The evidence for relativism

Max Kolbel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle

62 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the kind of evidence that might be adduced in support of relativist semantics of a kind that have recently been proposed for predicates of personal taste, for epistemic modals, for knowledge attributions and for other cases. I shall concentrate on the case of taste predicates, but what I have to say is easily transposed to the other cases just mentioned. I shall begin by considering in general the question of what kind of evidence can be offered in favour of some semantic theory or framework of semantic theorizing. In other words, I shall begin with the difficult question of the empirical significance of semantic theorizing. In Sect. 2, I outline a relativist semantic theory, and in Sect. 3, I review four types of evidence that might be offered in favour of a relativistic framework. I show that the evidence is not conclusive because a sophisticated form of contextualism (or indexical relativism) can stand up to the evidence. However, the evidence can be taken to support the view that either relativism or the sophisticated form of contextualism is correct.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)375-395
Number of pages21
JournalSynthese
Volume166
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2009

Keywords

  • Indexicality
  • Relativism
  • Contextualism
  • Knowledge attributions
  • Taste predicates
  • Future contingents
  • David Lewis
  • Context of use
  • Circumstance of evaluation
  • Epistemic modals
  • David Kaplan

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