LECTIONES SINENSES

Lectiones apud Universitatem Tsing Hua MMXI

TRUTH, CONTEXT AND SEMANTIC RELATIVITY November 2011, Tsinghua University Beijing

The aim of these lectures is to discuss the challenges which have recently been addressed to the classical truth conditional conception of meaning from the part of philosophers who defend the idea that the meanings of sentences are not determined by truth conditions, but by contextual factors. These conceptions, known as contextualist or relativist, claim that meaning is a function of the context of use of sentences and of the circumstances of evaluation, and that truth is relative to these factors. They can be more or less radical, depending upon whether they intend to supplement truth conditional semantics or to replace it. The main examples are judgments of taste and judgments about knowledge. The semantic relativism framework is analysed and discussed. I shall argue that none of these views motivate the radical claim that meaning is not determined by truth conditions. Some, but not all, of these relativist view are not simply local, but global, and defend a generalised relativism with respect to truth, knowledge and thought. I argue that we should resist this form of global relativism as well.

1. First lecture: Meaning, truth and contex

According to classical theories of meaning, the meaning of sentence consists in its truth conditions. But meaning is also a function of context, in particular when sentences contains indexicals (“Here”, “I”, “now”), comparative adjectives (“tall”, “flat”, “rich”) and other kinds of sentences (such as tensed sentences and counterfactual conditionals). How far can does context sensitivity affect meaning? For classical truth conditional theories (Frege, Davidson, possible world semantics) a context sensitive sentence fails to express a proposition and needs to be completed by parameters to be judged as true. Classical semantics admits that truth can be relative to contexts and to pragmatic factors but a semantic core is maintained. In some cases, meaning is not affected by truth and reference, but by other factors which render the truth of sentences relative. The most prominent examples include utterances about values, utterances attributing knowledge, utterances that state that something is probable or epistemically possible, and utterances about the contingent future. In these cases, some have argued, the standard picture needs to be modified to admit extra truth-determining factors. For radical contextualists there is no part of meaning which is not affected by context. Moderate contextualism limits the role of context sensitivity.

This first lecture draws a map of the main sources of context sensitivity in contemporary semantics and philosophy of language, describes the standard semantics way of dealing with context, and exposes various forms of semantic contextualism. I argue that radical contextualism is wrong.

1. Second lecture : Semantic relativity

On the classical picture of linguistic meaning the meaning of a sentence centrally consists in a rule that determines the content or proposition the sentence would express for each context in which the sentence may be used. This proposition in turn determines a truth-value for each way the world may happen to be. An older challenge to the traditional picture concerns whether the truth-values of propositions depend on a time or an agent. A more recent challenge comes from the view that certain kinds of sentences manifest the relativity of truth: judgements of taste, such as “Gong Li is prettier than Marilyn Monroe” , judgements of value such as “It is good to rich”, epistemic modals such as “Mary might be in Paris” and future tense sentences such as “There will be a sea battle”. According to semantic relativism the sentences in question express non-standard propositions that exhibit a relativity of truth to an extra factor. The proposition that spinach is delicious is true relative to some standards of taste, and false relative to others. The proposition that the treasure might be under the palm tree is true relative to some epistemic situations, and false relative to others. The proposition that John is tall is true relative to some standards of height, and false relative to others. This second lecture will explore the varieties of semantic relativity, and will introduce the main views in this field, in particular those of John Mc Farlane and Mark Richard. I shall attempt to reject these views in their most extreme forms.

1. Third lecture : Knowledge and context

One of the main domains in which it has been argued that the phenomenon of semantic relativity is pervasive is the epistemic domain. Semantic relativists and contextualists have held that that words like “know” are context relative, and change in meaning depending on the circumstances of attribution. Attributor contextualism (de Rose 2009) holds that the meaning of “knows” varies depending on the attributor of knowledge claims. Subject sensitive invariantism ( Stanley 2005, Fantl and Mc Grath 2009) holds that the variation comes with the speaker and with what is practically at stake. The arguments are in general given in terms of variations on situations where the cost of ignorance or unjustified belief may affect our attributions (( de Rose’s bank cases for instance).I try to show that these examples are unconvincing. It has also been argued that epistemic modals, such as “Obama might be in Honolulu”, are affected by this kind of context sensitivity. I examine in this lecture the credentials of such views, and their potential concequences for epistemology, and defend a version of the invariantist view of knowledge.

1. Fourth lecture : against truth relativism

Many of the semantic relativist views are mainly local, and argue on the basis of specific kinds of sentences - those about taste or values - that they are affected by phenomena of semantic relativity. But some versions are more radical and global. The pretend to show that truth itself is relative, as well as knowledge and justification, and thus try to resuscitate a kind of Protagoreanism or of generalised relativism. I examine in this lecture the arguments of the neo-relativists, and reject them. I defend an absolutist concept of truth.