Indeterminacy in the World

1 Introduction
There is a difference between a shaky and out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

Erwin Schrödinger
1.1 Scope
This Element is about indeterminacy insofar as it does not originate in the way we represent the world in mind or language. Following tradition, I will be referring to such a phenomenon as metaphysical or worldly indeterminacy.

Here is a preliminary gloss on indeterminacy as such:

It is indeterminate whether p if, and only if (iff) there is no fact of the matter whether p.

The gloss provides us with a way of classifying indeterminacy based on its source. When there is no fact of the matter whether p because there is no fact of the matter about the meaning of ‘p’, we speak of semantic or linguistic indeterminacy. When there is no fact of the matter whether p despite there being a fact of the matter about the meaning of ‘p’, we speak of metaphysical indeterminacy (Section 3.1).

Indeterminacy ought not be confused with indefiniteness in the following sense: a declarative sentence ‘p’ is indefinite iff it is not truth-evaluable. Because indeterminacy whether p presupposes that ‘p’ is truth-evaluable, indefiniteness and indeterminacy are incompatible…