Abstract
Indexical contextualism (IC) is an account of predicates of personal taste (PPTs) which views the semantic content of PPTs as sensitive to the context in which they are uttered, by virtue of their containing an implicit indexical element. Should the context of utterance change, the semantic content carried by the PPT will also change. The main aim of this paper is to show that IC is unable to provide a satisfactory account of PPTs. I look at what I call “pure” IC accounts and show that because they fail to respect empirical data regarding disagreements where neither person is at fault, known as “faultless disagreements”, they must be rejected. I then go on to consider what I call IC “plus” (IC+) accounts. Such accounts attempt to account for the faultlessness of such disagreements using a simple indexical semantics, whilst introducing some extra ingredient to account for the disagreement part. I focus on two main versions of IC+: Gutzmann’s (in: Meier, van Wijnberger-Huitink (eds) Subjective meaning: alternatives to relativism, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2016) expressivist account, and López de Sa’s (in: García-Carpintero, Kölbel (eds) Relative truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008; Erkenntnis 80(Supp 1):153–165, 2015) presuppositional account. I discuss some internal worries with these accounts before going on to some final remarks about IC/IC+ in general. I conclude that neither IC nor IC+ can provide a satisfactory semantics for PPTs.
Highlights
Indexical contextualism (IC)1 is an account of predicates of personal taste (PPTs) which views the semantic content of PPTs as sensitive to the context in which they are uttered, by virtue of their containing an implicit indexical element
We have seen that pure IC tends to reject the very possibility of faultless disagreement
After showing that semantic blindness is not a good enough explanation for our intuitions, especially in the light of the linguistic data, we considered IC? accounts which seem to respect empirical findings
Summary
Indexical contextualism (IC) is an account of predicates of personal taste (PPTs) which views the semantic content of PPTs as sensitive to the context in which they are uttered, by virtue of their containing an implicit indexical element. Pure IC theories are unable to give an account of disagreements where neither speaker is at fault It will be shown how pure IC is only able to account for the disagreement part or the faultlessness part-not both. IC cannot ignore faultless disagreement and must have an account of it Because they are unable to do so, I suggest that pure IC must be rejected. After my discussion of pure IC, I will consider what I call Indexical Contextualist ‘‘Plus’’ (IC?) theories, where the faultlessness aspect is accounted for using a simple indexical semantics, but the disagreement aspect is accounted for by an extra ingredient. They respect empirical data, by attempting to account for faultless disagreement. I conclude that neither IC nor IC? can provide a satisfactory semantics for PPTs
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