Rollercoasters are not Fun for Mary

Against Indexical Contextualism

Bibliographic Data

ID21655360
AuthorsJustina Berškytė (0000-0001-5356-6698, University of Manchester, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume31
Issue3
Pages315-340
Publication date2021-06-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAxiomathes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1122-1151 • E-ISSN: 1572-8390
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10516-020-09501-y
OpenAlexW3037537369
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited42

Indexical contextualism (IC) is an account of predicates of personal taste (PPTs) which views the semantic content of PPTs as sensitive to the context in which they are uttered, by virtue of their containing an implicit indexical element. Should the context of utterance change, the semantic content carried by the PPT will also change. The main aim of this paper is to show that IC is unable to provide a satisfactory account of PPTs. I look at what I call “pure” IC accounts and show that because they fail to respect empirical data regarding disagreements where neither person is at fault, known as “faultless disagreements”, they must be rejected. I then go on to consider what I call IC “plus” (IC+) accounts. Such accounts attempt to account for the faultlessness of such disagreements using a simple indexical semantics, whilst introducing some extra ingredient to account for the disagreement part. I focus on two main versions of IC+: Gutzmann’s (in: Meier, van Wijnberger-Huitink (eds) Subjective meaning: alternatives to relativism, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2016) expressivist account, and López de Sa’s (in: García-Carpintero, Kölbel (eds) Relative truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008; Erkenntnis 80(Supp 1):153–165, 2015) presuppositional account. I discuss some internal worries with these accounts before going on to some final remarks about IC/IC+ in general. I conclude that neither IC nor IC+ can provide a satisfactory semantics for PPTs

Contextualism · Epistemology · Indexicality · Linguistics · Utterance · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · History · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access