Subjective disagreement

Thirdly, as discussed at more length in §2.2.1 and in Chapter 5, attributions of value easily give rise to so-calledFAULTLESSorSUBJECTIVE DISAGREEMENTS, that is, disagreements in which no party appears to be making any kind of mistake and where the matter under discussion does not depend, or at least not obviously, on some objective fact of the matter.¹² By contrast,

11By way of curiosity, the oddness of accusing someone who is voicing their opinion of lying is immediately reminiscent of Bob Dylan’s famousreplyto a heckler calling him ‘Judas’ after “going electric”:

Heckler: Judas!

Dylan: I don’t believe you... you’re a liar!

12See n.2on Chapter2for references on faultless/subjective disagreement.

statements of fact do not in general give rise to subjective disagreements; that is, in most cases it is assumed that either speaker is mistaken and there is a determinate truth of the matter that decides who is right. The disagreement between Milica and Camila in (6.10a) does not seem subjective, while the disagreement in (6.10b) does:

(6.10) a. Milica: The Eiffel Tower is taller than the Shard in London. ≈not subjective Camila: No, the Shard is taller.

b. Milica: Andouillette is tastier than haggis. ≈subjective Camila: No, haggis is tastier.

We can formulate this property in the following way:

Definition 23 (Subjectivity) An utterance is subjective just in case a disagreement with it ap-pearsprima faciesubjective.

To see this, consider a disagreement dialogue in the first context:

(6.7b) (Vis-à-vis):

Amir: The Mercedes is better than the Audi. ≈subjective Mora: I disagree.

On what grounds might Mora be disagreeing with Amir? Assuming that both her and Amir have access to the same information about both cars, it is most natural to think that their disagreement turns on what standard to adopt, Mora’s or Amir’s. And in principle, both of them seem equally justified in evaluating relative to their standard (see C. Barker 2013, 242, for a similar point), and for this reason, the disagreement between them appears subjective.

By contrast, consider a similar disagreement in (Experts), once that Mora learns about the cars:

(6.7c) (Experts+ Mora has studied the cars):

Amir: The Mercedes is better than the Audi. ≈not subjective Mora: I disagree.

Again, what might ground Mora’s dissent in this context? It is reasonable to think that Mora is either challenging her and Amir’s common standard, or she has independent information about the cars, and she is using that information to challenge Amir’s claim. In the first case, the disagreement would appear subjective, but the context would no longer be one in which Mora and Amir share a standard, since Mora would be trying to change the standard with her utterance. The second option seems more natural; but then, it seems that their disagreement would turn on the properties of the cars and not on what standard to adopt. Therefore, their disagreement would not be subjective.¹³

13 Note that, up to here, we have been usingsubjectiveto pick out a class of adjectives (those that we called lexical or ordering-subjective in §2.2.1; Chapter5) or even more specifically, particular forms of certain adjectives (cf. positive form subjectivity discussed in §2.2.1). Subjectivity might have appeared to be a property of certain adjectives, or of particular forms of those adjectives. Now, by contrast, we speak of utterances, not words, being subjective. Are we being equivocal? No: as we said before, for difficult to be subjective is for unembedded sentences containing the word difficult to beliable to appear in disagreement dialogues that would naturally be characterized as subjective (perhaps by one of our participants in Chapter5). Therefore,paceour previous usage, subjectivity is not a property of words—it is a property of certain standardized situations in which people disagree, or seem to disagree about the extension of those words, such as (Vis-à-vis). When we turn to non-standard situations containing the same dialogues, such as (Experts), the subjectivity fades away, which suggests that subjectivity was not, after all, a property of the words that we have been calling “subjective”.

One might object, however, that in contexts like (Experts) where interlocutors share a standard, they can still have a subjective disagreement. This might be because the standard is not fully determined, in the sense that it does not apply to all potential objects of evaluation; or because the objects under consideration are borderline cases for the application of the common standard.

However that is, we can control for these situations simply by assuming that the relevant stan-dards are not underdetermined nor vague in the way just described. That is, we need to assume that for any pair of cars <a, b >and evaluative standarde, it is a determinate matter whether the pair<a, b>is in the extension of the relationbetter thanrelative to standarde. If this qual-ification is built into all contexts, then only disagreements in which the standard is not shared would appear subjective (this is equivalent to assuming that each standard about cars induces a total orderon its domain, which might be taken to be unrealistic. Nonetheless, for our purposes it is a harmless idealization).

6.2.4 Action-guidance

Lastly, attributions of value alter thepractical commitmentsof interlocutors, while statements of fact do not. This occurs in virtue of the fact, discussed at length in §2.3.1, that evaluative adjectives areACTION-GUIDING. To see this, consider what happens in a context where (6.11a) and (6.11b) are accepted, respectively.

(6.11) a. It is cruel to hide your office mates’ keys. ↝practical commitment b. It is uncommon to hide your office mates’ keys. ↝̸practical commitment If interlocutors accept (6.11a), they are adopting a certain practical stance against performing the kind of action under evaluation, namely hiding office mates’ keys. The attitude is one of rejection or avoidance, in virtue of the fact thatcruelis a negative evaluative adjective. One way to see this is that there would be a strong incoherence if interlocutors who agreed on (6.11a) still went on to hide their office mates’ keys. In contrast to this, if (6.11b) were accepted in a conversation, there is no sense in which interlocutors would be adopting any practical stance towards that action—thinking that (6.11b) is true is compatible with any practical attitude that one might have towards that action.

Let us call this theACTION-GUIDANCEof an utterance:

Definition 24 (Action-guidance) An utterance is action-guiding just in case its uptake changes the practical commitments of participants in the conversation.

The capacity to alter the practical commitments of interlocutors is a feature that characterizes evaluative language generally, and it has long been observed and discussed by philosophers working in metanormative theory. The production and uptake of value ascriptions involves the adoption of practical commitments on the part of interlocutors, that is, commitments about how interlocutors are disposed to act.¹⁴

With respect to our examples, the observation is the following: in (Vis-à-vis), the practical com-mitments of interlocutors change as a result of Mora’s uptake of Amir’s utterance; in (Experts) however, the practical commitments of the interlocutors remain unaltered after Mora’s uptake of Amir’s utterance.

14See §2.3.1in Chapter2.

Let us elaborate. If in (Vis-à-vis) Mora is convinced by Amir’s statement that the Mercedes is better than the Audi, then she adopts a commitment to orient her action in a way that coheres with her newly acquired standard. This can be spelled out in a variety of ways: Mora might seek to buy a car like the Mercedes, or she will recommend it to other people over cars like the Audi; if given the choice, she will choose to drive or ride on a car like the Mercedes rather than the Audi, etc. These are all commitments that Amir (in (Vis-à-vis)) presumably had already, and that cohere with his antecedently held opinion that the Mercedes is better than the Audi.

Note that, if Amir had claimed that the Mercedes was bigger than the Audi and Mora accepted that, no practical commitments would be adopted by her as a result of her uptake of Amir’s claim.

(6.7b) (Vis-à-vis):

Amir: The Mercedes is better than the Audi. ↝practical commitment By contrast, if Mora accepts Amir’s statement in (Experts), she does not thereby acquire any new practical commitment or change the commitments that she already had. We have intention-ally set up (Experts) in a way such that Amir and Mora share a standard for cars. In virtue of that, Amir and Mora already share certain practical commitments towards cars that meet their shared standard to various degrees. If Mora interprets Amir’s utterance as an evaluation that is being made relative to their common standard, she does not change her standard by virtue of accepting Amir’s utterance in that context, and therefore, her practical commitments are not altered either.

(6.7c) (Experts):

Amir: The Mercedes is better than the Audi. ↝̸practical commitment Before moving on, a potential confusion should be pointed out: in both contexts, the exchange—if Amir’s utterance is accepted—results in the adoption, on the part of the inter-locutors, of certain practical commitments towards thevery objects under evaluation. In both contexts, Mora will come to adopt a more positive outlook towards the Mercedes than towards the Audi, if she accepts Amir’s utterance. So the contrast that we want to point out here cannot be spelled out in terms of the interlocutors’ practical attitudes towards the cars at the end of the exchange, because those attitudes will turn out to be relevantly similar in both contexts.¹⁵ Rather, the contrast between the (Vis-à-vis) and the (Experts) contexts with respect to those utterances’ action-guidance is best fleshed out by consideringthe wayin which Mora comes to have that attitude: in (Experts), it is the result of antecedently held practical commitments; in (Vis-à-vis), that attitude results from accepting Amir’s utterance, and in virtue of that coming to acquire new practical commitments.^16,17

15As Umbach points out (p.c.), another way of seeing this is to consider that the utterances in both contexts have the status of a recommendation (to choose the Mercedes over the Audi). This is the case regardless of whether the recommendation follows from a previously held standard of from a newly acquired one.

16 As we said with respect to subjectivity, note that there is a contrast between our previous way of talking about action-guidance and the way we are describing the phenomenon now. Before (cf §2.3.1), we described certain adjectives as guiding; and now we are claiming that not all uses of those these adjectives are action-guiding—in particular, in contexts like (Experts) they are not. It follows, once again, that action-guidance is not a property of certain words, but of specific, standardized uses of those words.

17 It may seem too strong to say that, when a value judgment remains unchallenged, all participants in the conversation have accepted it. Moreover, as Neftalí Villanueva remarks (p.c.), on occasions it can be rather pedantic to challenge a value judgments (it is my duty to speak up). However, that silence amounts to assent or

Let us take stock: we have diagnosed the contrast in conversational profile between the utter-ances in (Vis-à-vis)/(Experts) via the following four features: EPISTEMIC STATUS, DECEIT POTENTIAL, SUBJECTIVITY and ACTION-GUIDANCE. Just as other sentences that we intu-itively take to express judgments of value, the utterance in (Vis-à-vis) lacks the first two features but has the last two. By contrast, just as sentences that we commonly take to express factual judgments, Amir’s utterance in (Experts) has the first pair of properties and lacks the second.

This is shown in the following table:

Judgment of value Judgment of fact (Vis-à-vis) (Experts)

Epistemic Statuts × ✓ × ✓

Deceit Potential × ✓ × ✓

FD-Potential ✓ × ✓ ×

Action-guidance ✓ × ✓ ×

Table 6.2: The contrast between (Vis-à-vis) and (Experts).

We take this to show that, while the utterance in (Vis-à-vis) expresses a judgment of value that conveys an appreciation on the part of the speaker, the utterance in (Experts) expresses a judgment of fact, with the function of conveying purely descriptive information.

What about uses that are neither purely descriptive nor purely evaluative (cf. (Strangers))?

How do they fare with respect to the dialectical properties just reviewed? It is a little difficult to say, as such mixed uses presuppose that speakers do not share enough information for many of the dialectical moves that we have considered to be acceptable to begin with. For instance:

if Amir and Mora do not share any information about the cars in the auto-show nor about their respective standards, epistemic answers such as I doubt it will probably be out. This is not, however, necessarily because Amir has expressed an opinion, as in (Vis-à-vis). Rather, that reply is out because Mora has no information to challenge Amir’s statement. The same goes for the question of whether Amir’s statement has deceit potential and whether it can lead to a faultless disagreement. However, there is some reason to think that situations like (Strangers) will more easily develop into situations like (Vis-à-vis), since it’s easier to come to share factual than practical information. To see this, note that it would be natural for Amir to follow up his claim in (Strangers) with certain specs of the cars, in order to clarify what he meant by better. And then the situation would become much like (Vis-à-vis). It would be comparatively more awkward (and arrogant) for him to follow up his claim in (Strangers) by saying what he assumes to be his and Mora’s (whom he’s just met) shared standard for goodness in cars.

Either way, none of the proposed tests for distinguishing descriptive and evaluative uses can be applied to (Strangers) without either of those two clarification moves on the part of Amir.