Propositions, Clarification, and Faultless Disagreement

Abstract

Both contextualist and relativist solutions to the faultless disagreement problem clash with our intuitions: contextualism, with the intuition that two people arguing about a matter oftaste are in fact disagreeing; and relativism, with the intuition that the truth of a proposition is independent of who is evaluating it. In this paper, I will outline a solution that explains our intuition of disagreement without clashing with our intuitions about truth. I will do this by proposing a definition of propositions as ideally clarified assertoric content, having one absolute truth-value that does not vary across any contexts. I will argue that this definition is plausible, that it best serves the purposes of philosophy, and that it best solves the problem of faultless disagreement.