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On nonindexical contextualism

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Abstract

MacFarlane distinguishes “context sensitivity” from “indexicality,” and argues that “nonindexical contextualism” has significant advantages over the standard indexical form. MacFarlane’s substantive thesis is that the extension of an expression may depend on an epistemic standard variable even though its content does not. Focusing on ‘knows,’ I will argue against the possibility of extension dependence without content dependence when factors such as meaning, time, and world are held constant, and show that MacFarlane’s nonindexical contextualism provides no advantages over indexical contextualism. The discussion will shed light on the definition of indexicals as well as the meaning of ‘knows,’ and highlight important constraints on the way meaning can be represented in semantics.

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Notes

  1. See Bar-Hillel (1954, p. 359), Gale (1967, p. 151), Montague (1968, p. 103), Lewis (1970, p. 184ff), Stalnaker (1976, p. 229), Kaplan (1977, pp. 490, 506), Lyons (1977, pp. 106, 637, 646), Levinson (1994, 2003), Leezenberg (1994, p. 1648), Perry (1997, p. 586), Forbes (2003, p. 87), Corazza (2003, p. 593ff), Cappelen and Lepore (2005, p. 89) Gonzáles-Romero (2005, p. 261). Related definitions characterize indexicals as expressions whose reference varies with the token, occurrence, or utterance; see Burks (1949, pp. 685–7), Reichenbach (1947, p. 284), Gale (1964, p. 227), Searle (1983, p. 221), Perry (2003, p. 378); contrast Kaplan (1977, p. 522).

  2. MacFarlane cites Kompa (2002) and Ludlow (2005, p. 27) as possible antecedents.

  3. This formulation is adapted from MacFarlane (2009, p. 236). For it to be plausible, we also need to assume that S’s epistemic position with respect to p meets e(C) only if S believes p, and is not in a Gettier situation.

  4. MacFarlane credits Hawthorne (2004) and Cappelen and Lepore (2005) for this argument.

  5. MacFarlane (2009, p. §2) uses “temporalism” as a motivating example. Inferring from that example, MacFarlane might take temporalism to maintain that ‘knows’ expresses the same two-place relation in every context, the relation S stands in to p iff S knows p. Given MacFarlane’s truth-conditions, and the independence of t as well as e of S and p, there is no such two-place relation.

  6. ‘S knows’ can be used elliptically. If Sam says, “Does Alice know her husband is having an affair?” Barry can reply “She knows.” When so used, ‘S knows’ expresses different propositions on different occasions.

  7. MacFarlane could fill this out by using the theory of thoughts and propositions I developed in Davis (2003).

  8. As MacFarlane (2009, p. 240) observes in connection with a slightly different example (one of DeRose’s “abominable conjunctions”), nothing in contextualism prevents the epistemic standard from shifting from one conjunct to another since they occur in different contexts (as demonstrative pronouns show). So it allows an explicit contradiction like ‘Alice knows her car is in the driveway but does not know it is’ to come out true. MacFarlane claims that nonindexical contextualism explains why it always seems contradictory: “the context of use determines a single epistemic standard that is relevant to the evaluation of both occurrences of ‘know.’” This is an independent postulate, however, not something entailed by nonindexical contextualism. The indexical contextualist could postulate the same thing.

  9. As is customary, we are using ‘utter’ in a generic sense that includes writing and signing. If it is restricted to spoken utterance, then to utter an expression is to make it occur by speaking.

  10. Things are less obvious if a sentence occurs more than once in a context, which is why I changed MacFarlane’s ‘an’ to ‘the.’

  11. See Cappelen and Lepore (2005, p. 105ff), MacFarlane (2005, p. 202ff), Hawthorne (2004, pp. 107, fn. 125), Davis (2005, p. 39, 2007, pp. 400–01), Bach (2005, p. 60), Stanley (2005, pp. 54ff, 115, 119ff), Fantl and McGrath (2009, p. 180ff). Contrast DeRose (1992, pp. 925–6, 2009, pp. 207–12), Cohen (2005, pp. 205–206), Blome-Tillmann (2008, pp. 34, 37).

  12. MacFarlane thought that Kompa 2002 lapsed into inconsistency when she claimed that her theory had the “unpleasant” consequence of counting Ascriber C says something true in uttering ‘A knows that p’ but A doesn’t know that p, his (30), as true in certain cases. According to MacFarlane (2009, p. 248), ‘if “says something true” means “expresses a proposition that is true,” which I think is the most natural reading, then nonindexical contextualism does not predict that (30) is true.’ But ‘says something true’ also means “speaks truly,” which on nonindexical contextualism means uttering a sentence that is true in the context of utterance, and requires only that the proposition expressed be true relative to that context.

  13. I critique MacFarlane’s relativism in “Knowledge Claims and the Context of Assessment,” which was presented at the “Contexts, Perspectives, and Relative Truth” conference held at the University of Bonn, June 9–11, 2011.

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Acknowledgement

I thank members of the audience at the Kirchberg Symposium, especially John Greco and Stewart Cohen, for comments that helped improve my argument significantly.

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    Wayne A. Davis

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Davis, W.A. On nonindexical contextualism. Philos Stud 163, 561–574 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9831-1

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