Recently a fascinating debate has been rekindled over whether
vagueness is metaphysical or linguistic. That is, is vagueness an objective
feature of reality or is it merely an artifact of our language?
Bertrand Russell’s contribution to this debate is considered by many
to be decisive. Russell suggested that it is a mistake to conclude that
the world is vague simply because the language we use to describe it is
vague. He argued that to draw such an inference is to commit “the fallacy
of verbalism”. I argue that this is only a fallacy if we have no reason
to believe that the world is as our language says. Since vagueness
is apparently not eliminable from our language—a fact that Russell
himself acknowledged—an indispensability argument can be launched
for metaphysical vagueness. In this paper I outline such an argument.