Semantic contextualism vs. relativism about evaluatives

Let’s turn now to the second axis along which these proposals differ, namely the various ways of implementing the type of semantics that I am interested in. Adopting plans as the new ingredient in our “enriched” semantics, the question arises as to how to implement a plan-sensitive semantics. This takes us into the contextualism-relativism debate (see Stojanovic 2017a,b).

We can organize different theoretical options around two questions. The first one is: how do different plans affect the meaning of evaluative sentences? There are two principal answers to that question. The most straightforward is: by adopting some kind ofCONTEXTUALISM, which is the view that evaluatives encode a contextual sensitivity to plans as part of their lexical meaning.³ The standard way to cash this out is to claim that those expressions behave like indexicals (1989) (some authors call this view ‘indexical’ contextualism). Just as the meaning of a word liketodaycan be factored out in a constant, functional description of a day relative to the context of use (its KaplanianCHARACTER, i.e.,the day of the context) and a variable day depending on the context (its KaplanianCONTENT, i.e.,February 26th), the meaning of a word likegood could be factored out into a Kaplanian character (i.e. supported by the plan of the context), and the actual varying plan of whoever are taking part in the conversation.

Contextualists would hold that an utterance of a sentence like (3.1) states a property of a contextually-determined plan, namely that it is a plan to support the act of volunteering. Thus, (3.1) would be truth-conditionally equivalent to a sentence like (3.5):

(3.5) Volunteering is supported by the plan of the context.

A further question then arises: what isthe plan of the context? Is it the speaker’s? The hearer’s?

Both of them? Each of these options faces different challenges. Briefly: if the speaker describes

3Contextualism about different types of expressions has been vindicated by authors like DeRose (1992;1991), Kratzer (2012), Stojanovic (2007), Glanzberg (2007), Sæbø (2009), Moltmann (2010) von Fintel & Gillies (2011) or Silk (2016,2017).

either their own or their hearer’s plan, then disagreement vanishes, as different speakers engag-ing in disagreement would be expressengag-ing semantically compatible propositions, and therefore talking past each other.⁴ If, on the other hand, speakers are describing their mutual plan so to speak, there is a sense in which their utterances are unwarranted—most of the time, we cannot know what the evaluative stance of our interlocutor is and yet that does not seem to prevent us from making value judgments (a thorough review of these problems for contextualism can be found in Lasersohn2005, esp. §§3-4).

Furthermore, there is a general difficulty for any version of contextualism that was raised early on by proponents of expressivism like Ayer (1946): it purports to understand evaluative sen-tences as though they were descriptions of plans, rather than avowals thereof. This contrast was presented briefly in §2.3.2, where we discussed the difference between expressing an non-doxastic attitude and expressing a belief that one has a non-non-doxastic attitude. Since contextu-alism incorporates a reference to plans as part of the regular, descriptive proposition expressed by an utterance of an evaluative sentence at a context, evaluative sentences turn out to do the latter in a contextualist semantics: they express beliefs that one has a non-doxastic attitude, in this case a plan, rather than the endorsement or avowal of such plan. To see this more clearly, consider the contrast between the following sentences:

(3.5) Volunteering is supported by the plan of the context.

(3.6) Let’s support volunteering.

The basic criticism directed by non-factualists at contextualists is that, by assigning sentences like (3.1) a semantics along the lines of (3.5), they lose track of the fact that the communicative function of evaluative sentences seems much closer to sentences like (3.6)—where a plan is proposed or endorsed by the speaker for the hearer’s uptake—than to sentences like (3.5)—

where a plan is merely described. Any view that incorporates a reference to plans as part of a regular, descriptive propositional content is prey to this criticism (see Gibbard2003, 85 and ff for discussion of this point).

The least straightforward answer to the question ‘how do different plans affect the meaning of evaluative sentences?’ (and one that avoids the previous difficulty) is to say that different contexts do not change the Kaplanian content of (3.1), which is stable across contexts. Nev-ertheless, again following Kaplan, one and the same Kaplanian content receives different truth values at different CIRCUMSTANCES OF EVALUATION (Kaplan 1989). So a different way of incorporating plans into our semantics is to consider them part of the circumstances of evalu-ation of sentences. This is semantic RELATIVISM (Coppock2018; Egan 2012; Kölbel 2003;

Kolbel2002; Lasersohn2005; MacFarlane2014; Stephenson2007b).

The relevant analogy for this family of view is the relativity of propositions to possible worlds.

Consider a regular, descriptive sentence like (3.7):

4There are ways out of this objection; a possibility that has recently gained traction is that speakers expressing compatible contextualist propositions could nevertheless be having ametalinguisticdisagreement about how to use evaluative terms. The basic idea behind this position is that expressing compatible propositions need not entail that speakers cannot have a dispute, and therefore, that contextualism can, after all, accommodate disagreement (C. Barker2013; Plunkett and Sundell2013; Umbach2016, see). A different possibility is that, in conversations about evaluative matters, it is presupposed that speakers share the relevant evaluative parameter. This is called a

PRESSUPPOSITION OF COMMONALITY(Blome-Tillmann2009; López de Sa2015). If speakers presuppose that they share a plan, then their disagreement could turn on the content of their shared plan. These positions face further problems. For discussion, see Stojanovic2017a.

(3.7) Volunteering is widespread.

(3.7) expresses one and the same proposition at every context of use. However, it has different truth-values at different possible worlds. In the actual world, where volunteering is not that widespread, that proposition is (arguably) false. But things might have been different, and un-der different circumstances, the proposition expressed by (3.7) might be true. Importantly, note that the fact that we can evaluate one and the same sentence at different circumstances of evalu-ation does not imply that (3.7) has a different Kaplanian content at each of those circumstances of evaluation, but only that it has a different truth-value. Authors who adopt this option hold that the truth of an evaluative sentence like (3.1) is sensitive to plans in just the same way that the truth of (3.7) is sensitive to possible worlds. (3.1) always has as its content the proposition that volunteering is good, simpliciter. But that proposition can be true or false depending on the plans of the context in which we evaluate it.

A further axis of variability concerning semantic relativism is: what is the appropriate con-text from which to evaluate the truth of a given evaluative sentence? The most obvious an-swer is: the context of use. If relativism is defined in this way, then the context-sensitivity of evaluatives is not substantially different from other forms of context-dependency attested in natural language (such as e.g., sensitivity to times). MacFarlane (2014) advocates for an-other possibility: rather than holding that the appropriate context from which to evaluate the truth of an evaluative sentence like (3.1) is the context in which that sentence isuttered, we can consider the possibility that the right context is the context in which an utterance of such sentence isassessed. This proposal has been dubbedASSESSMENT RELATIVITY. This form of context-dependency is radically different from the kind of context-sensitivity attested in natural language, and therefore more difficult and problematic to defend.

Nonetheless, that is the type of position that we want to defend in this work. That being said, it is not my objective to launch a full-fledged defense of MacFarlane’s views here, nor to further explore its virtues. Moreover, an important point of contrast between his view and mine is that MacFarlane’s view is pluralist, whereas the view defended here is a monist view, according to which the single semantic parameter that a semantics for evaluatives requires is a plan parameter. But before moving on, let me stress briefly the aspect that I consider most attractive of this type of semantics. This aspect arises when we consider a disagreement scenario such as the following:

(3.8) a. Annag: Volunteering is good.

b. Liam: No, it’s not.

Suppose that we eavesdrop on that conversation. Consider Annag’s utterance, and assume that the correct semantics for good is relativist. This means that the truth of (3.8a) depends on someone’s plans, even though plans are not part of the proposition expressed by her utterance.

Now, the question arises as to whose plans are appropriate for assessing the truth of (3.8a). In a standard relativist framework (that of Lasersohn2005; Stephenson2007bor Kolbel2002), the relevant plans would be Annag’s. But suppose that we, the eavesdroppers, disagree—we think that volunteering is not a good thing to do. Our intuition about Annag’s utterance, then, is that she said something false (and that Liam said something true). Assessment relativity respects this intuition, and predicts that, in the situation just described, Annag’s utterance expresses a falsity. This is because, from the eavesdropper’s point of view, the correct plans relative to which to assess Annag’s utterance are the eavesdropper’s, not Annag’s.

By making the truth-value of evaluative sentences always depend on the assessor’s plans, this type of semantics guarantees two things: first, the truth-value of any evaluative sentence will not depend on who utters that sentence, but on the plans of whoever is evaluating it. In practice, this means that plan-sensitivity works like possible world-sensitivity: just as a descriptive sentence (such as volunteering is widespread) is true or false at a possible world regardless of when, where or by whom it is uttered, an evaluative sentence is true or false relative to a plan regardless of when, where or by whom it is uttered. And secondly, by adopting a semantics whereby plans and possible worlds can vary independently of each other, the truth of evaluative sentences does not depend (merely) on how the world is: holding the possible world fixed, different choices of plans will make evaluative sentences true or false. This respects the basic assumption behind an

“enriched” semantics, namely that knowing what the world is like is not enough for determining truth conditions.

Let us note, however, that assessment sensitivity approaches are not free from controversy.

Stojanovic (2007,2017a) makes a compelling case that this type of semantics has trouble ac-commodating the intuitions behind disagreement dialogues like (3.8), which is one of the main purported advantages of this view advertised by MacFarlane. Disagreement is not the focus of this work, and intuitions about truth are markedly shaky, so we will leave it at this.