Replies to Raffman, Stanley, and Wright

Abstract

Replies to Raffman, Stanley, and Wright John MacFarlane University of California, Berkeley I am extremely grateful to all of my commentators for taking the time to engage with my book, and for their thoughtful and incisive remarks. Because of space constraints, I will have to be selective in my replies. Reply to Raffman Diana Raffman pushes back on some of the judgments that I use to argue for a relativist treatment of “tasty” and “might,” against more standard contextualist views. She denies that it would be appropriate to respond to an assertion of (1) Licorice is tasty by saying “No, it isn’t” or “You’re mistaken, it’s not.” I’ll concede that there are several ways in which these responses might be “inappropriate,” in context. They might be too harsh or confrontational, or they might pointlessly start arguments. But a defender of (solipsistic) contextualism needs to go beyond saying that these responses are inappropriate. She needs to argue that they are false, and that the corresponding affirmations—“Yes, it is” and “You’re right, it is”—are true. That does not strike me as plausible. If you find licorice disgusting, you cannot reply to an assertion of (1) by saying “Yes,” or “That’s true,” or “I didn’t realize that.” On the other hand, these replies are perfectly appropriate as responses to (2) Licorice is tasty to me How can the solipsistic contextualist explain this difference? Raffman’s observation that even an explicitly subjective assertion like (2) can start an argument (grounded in a disagreement about what tastes the parties should have) can help the contextualist explain how (1) can be the focus of disagreements. But it does nothing to explain the differences between (1) and (2). Raffman suggests that when Sally says