Context, content, and relativism

Abstract

Forthcoming in Philosophical StudiesHere is a simple and inviting picture: the semantic values of sentences, relative to contexts, are sets of possible worlds. These are the truth conditions of assertions of those sentences in contexts. They are thus the contents of assertions, or the objects of attitudes we might take towards such contents.There have been many questions raised about the simple picture. For instance, sets of worlds might well be too coarse-grained to capture fully the objects of attitudes, leading to more fine-grained or structured contents. But opting for structure does not conflict with truth conditions being sets of worlds, and so, I shall ignore this sort of question. I shall likewise ignore questions about the nature of possible worlds.I propose to ignore these questions to focus on whether the semantic values of sentences should be sets of something more than possible worlds. For instance, it has frequently been proposed that semantic values should be sets of pairs of worlds and times. The simple picture opts for eternalism: semantic values of sentences are eternal truth conditions. This stand in * Versions of this paper were presented at a symposium on relativism at the Pacific APA, 2006, the 'Cog Lunch' at CSLI, 2006 contrast to temporalism, which holds that semantic values are time-relative truth conditions. Temporalism has been subject to a number of criticisms; from Enç (1984Enç ( , 1986, from Evans (1985), from King (2003), and from Richard (1981Richard ( , 1982. I shall not be particularly concerned to argue against temporalism here, though I find these criticisms persuasive, and I shall be assuming eternalism. The question on which I shall focus here is whether, on the model of temporalism, we should see any other additions to worlds in the semantic values of sentences. Leaving times to one side, we can distinguish two sorts of positions: Semantic value absolutism:The semantic values of sentences are sets of worlds. Semantic value relativism:The semantic values of sentences are sets of tuples of worlds and other parameters, relative to which the truth of a sentence in a context is determined.The particular form of semantic value relativism I shall discuss most in this paper posits that semantic values of sentence are sets of pairs of worlds and judges. The judge assesses certain claims, like what counts as fun.As proponents of such views are clearly aware, this is a form of relativism about truth.We can get no truth value from the content of an assertion until we fix the judge relative to whom it is true. But defenders of this sort of semantic value relativism are quick to point out they are not repeating the mistake, all too common among our undergraduates, of just thinking that truth is 'truth for me, and truth for you'. Rather, they argue, there are semantic phenomena we cannot make sense of without making room for relative truth.Furthermore, they will argue, this semantically motivated relativism is more modest, and more sensible, than our undergraduates' version, and so is no...

The Many Uses of Predicates of Taste and the Challenge from Disagreement

“…This is a more direct route than the one I'm taking in this paper. Stojanovic (2007), Glanzberg (2007) and Snyder (2013) engage with Lasersohn's arguments; I find their replies misguided, but for reasons of space I cannot present my reasons here.…”

“…Another use of predicates of taste that contextualists (e.g., Glanzberg 2007;Cappelen and Hawthorne 2009;Huvenes 2012) have mentioned in connection with the challenge from disagreement is what could be called a 'group' or 'collective' use. A speaker uses a predicate of taste collectively if she is taking on the point of view of a group/collective.…”

“…Another use of predicates of taste that contextualists (e.g., Stojanovic 2007;Glanzberg 2007;Cappelen and Hawthorne 2009;Moltmann 2010;Snyder 2013) have drawn attention to is known as their 'generic' use. A speaker uses a predicate of taste generically if she has in mind what is generally, or usually, considered to be the case among the members of a (contextually determined) group.…”

“…2 Options: by complying with the character of predicates of taste, conceived as indexicals (perhaps following Rothschild and Segal's (2009) treatment of color terms); by saturating a variable for standards of taste found in their syntactic configuration (e.g., Stojanovic 2007;Schaffer 2011); by saturating more than one variable, when construed as akin to gradable adjectives (Glanzberg 2007); by pragmatic processes of the kind postulated by truth-conditional pragmatists (e.g., Recanati 2004).…”

Essential Contestability and Evaluation

“…The relevant contextual parameters seem not to be fixed solely by any single feature of the context (whether a speaker's intention or a publicly observable gesture), but rather by many contributing factors that sometimes conflict. 27 Factors that may in general be thought eligible to play a 26 My discussion of metasemantics draws on Glanzberg (2007) and Kennedy (2007). In the cases of interest to me, linguistically encoded meaning can be understood as a function from contexts to contents à la Kaplan's notion of "character" (Kaplan 1989).…”