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Reply“Context, of)” |
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Συγγραφέας: Herman Cappelen, John Hawthorne Herman Cappelen, John Hawthorne: Reply“Context, of)” (pdf, 4 pages) Lasersohn discusses a type of case that we raise as problematic for a simple relativistic approach to predicates of personal taste: A waiter says 'The party was not fun'. The host says 'The party was fun'. We do not think they disagree. But, prima facie, it seems that a relativistic analysis will predict disagreement. We were fully explicit that such cases could be handled by a mixed view that said that the relevant sentences have relativistic contents only some of the time. Moreover, this case was only a small piece of our overall argumentative arsenal. Nevertheless we did think it illuminating since a shift to a mixed view carries its own costs. Lasersohn's main aim is to provide an answer to the case on behalf of someone who pushes a uniformly relativist account. One relativist tactic here is to complicate the account of disagreement, distinguishing disagreement from inconsistency (see Richard contribution to this symposium). Lasersohn pushes a different strategy, which amplifies and refines on one that we briefly pursued in a footnote. The key thought is that 'predication in natural language is often done on the basis of only certain parts or aspect of the object to which the predicate is applied.' (Lasersohn, this vol.) The simplest version of such a manoeuvre (the one we discussed in the relevant footnote) is one that claims that 'The party' has different referents in the mouths of each speaker, the one occurrence referring to one part of the complex event, the other referring to a different part. Lasersohn is rightly wary of this. After all there is quite a bit of linguistic evidence against it. The host can say 'It was fun', anaphorically picking up on the use of 'The party' by the waiter. This is hard to make sense of on an analysis that posits disparate referents. Also, it is fine to claim that there is an event that the host thought was fun, but that the waiter did not think was fun. This does not square with the multiple referent approach. Lasersohn intends instead that the 'contextual effect be attributed to the predicate' (Lasersohn, this vol.) Here is one toy model... |
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