The Pragmatics of Insensitive Assessments

In assessing the veridicality of utterances, we normally seem to assess the satisfaction of conditions that the speaker had been concerned to get right in making the utterance. However, the debate about assessor-relativism about epistemic modals, predicates of taste, gradable adjectives and conditionals has been largely driven by cases in which seemingly felicitous assessments of utterances are insensitive to aspects of the context of utterance that were highly relevant to the speaker’s choice of words. In this paper, we offer an explanation of why certain locutions invite insensitive assessments, focusing primarily on ’tasty’ and ’might’. We spell out some reasons why felicitous insensitive assessments are puzzling and argue briefly that recent attempts to accommodate such assessments (including attempts by John MacFarlane, Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies) all fail to provide more than hints at a solution to the puzzle. In the main part of the paper, we develop an account of felicitous insensitive assessments by identifying a number of pragmatic factors that influence the felicity of assessments. Before closing, we argue that the role of these factors extends beyond cases considered in the debate about assessor-relativism and fits comfortably with standard contextualist analyses of the relevant locutions. References Almér, A. & Bj rnsson, G. 2009. ‘Relativism, Contextualism and Insensitive Assessments’. Logique et Analyse 52: 363–372. Bach, K. 2011. ‘Perspectives on possibilities: Contextualism, Relativism, or what?’ Bennett, J. 2003. A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals. Oxford U. P. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0199258872.001.0001 Bj rnsson, G. 2011. ‘Towards a Radically Pragmatic Theory of If-Conditionals’. Forthcoming in Making Semantics Pragmatic, (ed) Ken Turner, in Current Research in the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface, Vol 24, Emerald. Bj rnsson, G. ms. ‘Do “Objectivist” Features of Moral Discourse and Thinking Support Moral Objectivism?’ Manuscript. Bj rnsson, G. & Finlay, S. 2010. ‘Defending Metaethical Contextualism’. Ethics 121: 7–36. Brogaard, B. 2008. ‘Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism’. The Philosophical Quarterly 58: 385–409. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.543.x Cappelen, H. & Hawthorne, J. 2009. Relativism and Monadic Truth. Oxford U. P. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199560554.001.0001 DeRose, K. 1991. ‘Epistemic Possibilities’. Philosophical Review 100: 581–605. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2185175 DeRose, K. 1998. ‘Simple Might’s, Indicative Possibilities, and the Open Future’. The Philosophical Quarterly 4