Lasersohn (2005) vs Non-Indexical Contextualism

I just came back from Paris, where I participated in the CPR07 organized by François, Isidora, and Neftalí. It has been a great fun, many thanks to them for that! Now I really look forward to submiting something also for the next one on vagueness.

Isidora presented her 'Talking about Taste,' where she discusses Lasersohn (2005) on the assumption that the view is a version of non-indexical contextualism, and I've met some other people attributing that view to him likewise. But I think this is not correct.

Lasersohn does say that the truth of contents is relative to a further, non-standard coordinate in indices, a judge, who will be provided by the context. But he also says:

In order to maintain an authentically subjective assignment of truth values to sentences containing predicates of personal taste, we must allow that the objective facts of the situation of utterance do not uniquely determine a judge. The formalism developed ... required that for any context c, there must be a unique individual j_c, the judge of c. That is, it was stipulated that the contexts uniquely determine a judge. If we are to retain this feature of the formalism, therefore, we must conclude that the objective facts of the situation of utterance do not uniquely determine a context. (p. 669, emphasis added)

Hence, contrary to the appearances produced by his non-standard use of 'context,' Lasersohn view is indeed radical relativism proper.

Happy Birthday, bleb!!

Yep, one year already!

I'm back in Barcelona -- I feel I'm still moving, but has been a month now! Hope I manage to get some normality soon!

Vagueness at NYU

Yesterday we had the first session of the NYU Seminar on Vagueness. Wow. As you’ll imagine, it’s just impressive to get the topic introduced by Crispin Wright, and discussed by Hartry Field, Kit Fine, Stephen Schiffer, and Ted Sider, among others. Very very impressive.

I will only attend to the very first sessions, though. In October, I’ll be joining ICREA—from the Catalan for Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies—back in Barcelona as a (junior) researcher. I’m both excited for everything I'll get there and sad for everything I’ll miss here… Oh well whatayagonnado?

On the Semantic Indecision of Vague Singular Terms

I've just seen that Donald Smith's ‘Vague Singulars, Semantic Indecision, and the Metaphysics of Persons’ is out in PPR.

Smith argues that if ‘I’ is indeed vague, and the view of vagueness as semantic indecision correct after all, then ‘I’ cannot refer to a composite material object. But his considerations would, if sound, also establish that ‘Tibbles,’ ‘Everest,’ or ‘Toronto,’ do not refer to composite material objects either—nor hence, presumably, to cats, mountains, or cities. And both considerations can be resisted, anyway.

As to the first, it suffices to observe that if ‘I’ (or ‘Tibbles’) is vague, and the view of vagueness as semantic indecision is correct, then, when I assert a sentence containing it, I do no need to take myself to having successfully referred to any particular thing—if that is understood as definitely referring to something. Rather, I aim my statement to turn out true on any admissible way of making the semantic decisions that are not (and should not, and maybe could not, be) made.

As to the second, one just has to notice that the “many” solution to the problem of the many is certainly not the only solution that defenders of the view of vagueness as semantic indecision can adopt—and have indeed adopted. One rival solution by disqualification is the so-called “supervaluationist” solution, mentioned by Lewis and more recently defended by McGee & McLaughlin, Varzi, and Weatherson. According to this alternative solution, each sharpening of ‘is a cat’ or ‘is a person’ selects just one of the many candidates—different ones in the different sharpenings, thus respecting the arbitrariness felt in denying that they all had an equal claim. ‘Tibbles is a cat’ serves as a penumbral connection, guarantying that it is rendered inadmissible any sharpening that selects a different candidate as the referent of ‘Tibbles’ from the one that is selected as belonging to the extension of ‘is a cat’—inasmuch as ‘If it is not red, then it is orange’ serves to exclude sharpenings in which borderline rose Fifí is assigned both to the extension of ‘is red’ and to that of ‘is orange.’ Thus the many candidates are indeed equally eligible as referents of ‘Tibbles,’ but it definitely the case that one and just one of them is a cat after all. Mutatis mutandis, once again, for persons.

My response will appear shortly in Sorites.

‘Indifferentism’?

In connection with the issue about labels here, Ghislain Guigon has suggested to me ‘indifferentism’:

"it seems to me that it reflects two aspects of your true dismissivism: first there is no difference in truthmakers between the opposite views. Second, the right philosophical attitude is to remain indifferent regarding the dispute."

I've just leared that the label does already exist:

"In Roman Catholicism, indifferentism is a condemned heresy that holds that one religion is as good as another, and that all religions are equally valid paths to salvation. Its condemnation is closely linked to the dogmatic definition that outside the Church there is no salvation."

I'm not sure about whether this goes against or in favor of using the label in the metametaphysical discussion (although I'm inclined to say that probably the latter)!

Crispin Wright goes to NYU

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/wright-from-st-.html

CFP: LOGOS Conference on Meta-Metaphysics

LOGOS Conference on Meta-Metaphysics
Barcelona , 19-21 June 2008

First Call for Papers

Do numbers, sets, and other abstract entities, exist? Does mereological composition ever occur? Does it always occur? How do objects persist through time? In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the status of certain traditional debates in metaphysics such as these. Some think that some of these turn out to be genuine disputes but of a semantic or conceptual character. Some think that some of these turn out to be pseudo-disputes that should be just dismissed. (Some others think, of course, that the disputes are indeed genuine, but not of a semantic or conceptual character.) Reflection of these issues promises to shed light on the nature of philosophical inquiry in general.

LOGOS—Grup de Recerca en Lògica, Llenguatge i Cognició is organizing a conference on meta-metaphysics. Invited and submitted papers will be made available to participants one month before the conference. Participants are expected to read them in advance, as there will be no presentation of them during the conference. Sessions will start with a critical commentary (lasting 20 minutes at most), followed by a response by the author(s) (lasting 10 minutes at most) and a general open discussion period.

Proposals to participate as a speaker and/or as a commentator should be sent by e-mail to logos@pcb.ub.es by 1 April 2008. Full papers in suitable form for blind refereeing should be submitted in order to participate as a speaker, and a short CV is to be supplied as to participate as a commentator. We expect to notify accepted proposals within four weeks of the deadline.

Participants other than invited speakers will have to rely on their own institutions to defray the cost of travel and accommodation.

Confirmed Invited Speakers:

John Hawthorne (Oxford )
Amie Thomasson (Miami)
Stephen Yablo (MIT)

Organizing Committee:

Manuel García-Carpintero (Barcelona)
Dan López de Sa (NYU/St Andrews)
Pablo Rychter (Barcelona)

Scientific Committee:

Fabrice Correia (Rovira i Virgili)
Manuel García-Carpintero (Barcelona)
John Hawthorne (Oxford)
Max Kölbel (Birmingham)
Dan López de Sa (NYU/St Andrews)
Sven Rosenkranz (Barcelona/St Andrews)
Pablo Rychter (Barcelona)
Amie Thomasson (Miami)
Gabriel Uzquiano (Oxford)
Timothy Williamson (Oxford)
Stephen Yablo (MIT)

Further information:

logos@pcb.ub.es
www.ub.edu/grc_logos