Our results can be summarized in two claims: on the one hand, we replicated Solt’s result for the classes that she tested, which is good. On the other hand, the adjectives that we tested (which we may simply call moral adjectives) were found to pattern with the adjectives in the EVAL
class. Our initial hypothesis that speakers might have stronger realist or objectivist intuitions about morality than say, about taste or aesthetics was not confirmed by these results. However, introducing moral adjectives into the picture ought to change slightly Solt’s characterization of evaluative adjectives. In this last section, we discuss the possibility that these results about moral adjectives call for a refinement of the notion of judge-dependency.
These results strongly suggest counting moral adjectives within the EVAL class. This is sup-ported by Solt’s general characterization of the EVALclass as those adjectives whose orderings are determined, or mediated by some ‘inherent human element’. So much seems true of moral statements—that their truth depends on a human subject.
However, Solt’s characterization of the different “roles” that judges can play does not readily apply to moral thought: recall that Solt claims that the extension of judge-dependent adjectives is mediated by a judge, who is the subject of some experience, perception or emotion. Moral judgment, however, does not require any of those things. Consider the contrast between the following dialogues and (5.3):
(5.2) a. The cake is tastier than the chocolate cookies.
b. No, the chocolate cookies are tastier.
(5.36) a. Those sneakers are uglier than the sneakers you tried on earlier.
b. No, the earlier sneakers were uglier.
(5.37) a. This cat is happier than that dog.
b. No, the dog is the happier one of them.
(5.3) a. Bill leads a more ethical lifestyle than Amy.
b. No, Amy does.
In all these disagreements, an OPINION answer (i.e., thinking that the issue is a matter of opinion) could be driven by considering that each speaker is a different judge with a different—
and valid—opinion about the matter. Moreover, this can be rooted on these speakers having different experiences, perceptions or feelings about the matter: in (5.2), speakers have both tried both foods and their tastes diverge; in (5.36) they have different aesthetic appreciation of the sneakers; and in (5.37) they have a different “emotional appraisal”, about the pets. But none of this applies straightforwardly to (5.3). To have a moral disagreement, it is not necessary to have different experiences or perceptions. Speakers in (5.3) need not have experienced in any way how Bill and Amy behave, nor do they need to see what emotions they appreciate in their behavior, nor what emotions Bill and Amy’s behavior causes in them. They are judging the matter differently, and people take them to be entitled to their divergent opinion (as witness our results). But it is not clearwhatexactly could their divergence be about.12
12Perhaps this applies to (5.36) as well: after all, it isn’t clear that two people looking at the same two pairs of sneakers could have a different perception of them. Consider, in this respect, the contrast withtasty: in (5.2), the experience upon which the evaluation rests can differ from speaker to speaker. You and I may perceive the taste of sugar differently, and that can interfere with our perception of the taste of chocolate in different ways, let’s say.
We want to close this chapter by pointing out two possible avenues to explore. First, recall that in previous chapters, we have defended that evaluative (including moral) adjectives can mobi-lize different priorities or preferences for action, which we modelled in terms of PLANS (i.e., sets of hyperplans). We can understand the disagreement between the speakers in (5.3), which is a disagreement aboutethical, in terms of speakers advocating for different moral norms. And in turn, we can understand different moral norms in terms of plans that each speaker advocates.
It need not be a disagreement about their experiences, emotions or perceptions, but simply a disagreement about how to conduct themselves. This type of disagreement would fall under what is sometimes known asDISAGREEMENT IN ATTITUDE(Gibbard2003; Ridge2013,2014;
Stevenson1963).
A disagreement in attitude is a disagreement about what to do, rather than a disagreement about how things stand. Applied to dialogues like (5.3), the idea is that speakers in these dialogues are expressing conflicting practical attitudes (see §2.3). By utteringBill leads a more ethical lifestyle than Amy, a speaker Aexpresses their support of Bill’s lifestyle over Amy’s;
by replying things like no, I disagree, etc., a speaker B can either express rejection of Bill’s lifestyle over Amy’s or simply rejectA’s support of it. Speakers in this type of dialogue disagree about what attitude to adopt, not about what is the case. Furthermore, under this conception of the disagreement in (5.3), the subjectivity of these dialogues is preserved since, even though speakers are disputing what lifestyle to support or reject, participants may be eschewing the idea that there is a single correct answer to that question.
If view of this, Solt’s characterization of judge-dependency should be refined in order to make room for the possibility that moral disagreement depends on advocating different plans for action. Judge-dependency cannot be reduced to experiential-semantics (Bylinina2017).
Often times however, the different judge “roles” appear together. For instance, PPTs have both an experiential semantics and carry evaluative meaning. Tasty, for instance, both requires an experience of and positively evaluates whatever falls in its extension. But for some adjectives, that is not the case: easy (one of the EVAL adjectives tested by Solt) arguably requires an experiencer, but not an evaluator—since calling something easy can be neutral with respect to its value. By contrast, some moral adjectives, such as ethical, do not require an experiencer even though they carry evaluative meaning.
Secondly, note that at least some moral adjectives also admitbeneficiaryarguments (which are alsofor/toPPs):
(5.38) a. The members of the committee were generous to Ann.
b. Bill’s friends will be loyal to him.
c. Mary’s advice is important for Sue.
Just like experiencerfor/to-PPs, beneficiary arguments seem to be inseparable from the corre-sponding predicate:
(5.39) a. Bill’s friends will be loyal to him to the end b. # Bill’s friends will be loyal to the end to him.
But in the case of an aesthetic evaluation, the perceptual experience upon which the evaluation rests is shared. In (5.36), there is a clear sense in which people areseeing the same thing. In light of this, there is some reason to drop the assumption that aesthetic adjectives belong in the ‘experiencer’ class, and perhaps we should consider them closer to moral adjectives than to PPTs and emotional predicates. We leave this for future consideration.
Nonetheless, beneficiary arguments are distinguishable from experiencerfor/to-PPs by the fact that the sentences in which they appear do not entail that the person referenced in the PP has any experience or perception whatsoever. In (5.38a) for instance, there is no inference that Ann experienced the generosity of the committee members in any way—all that the sentence requires is that she benefits from it.
Beneficiary arguments are also distinguishable from the adjunct-like doxasticfor/to-PPs that we discussed earlier. Recall that those PPs were doxastic operators, equivalent to according to x or in x’s opinion. If beneficiary arguments were adjunct-like doxastic operators, then the following constructions should sound contradictory (contrast (5.40) with (5.41)—unethical does not take this type of argument):
(5.40) a. The members of the committee were generous to Ann although she doesn’t think so.
b. Bill’s friends will be loyal to him although he doesn’t realize it.
c. Mary’s advice is important for Sue although she disagrees.
(5.41) # Torture is unethical for me although I don’t think so.
Beneficiary arguments have hardly been noticed in the literature on evaluatives (but see Sto-janovic2016, pp. 19–20 and Schaffer 2011, p.196, n.24). A divergence in (implicit) benefi-ciaries could be another reason why participants might be judging that at least some of the dialogues in our experimental items are subjective disagreements. This is different from a di-vergence in plans, or moral standards, or anything like this. Because two speakers could have exactly the same set of norms in mind when they are making a value judgment and yet be thinking of different beneficiaries. This might be especially pertinent when the disagreement involves thin evaluatives likegoodandbad. We leave further considerations about beneficiary arguments for future work.
5.5 Recap & conclusion
In this chapter, we have discussed Solt’s2018experimental paradigm to test the ordering sub-jectivity of adjectives. We noted that Solt did not test for broadly moral adjectives, which were an interesting class vis-à-vis her account of why certain adjectives are clearly subject to or-dering subjectivity. Our results confirmed that moral adjectives fall in this class as well. This called for an enrichment of the notion of judge-dependency in order to make room for the pos-sibility that, beyond having conflicting experiences, perceptions or emotions, speakers can have conflicting priorities or preferences for action. We refer the reader back to Chapter3-4for how this can be formally modelled, and in the following chapter we will see how a hyperplan-based semantics can help explain how evaluative sentences behave in conversation.
Appendix: experiment materials
This appendix provides the list of critical and control items used in the experiment.
• Critical items:
(1) a. What Rose did is morally better than what her boss did.
b. No, I disagree, what her boss did was better.
(2) a. The previous regime was more moral than the government that was estab-lished after the coup.
b. I disagree, the new government was more moral.
(3) a. Bill leads a more ethical lifestyle than Amy.
b. I disagree, Amy’s lifestyle is more ethical
(4) a. The current CEO of that company behaved more virtuously than the previ-ous one.
b. I disagree, the previous CEO was more virtuous.
(5) a. General McAdam was more coward than General Smith in that particular battle.
b. No, General Smith was more coward.
(6) a. The members of the committee were more generous than the invited par-ticipants.
b. No, the invited participants were more generous!
(7) a. Bill’s friends are more loyal than Mary’s.
b. No, Mary’s friends are more loyal.
(8) a. The treasurer turned out to be more honest than the president.
b. I don’t agree with you, the president was more honest.
(9) a. It’s more important to follow Mary’s than Bill’s advice.
b. I don’t agree with you, Bill’s advice is more important.
(10) a. What she did is more justified than what he did to her.
b. I don’t agree, what he did is more justified.
(11) a. Jane acted more rationally than Joe in the aftermath of the tragedy.
b. I disagree, Joe was more rational than Jane.
(12) a. Everyone knows that Ann’s work is more valuable than Jim’s.
b. I don’t agree with you, Jim’s work is of far more value.
• Control items (taken from Solt2018):
(1) a. Frank is taller than his friend Jimmy.
b. No, Jimmy is the taller one.
(2) a. The old Ipad is more expensive than the new one.
b. No, the new one is the more expensive device.
(3) a. The movie theater is emptier today than it was yesterday.
b. No it isn’t. It was emptier yesterday.
(4) a. The wine bottle is fuller than the champagne bottle.
b. No, the champagne bottle is fuller.
(5) a. The vegetable soup is saltier than the chicken soup.
b. No, the chicken soup is saltier.
(6) a. The green towel is wetter than the red one.
b. No, the red towel is wetter.
(7) a. Caryl and Tina both have blond hair, but Caryl’s is lighter than Tina’s.
b. No, Tina’s hair is definitely lighter than Caryl’s.
(8) a. I would rather use the yellow pillow—it’s harder than the white one.
b. No, the white pillow is the harder one of the two.
(9) a. The cake is tastier than the chocolate cookies.
b. No, the chocolate cookies are tastier.
(10) a. Those sneakers are uglier than the sneakers you tried on earlier.
b. No, the earlier sneakers were uglier.
(11) a. This cat is happier than that dog.
b. No, the dog is the happier one of them.
(12) a. The math professor is more intelligent than the physics professor.
b. No, I disagree. The physics professor is the more intelligent one.
Chapter 6
The Dynamics of value judgment
Summary1
Evaluative sentences are by default used to make attributions of value. In the appropriate setting however, some evaluative sentences can also be used to express judgments of fact. In this chapter, I argue for adynamicimplementation of the non-factualist framework presented in previous chapters as
offering the best account of such double uses of evaluative sentences.
6.1 Introduction
In previous chapters, I have defended that evaluative expressions in general, and adjectives in particular, have a non-factualist semantics. Roughly, this means that when we use evaluative language we are not describing the world, but rather, we are engaging in a kind of practical deliberation; we are not discussing how the world is, but how we want it to be and how we plan to behave, in order to make it so.
I have not, however, been very explicit about how using evaluative language can do this; that is, how asserting an evaluative sentence at some context impacts the conversation. In Chapter3, we gave a semantics for a propositional language,LV, containing evaluative operators⇑and⇓ (as well as the binary operators≥,>and≈) such that they operated on hyperplans, which were assumed to be part of the intensional models relative to which expressions are evaluated for truth. And in Chapter4we saw how to apply this type of model to natural language evaluative adjectives. But we have not really said much about the philosophical significance of these models, nor of how evaluatives behave in conversation. The purpose of this chapter is to amend this. We start from the idea—already hinted at in §3.2—that hyperplans represent practical commitments; and that we can model the conversational impact of uttering evaluative sentences as effecting changes in a parameter on the conversational common ground that stands for the practical commitments shared by speakers.
That is the general picture that will be defended; but this chapter has also a more specific empirical purpose, namely to show that certain evaluative sentences can also be used to impart descriptive information, just like non-evaluative sentences. It follows that the full semantic story for evaluative language needs to combine the hyperplans semantics explored in previous
1This chapter has benefitted greatly from extensive discussions with Carla Umbach and Mora Maldonado. Any errors are of course mine.
chapters with a traditional intensional semantics, in which evaluative sentences are associated with sets of possible worlds. We will see how to do this in the coming sections.
Let us start, then, by challenging the following two intuitively attractive pieces of common wisdom about evaluative sentences:
• Piece of common wisdom #1: evaluative sentences are used by speakers to make at-tributions of value, that is, to make statements whereby they express their sentiment or opinion (which, remember, need not be outright positive or negative, cf. §4.4.2).
This is an example:
(6.1) Tina’s is a good car.
• Piece of common wisdom #2: speakers uttering evaluative sentencesfail to make value attributions only in very special circumstances. To wit: (i) when those sentences are embedded under certain operators; (ii) when they are usedexocentrically(that is, when the speaker is taking someone else’s perspective, Lasersohn2005) or (iii) when used in free indirect speech.
These are some examples:
(6.2) According to Patti, Tina’s is a good car.
(6.3) (Context: Polly, talking about her daughter Tina’s new toy car) Tina’s a good car, the kids in her class are all super jealous.
(6.4) Nina thought about it for a minute and took her phone out to call Tina. After all, Tina’s was a good car, and the price was just right.
In contrast with (6.1), the speakers in (6.2)-(6.4) do not express their own sentiment or opinion about Tina’s car by using those sentences. Rather, they explicitly report or convey the opinion or stance of someone else.
Consider now the following quote from Hare’sThe Language of Morals:
If I say to someone ‘M is a good motor-car’, and he himself has not seen, and knows nothing ofM, but does on the other hand know what sorts of motor-car we are accustomed to call ‘good’ (knows what is the accepted standard of goodness in motor-cars), he undoubtedly receives information from my remark about what sort of motor-car it is. He will complain that I have misled him, if he subsequently discovers that M will not go over 30 m.p.h., or uses as much oil as petrol, or is covered with rust, or has large holes in the roof. His reason for complaining will be the same as it would have been if I had said that the car was red and he subsequently discovered that it was black. I should have led him to expect the motor-car to be of a certain description when in fact it was of a quite different description (Hare 1952, p. 113, quoted relevantly in Umbach2016, p. 147).
Hare is considering the possibility of using (6.1) in a purely descriptive way, that is, to make a statement of fact (similar to sayingM is a red motor-car) and not a judgment of value—against piece of common wisdom #1. And he is saying that one can do this without embedding (6.1), adopting someone else’s perspective or using free indirect speech—against piece of common wisdom #2.
Moreover, Hare claims that such a descriptive use of an evaluative adjective like good arises in a particular contextual setup: a situation in which the audience ‘has not seen, and knows nothing of M, but... ...knows what is the accepted standard of goodness in motor-cars’. In contemporary parlance, a descriptive use requires that the properties of carM are notcommon ground, but a certain standard of goodness in motor-cars is.2 Hare, however, does not not describe what the common ground would have to be like in order for that sentence to have its regular, evaluative use. Nonetheless, it seems that if we “flip” the common ground, so that the properties ofM are shared while the accepted standard is not, we obtain the usual situation in which an utterance of a sentence likeM is a good motor-carexpresses a judgment of value.
(6.5) a. (The standard for motor-cars is common ground; the properties ofM are not):
M is a good motor-car. ≈descriptive
b. (The properties ofM are common ground; the standard for motor-cars is not):
M is a good motor-car. ≈evaluative
That contrast is structurally identical to that observed in C. Barker2002betweenmetalinguistic anddescriptiveuses of dimensional adjectives liketall.3 As Barker notes, while dimensional adjectives are most commonly used to impart information about the world (in this case, about people’s heights), they can also be used to impartmetalinguisticinformation, that is, informa-tion about the how to use the wordtall.
(6.6) a. (The threshold for tallness is common ground; Feynman’s height is not):
Feynman is tall. ≈descriptive
b. (Feynman’s height is common ground, the threshold for tallness is not):
Feynman is tall. ≈metalinguistic
The contextual setup that gives rise to Barker’s descriptive use oftallis almost identical to the setup that gives rise to Hare’s descriptive use of good. Conversely, the contextual setup that gives rise to what Barker’smetalinguisticuse oftallis identical to the kind of context that, we hypothesize, gives rise to the standard, evaluative use ofgood. It would appear suggestive, then,
The contextual setup that gives rise to Barker’s descriptive use oftallis almost identical to the setup that gives rise to Hare’s descriptive use of good. Conversely, the contextual setup that gives rise to what Barker’smetalinguisticuse oftallis identical to the kind of context that, we hypothesize, gives rise to the standard, evaluative use ofgood. It would appear suggestive, then,