Faultless disagreement without contradiction: expressive-relativism and predicates of personal taste

Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (1):31-64 (2023)
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Abstract

In this paper we motivate and develop a new approach to predicates of personal taste within the framework of semantic relativism. Our primary goal is to explain faultless disagreement—the phenomenon where two parties disagree, yet both have uttered something true—which is often thought to arise from the use of predicates of personal taste. We combine semantic relativism with an expressivist semantics to yield a novel hybrid theory which we call _Expressive-Relativism_. We motivate the theory by rehearsing a famous objection to Relativism from Frege which we interpret as severing the connection between contradiction and disagreement for relativists. Endorsing the objection, we respond by enriching relativism with an expressivist component which explains disagreement over matters of taste as a refusal to share perspectives rather than as resting on contradiction.

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Author Profiles

Graham Stevens
University of Manchester
Justina Berškytė
University of Manchester

References found in this work

Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics and Epistemology of Demonstratives and other Indexicals.David Kaplan - 1989 - In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan. Oxford University Press. pp. 481-563.
Thinking how to live.Allan Gibbard - 2003 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Relativism and Monadic Truth.Herman Cappelen & John Hawthorne - 2009 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. Edited by John Hawthorne.

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