise

(d) :Δx ¼ y From (c)

(e) x ¼ x Instantiation of (a)
(f) Δx ¼ x From (e) by Rule of Necessitation
(g) x ¼ y ! ðΔx ¼ x ! Δx ¼ y) Instantiation of (b)
(h) :x ¼ y From (d), (f), and (g)

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176 K. Akiba

Here it is of no significance whether the unbound variables x and y in (c)

through (h) are or are not replaced with the pseudo-names a and b. The essential
point is that nothing prevents us from quantifying over indeterminate (or vague)
objects as well as determinate objects and determinately naming and denoting
them as we wish. We can talk directly about objects themselves and not about
the names of the objects, and we can talk directly about the states of affairs
involving the objects and not about sentences describing the states of affairs. We
do not have to start the argument, as Evans did, by supposing that it is
indeterminate whether the sentence ðor statementÞ ‘a is identical with b’ is true;
we can start the argument, as Salmon did, by simply supposing that it is
indeterminate whether object a is identical with object b, or that it is indetermi-
nate whether x is identical with y for some objects x and y. Since Salmon talks
about objects themselves and not about the names of the objects, questions
about reference – let alone referential indeterminacy or ontically induced refer-
ential indeterminacy – do not even arise. In fact, if we replace ‘a’ and ‘b’ here
with ‘Sandy2 ’ and ‘Sue1 ,’ the previous reductio involving (5) and (6) will be just
an instance of Salmon’s argument. This bolsters our suspicion that any putative
(counter)example pertaining to Evans’s argument must involve determinate
references to indeterminate objects, and that referential indeterminacy with an
ontic source is irrelevant to the essential point of Evans’s argument.
Incidentally, this point also calls into question another onticist refutation of
Evans’s argument given in Barnes (2009). Barnes employs a sort of counterpart
theory for the objects in possible worlds, but insists that different names of
objects invoke different counterpart relations.

In the actual world [a and b] are identical (@a ¼ b), and thus they share all their properties.
…Yet the different names can invoke different counterpart relations, so in some worlds they
are not identical. …When we refer to a qua identical to b, then necessarily all its counterparts
are counterparts of b. When we refer to the one thing a=b as ‘a,’ the counterpart relation
invoked is such that it has different counterparts from the counterparts it would have were we
to refer to it as ‘b.’ But from this we cannot, of course, conclude that a and b are distinct; they
are one and the same thing, simply with different counterpart relations singled out depending
on which terms of reference we choose. (Barnes 2009, 90)

Just like Williams’s refutation, this proposal does not seem to get to the
heart of the problem. Again, Salmon’s version of Evans’s argument does not
involve proper names at all. It is difficult to understand why, when we are
talking about one and the same object, how we refer to it should make any
difference. Isn’t a rose a rose by any other name?
Indeed, if you deny the existence of transworld objects, as Barnes does, you
are already denying the existence of her a and b in any worlds other than the

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 Referential Indeterminacy with an Ontic Source? 177

actual world. Barnes’s a and b, which are really one and the same object by
hypothesis, may have counterparts in other worlds, which are really objects
distinct from a=b; and Barnes’s counterpart theory may make the sentence ‘a
is identical with b’ true in some worlds and false in others. But it does not make
a=b exist in the other worlds. Since her theory does not even accept the premise
of Salmon’s reductio that it is indeterminate whether a is identical with b, the
argument cannot even get started. Barnes maintains that she is arguing against
the application of λ-abstraction, but she is in fact not agreeing with Evans or
Salmon about their initial ontological assumptions.

Conclusion
Contrary to Williams’s contention, there is much doubt that the idea of ontically
induced referential indeterminacy plays any significant role in a proper defense of
vague objects against Evans’s argument. This is, at bottom, because Evans’s argu-
ment concerns essentially not linguistic expressions but objects in the world, as
Salmon’s version of the argument reveals. It is not sufficient for Williams to come
up with an example which generates some indeterminate identity statements to
which λ-abstraction is not applicable. He must come up with an example which
does not generate any indeterminate identity statements to which λ-abstraction is
applicable, but there is reason to doubt that such an example is possible. Since
nothing seems to prevent us from talking directly about vague objects themselves,
bypassing any referential issues, Williams does not seem to be able to defend the
existence of vague objects by citing ontically induced referential indeterminacy.9

References
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9 See Akiba (2014) for our defense of vague objects against Evans’s argument.

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 178 K. Akiba

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