Vagueness as imprecision is a bug to be mitigated: Commentary on Hutmacher and Franz (2025).
Abstract
Hutmacher and Franz (2025) argue that psychological concepts are inherently vague and prescribe to embrace vagueness. Ironically, despite the argument that embracing inherent vagueness of concepts entails concept clarification and discussing definitions, Hutmacher and Franz do neither with their own focal concept. This allows them to engage in a motte-and-bailey fallacy through the equivocal meaning of concepts such as "feature," "bug," "embrace," and "vagueness" and in turn to overstate their conclusion that vagueness is a feature to be embraced. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Fields of Study & Subjects
Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology
Categorization
perception
and language
Psychology Research and Bibliometrics
Publication details
- Journal / source
- American Psychologist
- Volume
- 81
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 283–284
- Publication date
- 1 February 2026
- Language
- EN