Abstract

It was the explicit aim of my paper ‘Indexical Relativism versus Genuine Relativism’ to ‘characterize and compare’ (p. 297) two different forms of relativism. One form, exemplified by Harman’s and Dreier’s moral relativism (Harman, 1975 and Dreier, 1990), involves the claim that certain sentences express different propositions in different contexts of utterance, much like indexical sentences – hence the name ‘indexical relativism’. The other form involves the claim that the truth-value of certain contents or propositions depends on certain non-standard parameters, i.e. depends not just on a possible world. The explicit conclusion of the paper was that the two forms differ significantly. Dan López de Sa (2007) seems quite happy to grant my main conclusion, namely that there is a significant difference between these two forms of relativism. However, López de Sa raises two worthwhile issues. First, he proposes a taxonomy of relativist views, one on which my ‘genuine relativism’ turns out to be the disjunction of two distinct views. Secondly, he offers an answer to a difficulty I raised for some forms of indexical relativism. I shall comment on each point.