Metaethical contextualism defended

Ethics

Volumn 121, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 7-36

  Björnsson, Gunnar ^a   Finlay, Stephen ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 78649924603     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/656304     Document Type: Article

References (121)

1. Contextualism about other kinds of terms is challenged in, for example, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore, Insensitive Semantics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
2. Peter Lasersohn, "Context Dependence, Disagreement, and Predicates of Personal Taste," Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (2005): 643-86
3. Andy Egan, John Hawthorne, and Brian Weatherson, "Epistemic Modals in Context," in Contextualism in Philosophy, ed. G. Preyer and P. Peter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 131-68
4. Andy Egan, "Epistemic Modals, Relativism, and Assertion," Philosophical Studies 133 (2007): 1-22
5. John MacFarlane, "Epistemic Modals Are Assessment-Sensitive," in Epistemic Modality, ed. A. Egan and B. Weatherson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
6. Contextualism about modals is orthodox in linguistics, following Angelika Kratzer, "The Notional Category of Modality," in Words, Worlds, and Contexts, ed. H. J. Eikmeyer and H. Rieser (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981), 38-74.
7. Metaethical contextualism is also defended against disagreement problems in Berit Brogaard, "Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism," Philosophical Quarterly 58 (2008): 385-409
8. Janice Dowell, "AFlexible Contextualist Account of'Ought'," (unpublished manuscript, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
9. other forms of contex- tualism are defended in, for example, Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies, "'Might' Made Right," in Egan and Weatherson, Epistemic Modality
10. Janice Dowell, "Empirical Metaphysics: The Role of Intuitions about Possible Cases in Philosophy," Philosophical Studies 140 (2008): 19-46
11. Jonathan Schaffer, "Contextualism for Taste Claims and Epistemic Modals," in Egan and Weatherson, Epistemic Modality.
12. This argument dates back at least to G. E. Moore, Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912), chap. 3.
13. This claim doesn't require that modals have separate argument places for each, as in Aaron Sloman, "'Ought' and 'Better'," Mind 79 (1970): 385-94
14. Kratzer, "The Notional Category of Modality." For one view on which a single argument place accommodates both kinds of relata
15. see Stephen Finlay, "Oughts and Ends," Philosophical Studies 143 (2009): 315-40.
16. This strategy is applied to the defense of epistemic modals and taste predicates in Alexander Almér and Gunnar Björnsson, "Contextualism, Assessor Relativism, and Insensitive Assessments," Logique et Analyse 52 (2009): 363-72.
17. A. C. Ewing, Ethics (London: English Universities Press, 1953).
18. Niko Kolodny and John MacFarlane (in "Ought: Between Subjective and Objective" [unpublished manuscript, University of California, Berkeley]) provide a helpful survey of the literature, placing on the side favoring the subjective interpretation H. A. Prichard ("Duty and Ignorance of Fact," in Moral Obligation, ed. W. D. Ross [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949], 18-39)
19. W. D. Ross ( Foundations of Ethics [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939])
20. T. M. Scanlon ("Thomson on Self-Defense," in Fact and Value: Essays on Ethics and Metaphysics for Judith Jarvis Thomson, ed. R. Stalnaker, A. Byrne, and R. Wedgwood [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001], 199-215)
21. "perhaps" Frank Jackson ("Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism and the Nearest and Dearest Objection," Ethics 101 [1991]: 461-82
22. and "Which Effects?'" in Reading Parfit, ed. J. Dancy [Oxford: Blackwell, 1997], 42-53)
23. and on the side favoring the objective interpretation G. E. Moore ( Principia Ethica [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903], and Ethics) and Judith Jarvis Thomson ("Imposing Risks," in Rights, Restitution, and Risk, ed. W. Parent [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986], 173-91, and The Realm of Rights [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990]).
24. Jackson, "Decision-Theoretic Consequentialism."
25. 'Ought' and 'Better'"
26. Angelika Kratzer, "What 'Must' and 'Can' Must and Can Mean," Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (1977): 337-55
27. and "The Notional Category of Modality"; Frank Jackson, "On the Semantics and Logic of Obligation," Mind 94 (1985): 177-95
28. Finlay, "Oughts and Ends".
29. Kolodny and MacFarlane, "Ought: Between Objective and Subjective." They adopt the scenario from Donald Regan, Utilitarianism and Cooperation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)
30. and Derek Parfit, On What Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
31. For semantic relativism about epistemic modals and/or taste predicates, see Egan, Hawthorne, and Weatherson, "Epistemic Modals in Context"
32. Lasersohn, "Context Dependence"
33. Egan, "Epistemic Modals, Relativism, and Assertion"
34. Tamina Stephenson, "Judge Dependence, Epistemic Modals, and Predicates of Personal Taste," Linguistics and Philosophy 30 (2007): 487-525
35. and MacFarlane, "Epistemic Modals Are Assessment-Sensitive." On an alternative view of what propositions are, relativism claims rather that the sentences at issue express different propositions relative to different contexts of assessment
36. see Andy Egan, "Billboards, Bombs and Shotgun Weddings," Synthese 166 (2009): 251-79
37. Herman Cappelen, "The Creative Interpreter: Content Relativism and Assertion," Philosophical Perspectives 22 (2008): 23-46.
38. For simplicity we ignore this view here.
39. We agree with Campbell Brown (discussion) that it is independently implausible that advice typically has this aim. It is not atypical to advise someone that he ought to take his daughter to the doctor for her cough, though he hadn't been deliberating over any relevant practical question. As a referee observed, advice more plausibly aims to give the correct answer to questions about which agents ought to be deliberating. But since Kolodny and MacFarlane's characterization of advice is reasonable in cases like Advisor's, the puzzle remains.
40. A similar view is defended in John Horty, "Right Actions in Perspective," in Modality Matters: Twenty-five Essays in Honour of Krister Segerberg, ed. H. Lagerlund, S. Lindstrom, and R. Sliwinski, Uppsala Philosophical Studies 53 (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 2006).
41. See Dowell, "Empirical Metaphysics," for a theory of how speaker's intentions determine relevant parameters.
42. In "'Might' Made Right," von Fintel and Gillies draw the same conclusion for epistemic claims.
43. Relativists also need to accommodate this point; Kolodny and MacFarlane acknowledge that in some contexts assessors are interested in the truth of an "ought" claim relative to a composite of different people's evidence.
44. Similar problems arise from the evaluations of eavesdroppers, discussed below.
45. In this scenario, Physicist and her information replace rather than supplement Advisor and his information.
46. A similar objection against contextualism about epistemic claims is raised by von Fintel and Gillies ("'Might' Made Right").
47. Kolodny and MacFarlane press this as an objection to contextualism, charging that it "distorts" the nature of deliberation. They briefly consider news sensitivity but claim that it seems equally vulnerable.
48. Since we argue below that a satisfactory contextualist account must solve the problems on the second horn anyway, we leave open the difficult question of how precisely to define the relevant body of information. The right account must at least balance the value of better information against the value of timely decisions. We also agree with Elizabeth Barnes (conversation) that in some contexts speakers may require for their normative judgments information of a quality that they know unobtainable; the appropriate judgment is then that there is no way to know what one ought to do. Plausibly, the quality of information that satisfies us is a function of what is at stake.
49. We disagree similarly with von Fintel and Gillies's diagnosis (in "'Might' Made Right") of the analogous case for epistemic claims.
50. Here we part company with Janice Dowell ("A Flexible Contextualist Account of 'Ought'"), who argues that a news-sensitive strategy is sufficient to vindicate contextualism.
51. The problem is sharpened if we suppose that the advisor's information is complex and difficult to process, so that the agent is more likely to get the correct answer to the question of what he ought to do given i if i excluded the advisor's information, than if i included it. Suppose that with Physicist's information Agent has a .99 probability of correctly judging that given that information he ought to block shaft A, thereby saving all 10 miners, and a .01 probability of incorrectly judging that he ought to block neither, saving 9, whereas without that information there is a probability of 1 that he correctly judges that he ought to block neither. Clearly in this case Physicist should provide the information, and assists Agent more by doing so, even though she thereby makes Agent less likely to answer his deliberative question correctly.
52. We don't believe it possible to identify any more basic, unified, or overarching goal of Agent's deliberation that advice aims to promote; any proposal of this kind will reproduce the problems discussed above. Agent's concerns have to be understood as irreducibly plural; his separate concerns for the lives of each of the miners cannot be replaced with a concern to save all their lives, or the most lives he can, for example, or else he ought to take an all-or-nothing gamble and choose one shaft to block, rather than blocking neither and sacrificing one life to save the other nine. Saying that the fundamental concerns in deliberation are to promote and protect values is not to deny that it might also be concerned with how to promote and protect values, including questions of how to weight probabilities and values, and what means to use.
53. Our argument here rests merely on the intuition that fuller information is better, and doesn't commit us to a particular account of why it is better. (A better position for making decisions is no guarantee of a better result.)
54. This treatment of normative modals parallels Kent Bach's treatment of epistemic modals ("Perspectives on Possibilities: Contextualism, Relativism, or What?" in Egan and Weatherson, Epistemic Modality). Bach argues that our real interest is not in any static epistemic modal propositions, but rather (as he puts it) in what is "possible now." It also bears similarities to two other contextualist strategies. One considered by Kolodny and MacFarlane is that ought judgments in deliberation and advice are made relative to evidence in an indeterminate and negotiable "conversational score"
55. on this strategy (applied to epistemic disagreements by Keith DeRose, "Single Scoreboard Semantics," Philosophical Studies 119 [2004]: 1-21), Agent and Advisor are concerned with a common but indeterminate proposition.
56. As Kolodny and MacFarlane point out, this strategy seems unable to integrate deliberation and advice when the conversational scores remain unreconciled. Another strategy, applied to epistemic disagreement by von Fintel and Gillies ("'Might' Made Right"), suggests that modal claims put into play a "cloud" ofpropositions, and can be accepted or rejected on the basis of the truth value of the strongest one that the assessor is in a position to accept or reject. We consider our strategy more plausible and better motivated than these alternatives.
57. Similar problems arise from diachronic disagreement with oneself (retractions). Suppose that having already judged that he ought to leave both shafts unblocked, Agent acquires new information, leading him to say, "I was wrong/what I said was mistaken. I ought to block A." Under news-insensitive contextualism his new judgment does not contradict his old judgment. This is less problematic for news-sensitive contextualism, which accommodates contradiction for reassessments made prior to the act, while post facto retractions do not seem as natural.
58. For similar arguments against contextualism about epistemic modals
59. see Egan, Hawthorne, and Weatherson, "Epistemic Modals in Context"
60. Egan, "Epistemic Modals, Relativism, and Assertion"
61. and MacFarlane, "Epistemic Modals Are Assessment-Sensitive."
62. For similar arguments against contextualism about taste predicates, see Lasersohn, "Context Dependence."
63. For the expectation of reciprocity in gossip, see Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 54.
64. A relativist might claim that unlike 9 and 10 it is impossible to respond to these "ought" claims by assessing the propositions which, according to our contextualism, they originally asserted. We think this is false; one can always respond with "Yes, that is what you ought to do, given what you know. But . . . "
65. Mark Richard ("Contextualism and Relativism," Philosophical Studies 119 [2004]: 215-42) observes evidence of similarly context-insensitive assessments of claims involving gradable predicates like "tall" and "rich."
66. Similar conversational dynamics have also been implicitly endorsed by philosophers who claim that ought claims involve implicit comparison classes (e.g., Sloman, "'Ought' and 'Better'"; Jackson, "On the Semantics and Logic of Obligation"). Here is Jackson: "I say 'It ought to be that Lucretia used less painful poisons.' You retort 'Oh no, it ought to be that Lucretia used painless poisons.' I then retort 'Oh no, it ought to be that Lucretia used political means rather than poison to obtain her ends.' You then retort 'Oh no, it ought to be that Lucretia never existed at all.' I then retort 'Oh no, it ought to be that Lucretia existed but made people happy'. . . Each retort seems a fair one, how so? What is happening is that the set of alternatives to which the 'ought' is relative is being implicitly changed at each stage of the conversation" (181).
67. One possible contextualist response is to postulate semantic blindness-that is, that insensitive assessments result from a failure to recognize the ambiguity in ought sentences. Bach ("Perspectives on Possibilities") postulates semantic blindness in defense of (by our classification) contextualism about epistemic modals. We think ours is a better and more charitable solution.
68. This strategy mimics Simon Blackburn's "quasi-realism" (Essays in Quasi-Realism [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993]), the project of explaining apparently realist features of moral discourse with purely expressivist resources.
69. This point needs care, however, since arguably "No, that's false" isn't false but just odd, and there doesn't seem to be any similar oddity about context-insensitive agreement using "true." Eavesdropping cases admittedly have no direct impact on decisions or advice, but they seem typically to be made in the mode of advice, or as simulated advice.
70. For general discussion of why context-insensitive assessments fit certain kinds of context-dependent expressions (e.g., normative and epistemic modals, predicates of personal taste, gradable adjectives) but not others (e.g., paradigmatic indexicals, explicitly relativized modals)
71. see Alexander Almer and Gunnar Bjornsson, "The Pragmatics of Context-Insensitive Assessments" (unpublished manuscript, University of Gothenburg).
72. A contextualist position of this kind might seem self-undermining: isn't allowing context-insensitive assessments as "true" incompatible with the contextualist's signature claim of context-sensitive truth conditions? It is not, because by truth conditions we mean the technical notion of the conditions of satisfaction of a proposition, which doesn't commit us to any stance on the meaning or use of "true" in English.
73. Kolodny and MacFarlane consider this problem, which has an analogue for relativism about epistemic modals raised by Richard Dietz, "Epistemic Modals and Correct Disagreement," in Relative Truth, ed. M. García-Carpintero and M. Köilbel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 239-62.
74. See MacFarlane, "Epistemic Modals Are Assessment-Sensitive." This flexible relativism deflects another contextualist objection, offered against relativism about epistemic modals by Bach ("Perspectives on Possibilities"). This objection holds that some modal claims must express relativized propositions, because they are explicitly relativized (e.g., "Given what she knows, the keys might be in the door"
75. cf. "Given what Agent knows, he ought to block neither shaft")-so relativism introduces unnecessary complications into the semantics of modals. But the relativist can interpret "given that p" as forcing a particular context ofassessment. For more relativist strategies, see Stephenson, "Judge Dependence," 514-18.
76. See, e.g., Gilbert Harman, "Moral Relativism Defended," Philosophical Review 85 (1975): 3-22
77. Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996)
78. David Wong, Moral Relativity (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1984)
79. James Dreier, "Internalism and Speaker Relativism," Ethics 101 (1990): 6-26
80. David Copp, Morality, Normativity, and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Finlay, "Oughts and Ends."
81. David Lyons, "Ethical Relativism and the Problem of Incoherence," repr. in Relativism: Cognitive and Moral, ed. J. W. Meiland and M. Krausz (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 210
82. Robert Streiffer, Moral Relativism and Reasons for Action (New York: Routledge, 2003), 8
83. Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 50.
84. Janice Dowell is working on an account of this kind ("A Flexible Contextualist Account of 'Ought'").
85. Streiffer (Moral Relativism, 14) argues that this strategy neutralizes contextualism's supposed advantage in explaining the extent and persistence of moral divergence. However, we think that contextualism is also (and better) motivated by other considerations.
86. Another way the contextualist can explain our sense that we disagree with Huck is to suggest that we erroneously but perhaps warrantedly assume that there is a shared standard in this case, or in moral disagreements in general (Wong, Moral Relativity, 79
87. Stephen Finlay, "The Error in the Error Theory," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 [2008]: 356-77).
88. Streiffer ( Moral Relativism, 14-15) argues that this defense of contextualism fails
89. the ubiquity of moral disagreement makes it highly implausible that common standards would be assumed. But such an assumption could be reasonable even in the face of extensive and intractable disagreement. Moral standards might be highly abstract and difficult to apply (perhaps admitting indeterminacy), as if Kantians or Utilitarians were correct about the principles of morality. Moreover, if our sense of disagreement depends on the assumption of a common standard, that could explain why it is less clear when the standards are strikingly different. If we consider the moral beliefs of, for example, a New Guinean headhunter prior to "civilized" contact, instead of the moral beliefs of a nineteenth-century American like Huck, it is arguably less clear that those beliefs contradict our own.
90. Contrast Streiffer ( Moral Relativism, 6), who assumes that the contextualist must say that the goal of each of the disagreeing parties is to establish the truth of their own position.
91. Is it a problem that Huck is a fictional historical character? We suggest that the typical purpose of expressing moral disagreement with fictional and/or historical characters is to express our attitudes about or settle what to do in situations like theirs. We are unlikely to find ourselves in such a situation, of course, but contingency planning need not be not restricted to likely or even possible scenarios
92. see Allan Gibbard, Thinking How to Live [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003].
93. As Jonas Olson observed to us, one can have preference for conformity to a standard that isn't plausibly moral subscription (e.g., to the standard that requires everybody to give one money), and as Michael Ridge observed to us, it is possible to subscribe to a moral standard yet sometimes prefer that people fail to conform to it (e.g., hoping that one's political opponent proves himself morally unfit for office). For discussion of problems in defining the noncognitive attitude involved in moral judgments and a proposed solution
94. see Gunnar Bjornsson and Tristram McPherson, "Moral Attitudes for Expressivists: Solving the Specification Problem" (unpublished manuscript, Linkoping University/University of Gothenburg and University of Minnesota-Duluth).
95. Our practical conflict with Huck is strictly with his moral commitment. As readers of his adventures know, Huck is internally conflicted, and his moral commitment is ultimately defeated by his own humanity. Some expressivists have agreed that moral judgments incorporate beliefs in standard- relative propositions, explaining disagreement as we propose in this section
96. see esp. Allan Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990)
97. and Matthew Chrisman, "From Epistemic Contextualism to Epistemic Expressivism," Philosophical Studies 135 (2007): 225-54.
98. We part company with them on how to understand standard-insensitive assessments below.
99. Streiffer ( Moral Relativism) claims that contextualists have to reject ordinary intuitions about when our moral claims are and are not contradictory. We disagree
100. the contextualist can accommodate intuitions about when our moral claims are and are not in practical conflict, and we doubt that ordinary intuitions can be trusted to reliably discriminate this from genuine contradiction.
101. See also Chrisman, "From Epistemic Contextualism."
102. Brian Weatherson, "Attitudes and Relativism," Philosophical Perspectives 22 (2008): 527-44.
103. Weatherson's target sentence involves "wrong" rather than "ought" (andJefferson Davis rather than Huck Finn): "Davis believed that helping fugitive slaves was wrong" ("Attitudes and Relativism," 540).
104. Unlike Weatherson, we think that it can also be appropriately evaluated as true and heard as relating to the norms to which Huck and his society ascribed. See n. 55.
105. Weatherson, "Attitudes and Relativism," 539.
106. Mark Schroeder, "Hybrid Expressivism: Virtues and Vices," Ethics 119 (2009): 257-309.
107. We have previously proposed this strategy for defending standard-relative con- textualism, in a rudimentary way, in Stephen Finlay, "The Reasons That Matter," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2006): 12-14.
108. This model of moral disagreement is explored and defended elsewhere by Stephen Finlay ("The Conversational Practicality of Value Judgement," Journal of Ethics 8 [2004]: 205-23
109. "Value and Implicature," Philosophers' Imprint 5 [2005]: 1-20
110. "The Reasons That Matter," "The Error in the Error Theory," and "Oughts and Ends").
111. Characterizing our assessment of Huck's belief as an imperative may seem odd, since we cannot address it to Huck or affect his actions. This situation parallels the eavesdropping case, which we characterized as simulated advice. Likewise, we understand distant assessments of moral claims as simulated demands; see also n. 43.
112. The dynamics of privileged propositions are illustrated by the following case: A: "The killer ought to have used a silencer." B: "No, certainly not. He ought not to have killed at all." A: "No, of course." As we interpret this, A offers an evaluation relativized to the killer's goals. B understands but substitutes an alternative (moral) standard as normatively trumping the killer's goals, offering a context-insensitive assessment of A's claim. A accepts the retroactive change in context, since the new standard is more highly valued than the original one (Finlay, "The Reasons That Matter"). The dynamics of fundamental moral disagreements are obviously different, since the interlocutors have conflicting values and conversational purposes. See Finlay, "Conversational Practicality," "Value and Implicature," "The Error in the Error Theory"
113. see also Stephen J. Barker, "Is Value Content a Component of Conventional Implicature?" Analysis 60 (2000): 268-79
114. Harman and Thomson, Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity.
115. A rival diagnosis appeals to the idea that ought claims identify the best of a set of specific alternatives, which can be expanded to introduce better options like not killing ( Jackson, "On the Semantics and Logic of Obligation"); see n. 30. This doesn't cover the case where changing the context alters the ranking of the original options; for example, it may be morally better that the killer failed to achieve his goals (by not using a silencer), given only the alternatives {he succeeds, he fails}.
116. As contextualists, we accept that some attributions of moral knowledge are made with "anthropological" rather than moral conversational purposes. It might be perfectly acceptable to say, in retelling the story of Huckleberry Finn, "Huck knew that he ought to tell on Jim, but his humanity weakened his will." The reference to the standards current in Huck's social environment would be obvious enough, and no endorsement implied.
117. Weatherson also objects that treating "ought" differently in belief and knowledge reports allows an interpretation of A as noncontradictory: (A) S believes that he ought to φ. Indeed S knows it. But S doesn't know that he ought to φ. Contextualism allegedly allows the two knowledge reports to relate to different ought propositions. The first seems to ascribe knowledge of the proposition made salient by the belief report (referred to by "it"), a proposition thus related to S's moral standards; the second ascribes knowledge of a proposition identified by an "ought" embedded in that knowledge report, hence related to the speaker's standards. But this reading of A seems unavailable. Our account of context-insensitive assessments dissolves this problem. Although the first knowledge report is concerned with S's belief, the assessment implied is of a proposition relevantly related to the proposition believed by S, one related to our standards. This gives both knowledge reports the same content; hence contradiction. Contradiction could be avoided if the first report could be made with anthropological and the second with moralistic interest. But such shifts of conversational interest do not occur between conjuncts without significant markers (change of voice, stressing the second "know," etc.).
118. See also Kolodny and MacFarlane, "Ought: Between Objective and Subjective," who also reject this kind of argument.
119. Consider also Streiffer's dilemma ( Moral Relativism, 9-12), as follows. Contextualism holds either (i) that moral utterances are always relativized to the speaker's standards, or (ii) that they can be relativized to any salient standard. If i, then moral sentences are not relativized to speaker's standards when embedded in belief reports. If ii, then moral sentences are never relativized to any other standards except when embedded in belief reports. We now can explain why embracing ii is not ad hoc, contra Streiffer. In assertoric uses or in semantic assessments, a speaker is concerned with conformity of actions to her own standards, whereas in belief reports (and anthropological reports of knowledge) her concern is the subject's attitudinal state. Brogaard ("Moral Contextualism") explains the differences between belief reports and knowledge reports in semantic rather than pragmatic terms. She takes moral propositions to be true only relative to judges, understands propositional attitude operators as shifting the relevant context of evaluation for these propositions from the attributor to the at- tributee and understands factive propositional attitude attributions as requiring that the proposition involved be true relative to the standards of the attributor. Her explanation thus bears structural similarities to ours, but it is less deep. It doesn't explain why we have a semantics that allows insensitivity to judges' concerns in semantic assessments in some areas of discourse but not others, why the sense of disagreement is stronger in moral matters than in, say, matters of taste, or why anthropological uses are natural. Explaining these requires understanding the pragmatic considerations discussed here, which remove any explanatory need for propositions with judge-relative truth conditions.
120. The semantics for modals orthodox in linguistics (Kratzer, "What 'Must' and 'Can' Must and Can Mean," "The Notional Category ofModality") recognizes such an argument place, which in normative uses is filled by some system of norms. For analogous cases against nonrelativized propositions about epistemic modality, see Bach, "Perspectives on Possibilities"; and Schaffer, "Contextualism for Taste Claims."
121. We have attempted parts of this defense elsewhere. See, e.g., Finlay, "Conversational Practicality," "The Reasons That Matter," "The Error in the Error Theory," "Oughts and Ends"; and Gunnar Bjornsson, "Do 'Objectivist' Features of Moral Discourse and Thinking Support Moral Objectivism?" (unpublished manuscript, Linkoping University and University of Gothenburg).