The evidence for relativism
Synthese 166 (2):375-395 (2009)
| 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. | |||||||||
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Gideon Rosen (2007). The Case Against Epistemic Relativism: Reflections on Chapter 6 of Fear of Knowledge. Episteme 4 (1):10-29.
Branden Fitelson & Richard Feldman (2012). Evidence of Evidence is Not (Necessarily) Evidence. Analysis 72 (1):85-88.
Herman Cappelen & John Hawthorne (2010). Reply to Glanzberg, Soames and Weatherson. Analysis 71 (1):143-156.
Dan López de Sa (2007). The Many Relativisms and the Question of Disagreement. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (2):269 – 279.
Wayne A. Davis (2004). Are Knowledge Claims Indexical? Erkenntnis 61 (2-3):257 - 281.
Gunnar Björnsson & Alexander Almér (2009). Contextualism, Assessor Relativism, and Insensitive Assessments. Logique Et Analyse 52 (208):363-372.
Herman Cappelen (2008). Content Relativism and Semantic Blindness. In G. Carpintero & M. Koelbel (eds.), Relative Truth. Oxford University Press.
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