Predicates of personal taste: empirical data

Markus Kneer

doi:10.1007/s11229-021-03077-9

Abstract

According to contextualism, the extension of claims of personal taste is dependent on the context of utterance. According to truth relativism, their extension depends on the context of assessment. On this view, when the taste preferences of a speaker change, so does the truth value of a previously uttered taste claim, and the speaker might be required to retract it. Both views make strong empirical assumptions, which are here put to the test in three experiments with over 740 participants. It turns out that the linguistic behaviour of ordinary English speakers is consistent with contextualist predictions and inconsistent with the predictions of the most widely discussed form of truth relativism advocated by John MacFarlane.

Highlights

1.1 Indexical contextualismIndexical contextualism is a semantic theory according to which claims involving predicates of personal taste such as ‘delicious’, ‘tasty’ or ‘fun’ are context-dependent.1 The relevant standard of taste of, say, ‘Spinach is delicious’ is determined by the context of utterance, and it manifests itself, albeit tacitly, at the level of the content expressed by the utterance
Too, people disagree with the assessment that what John said at the context of utterance was false (M = 2.21, SD = 1.99), and they disagree with the claim that it stands in need of retraction (M = 2.34, SD = 1.92)
The findings presented in this paper are quite clear: In three experiments modelled on a scenario which truth relativists present as data in favour of their semantics, empirical data proper suggests otherwise

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Indexical contextualismIndexical contextualism is a semantic theory according to which claims involving predicates of personal taste such as ‘delicious’, ‘tasty’ or ‘fun’ are context-dependent. The relevant standard of taste of, say, ‘Spinach is delicious’ is determined by the context of utterance, and it manifests itself, albeit tacitly, at the level of the content expressed by the utterance. Indexical contextualism is a semantic theory according to which claims involving predicates of personal taste such as ‘delicious’, ‘tasty’ or ‘fun’ are context-dependent.. The relevant standard of taste of, say, ‘Spinach is delicious’ is determined by the context of utterance, and it manifests itself, albeit tacitly, at the level of the content expressed by the utterance. Claims of this sort are somewhat analogous. What a sentence like ‘I am hungry’ expresses can vary across contexts, since different contexts of utterance may supply different values for the first-person pronoun, that is, different speakers. Indexical contextualists take (1) to mean (2): 1. Spinach is tasty

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion