Three Forms of Truth Relativism

Abstract

Several authors have argued that a range of linguistic data calls for a relativization of propositional truth to contexts of assessment or, more generally, perspectives. This chapter defends the more orthodox view that the truth of a proposition depends only on what the world is like. It develops an account — factual relativism — on which what the world is like depends, in some respects, on a perspective. The resulting model, which allows for a natural account of faultless disagreement and of the evaluation of perspectival representations from different points of view, is applied both to discourse about taste and discourse involving epistemic modals. Finally, it is argued that a plausible propositional relativism is bound to reduce to either indexical or factual relativism.

Relativism 1: Representational Content

“…Thus, different people (people like you and me, who can interact causally) may end up inhabiting distinct worlds. This is the conclusion drawn by Iris Einheuser (, ). Einheuser mitigates the extravagance of this thesis by guaranteeing that the distinct worlds you and I inhabit at least share a common ‘substratum’.…”

A Comedy of Errors or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sensibility‐Invariantism about ‘Funny’

“…Here I reject the thought expressed by Wright () and Einheuser () that disputes over matters of taste do not involve attributions of fault. To my mind, a disagreement that does not involve attributions of fault is no disagreement at all.…”

Truth, the Liar, and Relativism

“…Theorists have argued for some form of semantic relativism for many kinds of linguistic expressions, including predicates of personal taste (see Kölbel [2002Kölbel [ , 2003; MacFarlane [2005aMacFarlane [ , 2007aMacFarlane [ , 2008MacFarlane [ , 2011b; Egan [2010]; Lasersohn [2005Lasersohn [ , 2008Lasersohn [ , 2009and Einheuser [2008]) and epistemic modals (see Kölbel [2002]; Egan, Hawthorne, and Weatherson [2005]; Egan [2007]; Stephenson [2007]; MacFarlane [2011a, forthcoming]; Einheuser [2008]). Most of the semantic relativists argue that their theories capture the linguistic data better than the alternatives.…”