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Intuitions, Disagreement and Referential Pluralism

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Abstract

Mallon, Machery, Nichols and Stich (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79: 332–356, 2009) argue that the use of intuitions in the philosophy of reference is problematic as recent studies show intuitions about reference vary both within and between cultures. I use some ideas from the recent literature on disagreement and truth relativism to shed light on the debate concerning the appropriate reaction to these studies. Mallon et al. argue that variation is problematic because if one tries to use intuitions which vary to find the correct theory of reference one will end up endorsing an absurd position: referential pluralism. I argue that there is hope for intuition-based philosophy of reference. One can avoid endorsing referential pluralism (as Mallon et al. understand it). Furthermore, referential pluralism may not be so absurd after all.

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Notes

  1. I’ll also use this to refer to the same authors’ other papers: Machery et al. (2013) and (2004).

  2. A number of responses to MMNS have argued that the data in question do not provide evidence of variation in (right kind of) intuitions (Cohnitz and Haukioja 2012; Deutsch 2009; Lam 2010; Martí 2009; Systma and Livengood 2008/2009). Machery et al. (2009) and (2010) respond to some of these objections. In this paper, I grant, for the sake of argument, that there is significant variation in intuitions about reference.

  3. Like Mallon et al. (2009), I am using ‘substantive’ to rule out deflationary accounts, such as those of Horwich (1990) and Field (1986, 1994).

  4. This descriptive claim may be in need of some defence. There are certainly those who argue that philosophers of language ought to be able to use other methods, e.g., as noted by an anonymous reviewer, Devitt (2012) argues fairly convincingly that corpus studies and elicited production can play an important role in theorising about reference.

  5. It seems conceivable that one might encounter a tie. Two theories of reference might be supported equally by the intuitions of competent users. In such a situation, I suppose the user of the method of cases would either try to come up with some new cases, or resort to different means to decide the best theory.

  6. Mallon et al. (2009) frame their argument as part of a challenge to a particular argument form which they call ‘argument from reference’. They argue that there is no way to accommodate variation in intuitions which permits such arguments. For a brief overview of the debate concerning arguments from reference, see Genone (2012). I do not consider this aspect of their paper here. MMNS’s main goal is “to challenge the methods philosophers of language have embraced in their efforts to develop a satisfying theory of reference” (Machery et al. 2013: 17). In this paper, I consider their arguments against referential pluralism and their challenge to the method of cases in philosophy of language. These arguments do not depend on further details of MMNS’s argument concerning ‘argument from reference’; MMNS simply argue that using the method of cases when intuitions diverge will lead to referential pluralism and that this is an absurd position.

  7. There are other options here which one might consider and so it isn’t clear that using the method of cases when intuitions vary forces one to accept referential pluralism. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pointing some of these out: (1) One might think that the theory which is best supported by the intuitions of competent users was that which described a single reference relation which was maximally accommodating on the intuitions of both I1 and I2. (2) Alternatively, one might think that a commitment to the method of cases doesn’t mean that one couldn’t find some reason to give preference to the intuitions of one group rather than another, e.g., perhaps one could put the intuitions of one group down to some sort of performance error. (3) Another alternative might be to think that different groups may be effectively responding to different cases or questions as they may import different information to the experimental material—a point similar to that made by Sosa (2009) in relation to a different challenge to intuitions. Although it is not obvious what difference in imported information could make one group descriptivist about a name and another causal-historical. (4) A final option might be simply to accept that only one group is tracking the true reference relation but remain neutral concerning which—a response which would certainly not provide much optimism for intuition-based philosophy of language.

  8. Note the way Machery (2012) expresses the idea elsewhere “… philosophers of language interested in reference could maintain that intuitions are reliable guides to the semantic properties of names and go on to infer that names refer differently in different cultures” (p. 41, my emphasis).

  9. It seems sensible to assume, like MMNS, that what one says about relativity of reference will be mirrored by what one says about relativity of truth.

  10. MacFarlane (2005a) provides a list (Egan et al. 2005; Kölbel 2002; MacFarlane 2003; Richard 2004).

  11. MMNS do not explicitly address this distinction. But they indicate some awareness of the issue. Mallon et al. (2009, n.13) claim that they want to remain neutral as to how speaker relativism in natural language is best explained; I take this to mean that they are open to non-indexicalist forms of context-sensitivity given that they cite the work of MacFarlane in which relativism about propositional truth is discussed.

  12. Contrast this with an indexicalist relativist account. Such an account might say that ‘is tasty’ expresses different contents as assessed from different contexts. For example, when I say ‘ginger beer is tasty’, there are no non-relative facts about the proposition I assert. As assessed by you, I assert p1 which is false; as assessed by me I assert p2, which is true.

  13. Although, the non-indexicalist considered here is a pluralist about reference relations (as understood as mappings from terms/sentences to extensions/truth-values) there is something monistic about the account. There is a single relation expressed invariantly by ‘is tasty’, however, this is not the sort of reference relation which MMNS talk about, as its extension varies with the context of assessment.

  14. To fail to consider assessor relativism seems odd given that MMNS cite the work of Lasersohn and MacFarlane who both articulate views about some sort of relativity (albeit not in terms of reference) to a context of assessment (See Lasersohn 2005, 2009; MacFarlane 2005b, 2007a, 2009, 2014). It may be that MMNS would find assessor relativism implausible for other reasons. I’ll look at some of these at the end of section 3.

  15. E.g., “When asserting or denying that beliefs exist or that science progresses (or the conclusion of any other argument from reference), philosophers A and B would agree or disagree only if they belonged to the same intuition group” (Mallon et al. 2009: 347).

  16. Some worry that this isn’t true: that relativism about the truth of propositions isn’t tenable and that any relativist view will collapse into relativism about the content of beliefs/sentences. I don’t share this worry and it isn’t a worry articulated by MMNS so I don’t address it here.

  17. MacFarlane (2014) calls this the Simple View.

  18. Suppose we accept a contextually shifty account of knowledge attributions such that truth of knowledge attributions depends on contextually variant epistemic standards. Suppose that I assert ‘I know p’ at t1 when the standard are low at my context. Suppose that at t2 I occupy a context in which the standards are very high. The relativist has an easy job of saying why it is correct to retract my earlier assertion: it is false at my present context. If it were always the context of use which mattered, then it is unclear why it would ever be correct to retract an earlier assertion.

  19. If you are so inclined, you can read this argument as a reductio. This will probably lead you to reject the crude understanding of the method of cases which we have been working with so far (taken from MMNS), as it is this which leads to the idea that the philosopher using the method of cases needs to know about intuition group membership at such a hyper-fine-grained level. You would probably be right to do so.

  20. Indeed this is simply an instance of the general problem of theory being underdetermined by the evidence, rather than a specific problem for referential theory. Thanks for an anonymous referee for pointing this out.

  21. Perhaps MMNS rely on a very strong account of knowledge. In which case, my point here will not stand. However, (i) there are other reasons for thinking these authors wouldn’t want to rely upon any specific account of knowledge, and (ii) if they did require something like absolute certainty, then not having knowledge would not be particularly bothersome.

  22. One might worry that the concern about spuriousness is not just restricted to those areas of philosophy in which strong ontological claims are made on the basis of a theory of reference. The worry might be that they will spread to any area of philosophical discourse, indeed any area of discourse, so long as intuitions about the application of the relevant terms vary. The worry might be that there is variation in intuitions about the reference of a great variety of the terms we use. Of course, if this worry is correct, then it is of little help for MMNS, as then their (2013) response to Ichikawa et al. (2012) is problematic. Nonetheless, if the worry is correct, then it is a problem for my arguments in this section. However, it is not a worry for my overall project in this paper as, see section 3, I argue that the referential pluralist doesn’t have to accept The Co-membership Requirement.

  23. If I can show that the conjunction of the two views is not absurd, then it will be clear that neither position is absurd taken by itself.

  24. I have already argued that MMNS’s argument fails at earlier stages, e.g., I don’t think the referential pluralist has to accept The Co-membership Requirement.

  25. The conclusion that various similar philosophical debates are spurious is one which has been argued recently in Baz (2012). Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

  26. The reason being that in order to make such arguments one has to endorse a substantive theory of the reference of the relevant class of terms, e.g., folk-psychological terms, and the project of giving a substantive theory of reference runs into the problems we have discussed in this paper given cultural variation in intuitions.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Carl Baker, Michael Bench-Capon, Greg Currie, Mark Jago, Phillip Percival, Stefano Predelli, Pendaran Roberts, audiences in Leeds, Manchester and Nottingham, and to a number of anonymous referees for very helpful comments. Acknowledgment is also due to the support of an AHRC-funded studentship.

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    James Andow

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Andow, J. Intuitions, Disagreement and Referential Pluralism. Rev.Phil.Psych. 5, 223–239 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-013-0166-z

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