Here, in glorious Microsoft Word format, is the result of today’s tinkering with the truer paper.
In response to referee requests to make it more focussed and less technical, I’ve made it more focussed and more technical. I’ve cut most of the negative parts out, so I now just mention objections to rival theories and hope the reader will be familiar enough with them in order to take my new theory seriously. And I play up the comparisons with the simple fuzzy theory of vagueness, noting that I keep most of the benefits with none of the costs. After that, there’s some reasonably technical work designed to show that most of the promises I make can be fulfilled. There’s still a few big spots where I say, “The proof of this can be found in any textbook on the relevant area,” but I think I say enough to make it clear how to work out the technical details.
I do hope this works. Right now I seem to be getting a lot more attention than any of my papers do. That’s better than the converse, but I want both me and my papers to get lots of attention. (OK, I’m a little attention-seeking at times.) In this case at least I do think I’ve come up with a new theory that should at least be put in the mix when the best theories of vagueness are being compared.