Indexical telativism versus genuine relativism

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to characterize and compare two forms any relativist thesis can take: indexical relativism and genuine relativism. Indexical relativists claim that the implicit indexicality of certain sentences is the only source of relativity. Genuine relativists, by contrast, claim that there is relativity not just at the level of sentences, but also at propositional level. After characterizing each of the two forms and discussing their difficulties, I argue that the difference between the two is significant.

Keywords:

• relativism
• moral relativism
• indexicality
• truth
• Gilbert Harman
• Gareth Evans

Notes

Those who find section 1 tedious are invited to skip it and to move directly to section 2, where the main body of the paper starts.

I say ‘feature’ and not ‘property’ in order not to build into relativism the idea that something the possession of which is relative can count as a genuine property. My definition is neutral with respect to this issue.

I am speaking deliberately of correctness here, and not of truth. This is in order not to rule out by definition those relativists who think that whether something has the feature in question is not a matter of truth or falsehood.

E.g. Hales, 1997; see Kölbel, 1999 for comment.

Some opponents of relativism, e.g. Mackie, 1964, assume (iv) and use it against relativism. See Kölbel, 2002, Ch. 7.4 for detailed discussion.

This definition classifies some unexpected theses as relativistic: for example, standard theories of indexicals, such as Kaplan's, qualify as relativism about being a true sentence. Realist possible world theories of modality might also count as relativism about being a true proposition. However, actualists about modality won't qualify because they don't meet clause (iii).

I am deliberately saying merely that utterance of the two sentences results in assertion of the same proposition, and not that the two sentences are synonymous, because Dreier explicitly distinguishes the former from the latter claim. See Dreier, 1999: p. 567.

My characterization of HIR and SIR has been silent on the exact semantic mechanism of how an utterance of (B) comes to express the same proposition that would have been expressed by an utterance of (B*) or, in the case of HIR, (B**). Clearly, there is a range of choices here. For example, ‘ought’ might be viewed as more than two‐place, in which case rules governing ellipsis might explain how utterances of (B) can express the propositions they do. Or ‘ought’ might be viewed as implicitly indexical. I can't address these finer issues on this occasion. Thanks to Stefano Predelli for discussion.

• No doubt, the SIR theorist could respond by complicating SIR and thereby trying to accommodate some of the phenomena. He could say that while (B) and (B*) are propositionally equivalent, they do nevertheless behave differently in a number of contexts. When Fischer says ‘That's not true’ in response to Aznar's utterance of (B), and ‘That's true’ in response to his utterance of (B*), then we need to use different rules to interpret each instance of the anaphoric ‘that’. In the first case, when Fischer says ‘That's not true’ to Aznar's ‘Blair ought to go to war’, ‘that’ picks out the proposition Fischer would have expressed had he uttered what Aznar uttered. In the second case, when Fischer says ‘That's true’ to Aznar's ‘My moral code requires Blair to go to war’, ‘that’ picks out the proposition Aznar expressed (just the way we usually suppose that the anaphoric ‘that’ works). This accounts for the impression that Fischer's being right requires that Aznar's utterances express different propositions: Fischer's two utterances of ‘that’ do refer to different propositions; however, the first of these is not the proposition Aznar expressed.

• This sort of move, while not incoherent, is unattractive. It certainly looks as if the SIR theorist needs to make many more epicyclical adjustments in order to preserve his or her thesis that (B) and (B*) are propositionally equivalent. Similar adjustments will be necessary for other contexts, such as embedding in propositional attitude reports – how to interpret, for example, ‘He said that Blair ought to go to war’.

No doubt, the HIR theorist can at this point make moves analogous to the ones sketched for SIR in the previous footnote.

A supporter of ‘egocentric propositions’ such as John Pollock (1982) could object that we cannot just accept what the other has asserted. What they have asserted is an egocentric proposition, a proposition that is accessible only to one person. This point, however, does not improve the situation for the SIR theorist. For even on a theory like Pollock's, egocentric propositions have counterparts that are accessible to others. Thus even when an egocentric proposition is asserted, there is an analogue of ‘accepting what has been said’, namely accepting a counterpart of the egocentric proposition asserted. The problem then arises again: according to SIR, you and I can both come to believe the counterpart of the proposition asserted by the other; however, intuitively it should not be possible for me just to accept what you said (and vice versa). Thanks to Dan Lopez de Sa for putting this objection to me.

There are many bizarre consequences of Harman's view in this area: for example, suppose I say ‘Blair ought to resign’ to you, who share a moral code with me and Blair. If someone with a different moral code now enters the room and I utter the sentence again, now addressing the expanded audience, I suddenly no longer succeed in expressing a proposition. However, these bullets can all be bitten.

A distinction between the two types of dependence is necessary in order to account for the fact that a sentence like ‘I am here now’, even though true in all contexts, is not true necessarily. See Kaplan, 1977: p. 509.

One way of construing genuine relativism is to say that moral relativity is relativity to Kaplan's circumstances of evaluation. However, this presumably requires a view of circumstances of evaluation that is radically different from the usual view of circumstances of evaluation as possible worlds. Thus I prefer, for the moment, to introduce a separate form of relativity, namely to a perspective.

Compare Harman, 1975: p. 10. See also n. 8 above.

Kaplan has a very good rationale for separating the two kinds of relativity (to contexts of use and to circumstances of evaluation): it accounts for the fact that we would not accept ‘Necessarily I am here’ even though ‘I am here’ is true in every context of use. My rationale for introducing relativity to perspectives is different. There are certain aspects of language use which motivate the move. Roughly, our tendency to treat some contents of thought as objective and some as not objective can best be accounted for within a genuine relativistic framework. I have made a detailed case for this in Kölbel, 2002 and also in Kölbel, 2003. Perhaps my motivation can be translated into the sort of motivation Kaplan uses: perhaps the rules concerning the operators ‘Objectively …’ or ‘T faultlessly believes that …’ require that sentences express contents whose truth‐values vary with perspectives. However, I cannot here elaborate this line of thought. Compare Kaplan, 1977: pp. 503–4.

A Russellian analogue of HIR would have the analogous problem that our moral assertions about Hitler come out as false, no matter what we think he ought or ought not to have done.

I am not sure whether I need both rules to explain moral communication. However, the point here is not to provide the most elegant account of moral assertion, but to demonstrate that the idea of contents with relative truth‐values is coherent.

See for example, Frege, 1906: p. 202.

See, for example, Prior, 1962 and very recently MacFarlane, 2003.

Talks overlapping with this paper have been presented at the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Barcelona in February 2003, in the Seminars in Moral Philosophy at Oxford University in April 2003, at the Relativism conference organised by the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin in May 2003 and at GAP5 in Bielefeld in September 2003. I would like to thank the audiences for their many helpful comments, especially Lars Bergström, John Broome, Krister Bykvist, José Diez, Manuel Garcia‐Carpintero and Wolfgang Künne. Thanks for detailed discussion on specific points go to Dan Lopez de Sa and Stefano Predelli.