Moral vagueness

Cheryl considers an on-demand abortion after 151 days of gestational age. Is Cheryl morally permitted to do so? Many philosophers believe that cases like this illustrate that our moral vocabulary is vague. However, not everybody's convinced by such alleged examples. In this work, I demonstrate that straightforward arguments for moral vagueness fail due to the characterization problem of vagueness. However, I argue that the question of whether there is moral vagueness must nevertheless be taken seriously. Because it seems that moral predicates are vague, we have reason to believe that moral predicates are vague. This claim is supported by a phenomenological investigation of vagueness related borderline cases, showing that such cases have a distinct phenomenological profile. In addition to these arguments, I also argue that apparent reasons to dismiss moral vagueness despite the appearance that moral predicates are vague are unconvincing.