Predicates of Personal Taste and the Evidential Step

Predicates of Personal Taste and the Evidential Step1

Lavi Wolf

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Abstract

Predicates of personal taste give rise to faultless disagreement, meaning that they

encode a duality that allows them to invoke objective disagreement and to

subjectively refrain from assigning blame. The claim of this paper is that this duality

interacts with the evidential step, a conversational move from an assertion that

functions as a source of evidence pertaining to a proposition, to the context update of

this proposition. PPT assertions fail to do the evidential step due to their irreducible

perspective dependency, and are consequently reinterpreted and updated as an

objectivized mixture model. The paper presents a conversational theory that is able to

account for faultless disagreement as well as for new and old problems and puzzles

previously unaccounted for.

1. Introduction

The intuitive notion of Predicates of Personal Taste (henceforth PPT) such as tasty is

that they convey the speaker's point of view, and therefore should be differentiated

from objective predicates e.g. made in Israel. But if that were the case, i.e. if a person

who says that something is tasty is really saying that she2 finds it tasty then what

sense can we make of the following exchange:

(1) Suzy: This cake is tasty.

James: No, it's not!

Such cases of faultless disagreement (cf. Kölbel, 2003; Lasersohn, 2005) are so called

because of two issues they raise. The first is that while Suzy and James are clearly

disagreeing, this cannot be accounted for by the intuitive notion because disagreement

requires semantic contradiction and there isn't any contradiction between Suzy finding

the cake tasty and James not finding it so. In other words, the intuitive notion leaves

James nothing to disagree about. The second issue is that while Suzy and James are

indeed having a dispute, this is not an ordinary type of disagreement about 'facts in

the world'. For example, if Suzy and James disagree about whether or not the cake is

made in Israel, one of them speaks the truth and the other utters a falsehood. The

person who is wrong is at fault and should mend his beliefs accordingly. However, in

1 I would like to thank Janneke van Wijnbergen-Huitink and Cécile Meier, the organizers of the

"Subjective meaning: alternatives to relativism" workshop and the participants for the inspiring and

creative atmosphere. I am also very thankful to Ariel Cohen, Robert van Rooij and Galit Sassoon for

helpful discussions on this topic. 2 Masculine and feminine pronouns will alternate randomly.

the type of dispute depicted above, both Suzy and James are fully entitled to their

claim and none can (or should) be blamed for uttering a falsehood. This is the

problem of faultlessness, which an adequate theory of PPT should account for as well.

The need to account for cases of faultless disagreement is a motivation for

Lasersohn's (2005) theory, excellently discussed in the introduction chapter of this

volume (van Wijnbergen-Huitink & Meier, this volume). The introduction chapter

also discusses the contextualism-relativism debate that arose with regards to PPT

following Lasersohn's paper. I will, therefore, assume basic familiarity with these

approaches. For the purposes of this paper, the specific mechanism by which the

perspectival aspect of PPT is derived does not matter and contextualism and

relativism are both aspects of the same view3, the subjective evaluation view,

according which PPT are perspective-dependent. There is a judge and default cases of

faultless disagreement stem from this role being assigned to the speaker, i.e. default

cases of PPT are evaluated from a subjective perspective. Whether this judge is

represented by a covert indexical which is part of the propositional content or as an

index of evaluation will not concern this paper. I therefore focus on Lasersohn (2005)

as a prime example of the subjective evaluation approach, in the next subsection.

The rest of section 2 discusses Recanati (2007) as an example of the objective

evaluation approach and Cohen's (2014) objectivized evaluation approach. Section 3

presents the conversational theory of Wolf (2014), discusses the epistemic step and its

conversational descendant the evidential step, argued to be the source of faultless

disagreements regarding PPT. Section 4 solves the puzzles and questions raised in

previous sections and section 5 concludes the paper.

2. Background

2.1 Subjective evaluation

An important advantage of Lasersohn (2005) is that it solves the faultless

disagreement puzzle, i.e. is able to explain why disputes concerning PPT are possible

while at the same time no dispute party is at fault.

Lasersohn's seminal paper presents a theory that extends Kaplan's (1989) framework.

Kaplan distinguishes between the content and the character of utterances, when the

latter is a function from contexts to contents and the former is a proposition, i.e. a

function from world/time indices <w,t> to truth values. Lasersohn adds a third index,

the judge, representing the individual whose taste determines the truth value for

utterances containing PPT:

(2) [|the cake is tasty|]w,t,j

= 1 iff the cake is tasty at world w, time t, according to

judge j.

3 Indeed, as claimed in Stojanovic (2007), both approaches are semantically equivalent, i.e. it doesn’t

matter whether an utterance containing implicit arguments such as PPT is evaluated for truth by a

contextualist or a relativist semantic interpretation – if they are applied to the same indexical

parameters at the same point of view, the truth conditions will be equivalent.

The introduction of a judge index solves the faultlessness problem – each

conversational participant's claim is true, albeit with regards to a different judge,

therefore no one is at fault. The disagreement is accounted for by contradictory

contents – there is no triple index of evaluation (world, time, judge) in which both

contents are true, i.e. the content of the utterance 'the cake is not tasty' indeed

contradicts the content of the utterance 'the cake is tasty'

This is an advantage over contextualist accounts which cannot explain disagreement

(cf. van Wijnbergen-Huitink & Meier, this volume) However, this theory has several

problems, which are discussed in the following sections.

2.1.1 The pragmatic problem

The default use of PPT, according to Lasersohn's account, involves an autocentric

stance, i.e. the speaker is the judge whose taste determines the truth value.

This raises a pragmatic problem. Being a default case means that unless contextually

specified otherwise, every conversational participant naturally expects the judge in a

PPT utterance to be the speaker (Stojanovic 2007). Hence, conversational participants

should pragmatically assign the speaker the judge role by default. In our case, James

should naturally take Suzy to be expressing her own taste, and vice versa. But if both

conversational participants indeed recognize that they each one is expressing an

individual taste, why would they wish to argue? To be more specific, even though

disagreement can be explained semantically in this system, it can't be motivated

pragmatically. Note that when the judge is made explicit there is no actual dispute, as

apparent by the infelicity of the following (cf. also Crespo & Fernández, 2011;

Gunlogson & Carlson, this volume; Umbach, this volume):

(3) Suzy: This cake is tasty for me.

#John: No it's not, this cake is disgusting for me!

The autocentric stance is not a viable notion pragmatically, then. But perhaps a

different stance is at play? Maybe the disagreement stems from both conversational

participants taking each other's utterance to mean something other than a subjective

point of view? Lasersohn suggests a different stance which can be used, an exocentric

stance, in which the judge is someone other than the speaker. This type of stance is

apparent in (but not exclusive to) utterances such as:

(4) Suzy: This cat food is tasty, because my cat can't get enough of it

The judge in (4) is not Suzy, but the cat. We may even, quite reasonably, assume that

Suzy has never tasted the cat food herself. What, then, about disputes involving

exocentric stance?

(5) Suzy: This cat food is tasty.


An exocentric stance is not the default case, thus an argument may arise. However, in

this case the argument boils down to a misunderstanding. Assuming Suzy uses an

exocentric stance as in the previous example, James can either use an autocentric

stance or an exocentric one in which either the aforementioned cat or some other

individual is the judge. If James employs an autocentric stance, then the 'dispute' is

that Suzy claims that the cat finds the cat food tasty and James claims that James

doesn't find it tasty, which is not really a dispute but rather a misunderstanding. Once

the different stance is resolved (for instance, once Suzy realizes that James has

actually eaten the cat food and found it disgusting) Suzy and James will understand

that there's no real argument going on, since it's not feasible to compare cat taste

standards with human. As recalled, explaining both disagreement and faultlessness is

a main desiderata of PPT theories, thus losing disagreement is a high price to pay.

If James employs an exocentric stance in which the judge is some individual other

than Suzy's cat (for instance, if James uses his own cat as a judge) we will be left with

a similar pragmatic problem, since making this judge explicit again eliminates the

dispute:

(6) Suzy: This cat food is tasty for my cat

#James: No it's not, this cat food is disgusting for mine!

Finally, if James employs an exocentric stance in which the judge is the same as

Suzy's (i.e. Suzy's cat), according to Lasersohn's theory there is a real dispute but it is

not faultless. In this case, James' claim contradicts Suzy's claim since there is no

world, time, judge index in which both claims are true. However, both of them can't

be right at the same time – the cat either finds the cat food tasty, or it doesn't. It is

only a matter of finding out whose claim is correct, and in that case one of the

disputing parties will be wrong i.e. at fault. And again, explaining both disagreement

and faultlessness is a main desiderata of PPT theories, thus losing faultlessness is a

high price to pay. To conclude, it doesn't matter which judge the context assigns – the

theory either predicts no disagreement or no faultlessness.

2.1.2 The semantic problem

Disagreement in Lasersohn's theory is accounted for in the usual semantic sense, i.e.

at the level of content - both conversational participants assert contradictory contents.

And, since Lasersohn adds a judge to Kaplan's original indices, contradiction occurs

when there is no world, time and judge index in which both contents are true.

This raises a semantic problem, since it is perfectly possible to assert contradictory

contents in a Kaplanian framework in such a way that doesn't constitute any

disagreement. The following example (based on Recanati, 2007, slightly modified)

serves to show this point:

(7) Suzy (on Sunday morning): It is raining

James (on Monday evening): It is not raining

Suzy asserts the content which is true at a certain world/time index <w, t>4. James

asserts a content which is true at a different time, i.e. the world/time index is <w, t'>.

The contents are contradictory since there is no index in which both contents are true.

Yet, since Suzy's assertion is evaluated for truth at a different time index than James',

(similarly to our original example (1), in which Suzy's assertion is evaluated for truth

by a different judge) any dispute they might have concerning the state of rain (for

instance, if Suzy's utterance was left as a voice message on James' cell phone and

4 Since these utterances do not contain PPT, there is no need for a judge index.

James mistakes this message to co-occur with his own temporal location) will be due

to a misunderstanding and thus not constitute a genuine disagreement.

Since both (7) and (1) are cases in which two utterances semantically contradict one

another, and since (7) does not constitute a real disagreement, there is no support to

Lasersohn's claim that disagreement is to be represented by contradictory contents in

a Kaplanian framework.

2.1.3 The Frege-Geach problem

Lasersohn (2005: 656) argues that PPT may occur embedded under truth-conditional

operators e.g. conditionals, and thus participate in logical deduction such as the

following modus ponens:

(8) If there is a loop, the roller coaster is fun.

There is a loop.

Therefore, the roller coaster is fun.

This argument is based on the Frege-Geach problem (cf. Geach, 1965), raised against

emotivist metaethical theories with regards to the claim that moral predicates e.g.

right and wrong express the speaker's positive or negative emotional attitudes towards

the prejacent. Lasersohn uses the same argument against expressivism and claims that

the modus ponens serves to show that PPT are truth conditional, hence not expressive,

and accountable by his theory.

Lasersohn's argument is disputed by Gutzmann (this volume), who shows that there

are cases in which non-assertoric speech acts participate in logical deduction:

(9) Modus ponens with non-assertoric speech acts: imperatives

If the roller coaster has a loop, go for it.

The roller coaster has a loop.

Therefore, go for it.

(10) Modus ponens with non-assertoric speech acts: expressive speech acts

If the roller coaster had a loop, congratulations for being brave!

The roller coaster had a loop.

Therefore, congratulations for being brave!

But there is another flaw in Lasersohn's argument. Note that in both examples the PPT

and the non assertoric speech acts are used in the apodosis of the conditional. Matters

are different for both PPT and non assertoric speech acts when used in the protasis.

Non assertoric speech acts are completely out:

(11) #If go for it/congratulations then you earned my respect.

PPT are not completely out, which may indicate that they are truth conditional after

all. But the following lacks the logical certainty of Lasersohn's example:

(12) Suzy: If the roller coaster is fun, I will buy a ticket.

James: The roller coaster is fun.

Suzy: Therefore, I will buy a ticket.

In this instance, unlike the former, it seems that the premises do not necessitate the

conclusion, which means it lacks the deductive strength of the former.

In order to see the difference in a clearer manner, imagine a conversational scenario in

which Suzy is talking to Jeff, a person whose opinion Suzy values, and refers the first

assertion to him – 'if the roller coaster is fun I will buy a ticket'. Enters James, whose

opinion Suzy doesn’t value in any way, and asserts that the roller coaster is fun. Will

Suzy conclude from this that she should buy a ticket? Not necessarily.

Now, imagine the same scenario with the same conversational participants, but now

Suzy's first assertion is 'if there is a loop, the roller coaster is fun', and James' assertion

is that there is a loop. Does Suzy's opinion of James affect Suzy's conclusion?

If PPT are indeed truth conditional and explained in terms of Lasersohn's theory then

it shouldn't matter whether they appear in the protasis or apodosis of conditionals.

In light of the problems presented in the previous sections perhaps what we need is a

theory which is more objective. Such a theory, Recanati (2007) is discussed in the

following section.

2.2 Objective5 evaluation

Recanati (2007) accepts the basic ingredients of Lasersohn's theory but argues that the

default judge of PPT cannot be the speaker. Instead, utterances such as (1), repeated

below, should mean "the cake is tasty for us", when us is "the community to which

the speaker and his audience belong" (Recanati, 2007: 91):



Recanati's theory is able to account for the pragmatic, semantic and logical problems

that Lasersohn's theory suffers from, discussed above. The pragmatic problem is

accounted for since both discourse participants use the same judge and therefore it is

understandable that they are arguing. The semantic problem is accounted for since in

this case semantic contradiction and disagreement are related to each other - both

Suzy and James argue about the same thing, i.e. whether the cake is tasty for both of

them. The logical problem is accounted for since both the embedded and non-

embedded PPT in the deduction pertain to the same judge index.

However, this theory has problems of its own. The first of which is that it fails to

account for faultlessness since the judge is the same for both dispute participants.

And, as discussed previously, accounting for faultlessness is a main desiderata for

PPT theories, thus losing it is a high price to pay.

The second problem arises from Recanati's distinction between utterances like (1) and

utterances that make the judge explicit, such as "the cake is tasty for me". The latter

is, by Recanati, a weaker claim since it's entailed by the community reading. Because

of this, when Suzy's assertion is challenged by James she can retreat to the weaker

claim, thereby avoiding making a mistake6:

(14) Suzy: This cake is tasty

5 The term objective is used here in the intersubjective sense, i.e. an evaluation which is shared by all

individuals under consideration. 6 According to Recanati Suzy's first assertion is surely a mistake since James is part of us, therefore the

reply in (14) automatically makes the original assertion false.


Suzy: I meant, this cake is tasty for me.

Note that negation has to scope over the implicit for us, which is interpreted as a

universal quantifier. Otherwise, James' utterance will have the potential reading in

which it is true for both James and Suzy that the cake is not tasty. This is undesired

since it overrules Suzy's original assertion. That is, if Suzy's original assertion means

'the cake is tasty for us' James can object on grounds of his own taste (i.e. the cake is

not tasty for James, therefore it is not true that the cake is tasty for both James and

Suzy) but James can't include Suzy's taste in his objection. Thus a narrow scope

negation is out. The wide scope reading, in which it is not the case that the cake is

tasty for both Suzy and James, makes this dialogue felicitous and consistent. Suzy's

second assertion (i.e. the weaker claim that the cake is tasty for her alone) is

consistent as well.

However, by these lights, (15) should be felicitous since it is a conjunction of 'it is not

the case that the cake is tasty for us' with the weaker claim 'but it is tasty for me'.

However, (15) is as infelicitous as (16) (which is predicted to be infelicitous by

Recanati's theory) which is a conjunction of the strong claim 'the cake is not tasty for

me' (entailing 'not tasty for us') with the claim 'the cake is tasty for us':

(15) #This cake is not tasty, but it is tasty for me.

(16) #This cake is not tasty for me, but it is tasty.

So far we can see that there are problems with both the subjective and the objective

evaluation approaches. The following section presents a theory which combines both,

Cohen's (2014) objectivized approach.

2.3 Objectivized evaluation

In an attempt to come up with a theory of PPT which does not suffer from the

subjective or objective problems7, Cohen (2014) presents an objectivized theory of

PPT, based on Wolf & Cohen's (2011) theory of the predicate clear. Cohen discusses

the similarity between clarity and PPT - both are gradable, can be modified by

comparatives and overt experiencers, used as superlatives, and most importantly

exhibit faultless disagreement:

(17) Suzy: It is clear that Abby is a doctor.

James: No it's not!

In light of the similarities and the fact that clear and PPT are both evaluatives, Cohen

(2014) offers a treatment of PPT along the lines of clarity – PPT are objectivized

predicates, whose truth conditions depend on the opinions of various individuals,

specifically those that the speaker considers to be good evaluators of taste.

The notion of 'good evaluators' is formalized by a probabilistic mixture model, which

is defined over possible individuals:

7 Generic theories of PPT also do not suffer from the subjective and objective problems. For a

discussion and rejection of the generic solution, cf. Cohen (2014).

(18)

n

i

iimixture PwP1

)()(

The idea is that each individual i contributes to the mixture model a personal degree

of belief with regards to tasty. This degree is a probability measure representing the

subjective probability value that individual i assigns to the proposition. These

individuals are then assigned weights wi, indicating their perceived reliability in the

eyes of the speaker. If an individual (including the speaker herself) is considered to be

non-reliable in matters of taste, her weight will be low and if an individual is

considered an expert (such as a known connoisseur) in matters of taste her weight will

be high. The final probability value is then computed as the weighted sum of the

probabilities that were assigned. In the case of tasty:

(19) n

=i

iimixture caketastyPw=cake(tastyP1

))(())(

Since PPT are vague, Cohen uses a delineation function (Lewis 1970) d(tasty), which

returns a standard of taste that varies according to context. In some contexts (say, a

meeting of fine-cuisine critics) this standard will have to be very high, while in other

contexts (a meeting of friends at a local hotdog stand) this standard can be lower.

Thus, "the cake is tasty" is true iff the value of the mixture model is greater than

d(tasty):

(20) )())(1

tastydcake(tastyPwn

=i

ii

2.3.1 Objectivization and diagonalization

While the mixture model presented in the previous section is truth conditional, it does

not really provide the conditions of truth for PPT, i.e. it does not tell us whether it is

true that, in our example, the cake is tasty. Rather, it provides information with

regards to the tastes of individuals which are contextually under consideration. In this

sense the mixture model operates less like a horizontal proposition and more like a

diagonal one, which is "the proposition that is true at i for any i if and only if what is

expressed in the utterance at i is true at i" (Stalnaker, 1978: 81). The mixture model

takes into consideration different points of view i, i.e. individuals with different

standards of taste and checks for each one whether the interpretation of tasty in the

eyes of that individual is true for that individual.

Diagonal propositions are different from horizontal ones in many ways. One of them

is that the diagonalization process is not activated out of the blue. In order for

diagonalization to take effect there has to be some violation of conversational rules

that forces utterances to be reinterpreted.

Such a situation in which conversational rules are broken and conversational

participants are not able to update a standard horizontal proposition arises when

conversational participants perform PPT assertions. This conversational situation, I

submit, is the cause for the activation of the mixture model and is the source of

faultless disagreement in PPT. In order to see the conditions that give rise to the

activation of the mixture model we need to look into the inner workings of

conversation and the steps that conversational participants take in order to accept and

update new information. These steps are discussed in the following sections.

3. Conversational elements

3.1 The epistemic step

Sauerland (2004, 2005) discusses a gap between what the Gricean (1975) maxims are

able to account for and the conversational implicatures that are actually

conversationally derived. The maxim of quality, for instance, is not enough to derive

scalar implicatures and there is a need for an extra step on the hearer's part in order to

get there. Regard the following (Sauerland 2005):

(21) Maxim of Quantity: Make the most informative statement that you know to

be true.

(22) The Philharmonic played many of Beethoven’s symphonies.

(23) Primary Implicature: The speaker is not sure that the Philharmonic played

all of Beethoven’s symphonies.

(24) Secondary Implicature: The speaker is sure that the Philharmonic did not

play all of Beethoven’s symphonies.

The main utterance in (22) generates both a primary implicature (23) and a secondary

one (24). The maxim of quantity can account for the primary implicature but in order

to derive the secondary implicature there is a need for a further step – the epistemic

step. Sauerland accounts for this step via a contextual assumption about the epistemic

state of the speaker, i.e. that she either knows/believes that the alternative is true or

that she knows/believes that it is false8:

(25) Kspeaker (the Philharmonic played all of Beethoven’s symphonies) \/

Kspeaker (the Philharmonic didn't play all of Beethoven’s symphonies)

The first disjunct is out due to the primary implicature, therefore the hearer infers the

secondary implicature.

This account of the epistemic step is useful and insightful, but it doesn’t quite take us

all the way to where we need to get, i.e. to the implicature itself. Taking it step by

step, the first one is to pragmatically infer about what the speaker doesn't know for

certain. The second one (the epistemic step) is to get rid of uncertainties and infer

about what the speaker does know for certain. But in order to get from there to the

implicature itself i.e. that the Philharmonic did not play all of Beethoven’s

symphonies, we also need to get rid of the speaker's epistemic state altogether.

Another example of this step in action, this time depicting the well known move from

inclusive to exclusive disjunction:

(26) The Philharmonic played Beethoven’s or Mozart's symphonies.

8 The K-operator expresses epistemic certainty (Hintikka 1961).

The truth conditional meaning is the inclusive disjunction, i.e. that the Philharmonic

played either Beethoven’s or Mozart's symphonies, or both. Since the speaker doesn’t

utter the conjunction and since the conjunction is semantically stronger i.e. entails the

disjunction, the maxim of quantity leads the hearer to infer that the speaker isn't

certain that the conjunction is true. Applying the epistemic step here leads to the

conclusion that the speaker is certain that the conjunction is false. But, once more, the

speaker's epistemic state has nothing to do with the eventual implicature that the

hearer updates, which is the exclusive disjunction. In order to derive the exclusive

disjunction for (26), and the implicature that the Philharmonic played many but not all

of Beethoven’s symphonies for (22), we need one more step which I term the

evidential step9.

3.2 The evidential step

Wolf (2014) discusses the context update process of assertion, which involves a

speaker who performs the speech act and a hearer who has to decide whether to

accept, reject, further discuss, or agree to disagree on it. In order to make such a

decision, the hearer needs to takes into account various sources of evidence at her

disposal. These sources may include direct knowledge e.g. perception, deductive

processes e.g. inference, or reported information e.g. hearsay10

. Once these sources

are being considered, the hearer decides whether to take the evidential step and make

the transition from the evidence that was presented with regards to the truth of the

proposition, to the truth of the proposition.

The formal apparatus utilizes the following assertion operator:

(27) Ax <S,C>

The first argument, S, stands for the degree of strength by which the assertion is

performed and the second argument C is the assertion's propositional content. The

order of arguments stands for relative scope, i.e. the degree of strength scopes over

the propositional content. Thus, a shorthand representation of this assertion operator

in probabilistic terms, i.e. the assertion of propositional content with a degree of

strength that is the value v of a probability function P, is:

(28) Ax P() = v

An example for a standard process of assertion:

(29) Suzy: The cake is on the shelf.

ASuzy P (on-shelf(cake)) high

Suzy asserts the propositional content 'the cake is on the shelf', with a default degree

of strength for assertion which is equal to or greater than high, which stands for some

9 The examples used here are about scalar implicature but, as will be seen ahead, the evidential step

applies to every type of assertion. 10

If this classification of sources of evidence brings grammatical evidentials to the mind of the reader,

this is not a coincidence. I believe that evidentials may indeed be accounted for in terms of this view of

context update, but will say no more about this here.

probabilistic value close to 1 (based on a standard norm of assertion that the speaker

highly believes in what she asserts).

Once Suzy puts forward the assertion, the hearer has to consider it. This process of

consideration is formalized as a mixture model, similar to the one described in the

previous sections, composed of sources of evidence pertaining to the proposition.

(30)

n

=i

ii )(Pw=)P(1

If P() exceeds the hearer’s threshold of acceptance11

, the proposition is accepted and

updated into the common ground; if P() exceeds this threshold, the proposition is

rejected. Otherwise it is left in the Negotiation Zone, a conversational repository of

items under negotiation (cf. Wolf, 2014) which will not be discussed here.

The first important point regarding this process is that the speaker, Suzy, is but one of

many sources of evidence pertaining to the asserted proposition, and that each source

is a point of view with a distinct probability space and probability function. The

second important point is that if the hearer chooses to accept the assertion, he makes

the move from an evidence-dependent or evidence-relative proposition to a truth

conditional one, which is not relative to the beliefs of any individual.

The next section will show how this distinction plays a role in faultless disagreement.

4. Solutions to the problems

4.1 Faultless disagreement

PPT require some perceiver to do the evaluation. A cake can't be tasty if no one tastes

it and a roller coaster can't be fun if no one experiences the ride. As Lasersohn (2005)

puts it, they "aren’t about matters of fact, but are really just matters of opinion".

However, under the assumption that every assertion conveys the degree of belief of

the speaker alongside the propositional content, PPT in standard assertions always

have a default evaluator who is the speaker. Therefore, I propose the following

conversational addition to Cohen (2014) - at the time of assertion PPT behave just like

objective predicates and it is only later, at the stage of context update, that they fail to

make the evidential step and need to be reinterpreted as the mixture model. In order to

see this process at work step by step:


ASuzy P (tasty(cake)) high12

Suzy asserts the content 'the cake is tasty' with the degree of strength, which is Suzy's

degree of belief, of equal to or greater than high. This degree, recall, is derived from a

mixture model of various sources of evidence that Suzy is aware of, which pertain to

the taste of the cake. Note that the degree of strength of the assertion is expressed and

not asserted as part of the propositional content.

11

The assumption is that, by default, the threshold of acceptance is the same degree as the default for

standard assertion, i.e. high. However, this threshold can change, cf. Davis, Potts, & Speas, (2007) and

Davis (2009). 12

This degree is d(tasty) in Cohen (2014).

At the next stage the hearer, James, evaluates Suzy's assertion in light of his own

internal mixture model with the evidence available to him. Suzy's assertion

participates in this mixture model as an additional source of evidence pertaining to the

proposition 'the cake is tasty'. Note that at this stage every source of evidence acts as a

judge of sorts, an evaluator. If the probability value of James' mixture model

surpasses his threshold of acceptance James will accept Suzy's assertion:


ASuzy P (tasty(cake)) high

James: I agree/That's right/Yes, it is!

AJames P (tasty(cake)) high

The next stage is the evidential step in which the asserted propositional content is

updated into the common ground. However, the content is just the bare evaluator-free

proposition 'the cake is tasty'. This content has no truth value on its own and needs to

be coupled with some evaluator. However, as was argued in the previous sections, this

evaluator cannot be fully subjective or objective. Thus, in order to save the context

from becoming defective and preserve the coordination of the presuppositions of

conversational participants, the updated propositional content is reinterpreted as the

mixture model:

(33) Pmixture (tasty(cake)) high

Importantly – this mixture model is truth-conditional (not expressed). It stands for the

proposition that is true in every world in the context set, that good evaluators of taste

will find the cake tasty.

Moving on to cases of faultless disagreement:


ASuzy P (tasty(cake)) high

James: I disagree/That's wrong/No, it isn't!

AJames P (tasty(cake)) high

Both conversational participants assert contradictory contents with the same degree of

belief, which accounts for the disagreement. Of course, both contents can't be updated

into the common ground since such an update will be:

(35) Pmixture (tasty(cake)) high & Pmixture (tasty(cake)) high

Which is a contradiction.

Yet, Suzy and James perform the assertion from a subjective point of view, i.e the

degree of belief defined over the probability space of the speaker. Both Suzy and

James are entitled to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence available to

them and perform an assertion in light of these conclusions. If the evidence available

to each of them differs or the weights they assign to the sources of evidence differ, it

is none of their fault. This accounts for the faultlessness.

4.2 The Frege-Geach problem

Repeating (12):


James: The roller coaster is fun.

Suzy: Therefore, I will buy a ticket.

A representation of Suzy's assertion in (36) is:


ASuzy P ( P( buy(Suzy,ticket) | fun(roller-coaster)) = 1 ) ≥ high

And a representation of James' is:

(38) James: The roller coaster is fun.

AJames P (fun(roller-coaster)) ≥ high

Now, in order for a modus ponens argument to be valid the following features have to

be maintained (cf. Schroeder, 2009):

A. If the premises are true, then the conclusion is true as well.

B. It is inconsistent to accept each of the premises and deny their conclusion.

C. Accepting the premises commits someone, in some sense, to accepting their

conclusion.

The first feature is maintained, since if it is true that the probability of Suzy buying a

ticket given that the roller-coaster is fun is 1, and it is true that the roller-coaster is fun

then it is true that Suzy will buy a ticket.

Things get a bit more complicated in the next two features, since under the

conversational picture that we're describing there is a difference between asserting a

proposition and accepting it. We may assume that if Suzy's assertion is accepted than

the updated content will be the conditional probability, since this operator makes the

PPT relative to a probability space. But we can't assume an update of the bare

proposition 'the roller coaster is fun' for the reasons described above. We therefore

need to update James' assertion as a mixture model. But now, both assertions can be

accepted at the same time without inconsistency, because the embedded PPT is not

evaluated by the same probability space as the non-embedded PPT. For the same

reason, accepting the premises doesn’t necessarily commit someone to accepting their

conclusion.

Compare with the case of PPT in the apodosis, repeating (8) :

(39) Suzy: If the roller coaster has a loop, the roller coaster is fun.

ASuzy P ( P( fun(roller-coaster) | loop(roller-coaster)) = 1 ) ≥ high

James: The roller coaster has a loop.

AJames P (loop(roller-coaster)) ≥ high

Therefore, the roller coaster is fun.

An update of the proposition 'the roller coaster has a loop' does not require

reinterpretation as the mixture model. Thus, it is inconsistent to accept each of the

premises and deny their conclusion and accepting the premises commits someone to

accepting their conclusion.

4.3 Recanati (2007)

The problem in Recanati (2007), recall, is that the theory predicts (40) to be felicitous:

(40) # This cake is not tasty, but it is tasty for me.

(41) #This cake is not tasty for me, but it is tasty.

In the theory proposed here, when an overt experiencer is mentioned there is no need

for mixture model to be involved since the probability value is fixed to that of the

experiencer13

. Therefore, at the level of the propositional content, (40) is represented

as (42) and (41) as (43):

(42) Pmixture(tasty(cake)) ≥ high & Pspeaker(tasty(cake)) ≥ high

(43) Pspeaker(tasty(cake)) ≥ high & Pmixture(tasty(cake)) ≥ high

As can be seen above, the content in (40) is that while good evaluators of taste will

conclude that the cake is not tasty, the speaker finds the cake to be tasty. The content

in (41) is that while the speaker finds the cake to be not tasty, a mixture model

composed of good evaluators of taste will conclude that it is.

The reason why both cases are infelicitous stems from the speaker being a member of

the mixture model. Hence, both of these assertions imply that the speaker is assigned

a low weight within this mixture model, since in both cases the speaker's evaluation

does not affect the result. Combining this with the pragmatic assumption that

individuals usually hold their own taste judgments in a higher regard than they hold

others', results in an infelicitous utterance.

Note that if the speaker explicitly cancels this assumption the utterances become

better:

(44) Don't count on my taste, I have a very unusual one, you see. This cake is not

tasty, but it is tasty for me.

(45) Don't count on my taste, I have a very unusual one, you see. This cake is not

tasty for me, but it is tasty.

13

But see Cohen (2014) for an alternative proposal for overt experiencers.

5. Conclusion

PPT pose a problem for semantics. The claim of this paper is that at the heart of this

problem lies the transition from subjectivity, i.e. the speaker's point of view and

epistemic state from which an assertion is generated, to objectivity i.e. propositional

information that can be shared by conversational participants and employed for

further inferences as conversation progresses.

The conversational theory of Wolf (2014) is able to represent this transition via the

evidential step which is inherent in all assertions, in which hearers interpret partial

information received from various sources of evidence and turn it into truth-

conditional propositions.

PPT, unlike objective predicates, cannot go through the evidential step since the

source of evidence in the case of PPT is inseparable. They are therefore reinterpreted

in a diagonalization-like manner, as claims about context rather than about the world,

via a probabilistic mixture model.

This theory thus provides an account of the dual nature of PPT – predicates whose

origin is a subjective perspective which are used objectively to convey truth-

conditional information.

References

Cohen, Ariel. 2014. “A Tasty Mixture”. Ms. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Crespo, Inés, and Raquel Fernández. 2011. “Expressing Taste in Dialogue.” In

Proceedings of the 15th SEMDIAL Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics

of Dialogue, 84–93. Los Angeles, California.

Davis, Christopher. 2009. “Decisions, Dynamics and the Japanese Particle Yo.”

Journal of Semantics 26 (4): 329–366.

Davis, Christopher, Christopher Potts, and Margaret Speas. 2007. “The Pragmatic

Values of Evidential Sentences.” Proceedings of SALT 17 (1976): 71–88.

Geach, Peter. 1965. “Assertion.” Philosophical Review 74: 449–465.

Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics,

Volume 3: Speech Acts, edited by P. Cole and J.L. Morgan, 225–242. New York:

Seminar Press.

Gunlogson, Christine, and Greg Carlson. 2014. “Predicates of Experience.” In

Subjective Meaning: Alternatives to Relativism, Workshop of the 2010

Conference of the German Society for Linguistics (DGfS) February 24-26,

Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany., edited by Janneke van Wijnbergen-

Huitink and Cécile Meier. Berlin.

Gutzmann, Daniel. 2014. “If Expressionism Is Fun, Go for It!” In Subjective

Meaning: Alternatives to Relativism, Workshop of the 2010 Conference of the

German Society for Linguistics (DGfS) February 24-26, Humboldt-University,

Berlin, Germany., edited by Janneke van Wijnbergen-Huitink and Cécile Meier.

Berlin.

Hintikka, Jaakko. 1961. “Modality and Quantification.” Theoria 27: 119–128.

Kaplan, David. 1989. “Demonstratives.” In Themes from Kaplan, edited by Joseph

Almog, John Perry, and Howard Wettstein, 481–563. Oxford University Press.

Kölbel, Max. 2003. “Faultless Disagreement.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society

104: 53–73.

Lasersohn, Peter. 2005. “Context Dependence, Disagreement and Predicates of

Personal Taste.” Linguistics and Philosophy 28: 643–686.

Lewis, David. 1970. “General Semantics.” Synthese 12: 18–67.

Recanati, François. 2007. Perspectival Thought : A Plea for (Moderate) Relativism.

Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Sauerland, Uli. 2004. “Scalar Implicatures in Complex Sentences.” Linguistics and

Philosophy 27: 367–391.

———. 2005. “The Epistemic Step.” In Experimental Pragmatics. Cambridge UK:

Cambridge University.

Schroeder, Mark. 2009. “Hybrid Expressivism: Virtues and Vices.” Ethics 119 (2):

257–309.

Stalnaker, Robert. 1978. “Assertion.” Cole, Peter, Ed.: Pragmatics. Syntax and

Semantics . New York: Academic Press, . 9: 315–332.

Stojanovic, Isidora. 2007. “Talking about Taste: Disagreement, Implicit Arguments,

and Relative Truth.” Linguistics and Philosophy 30: 691–706.

Umbach, Carla. 2014. “Evaluative Propositions and Subjective Judgments.” In

Subjective Meaning: Alternatives to Relativism, Workshop of the 2010

Conference of the German Society for Linguistics (DGfS) February 24-26,

Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany., edited by Janneke van Wijnbergen-

Huitink and Cécile Meier. Berlin.

Van Wijnbergen-Huitink, Janneke, and Cécile Meier. 2014. “Subjective Meaning—or

How I Learned to Love Relativism.” In Subjective Meaning: Alternatives to

Relativism, Workshop of the 2010 Conference of the German Society for

Linguistics (DGfS) February 24-26, Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany.,

edited by Janneke van Wijnbergen-Huitink and Cécile Meier. Berlin.

Wolf, Lavi. 2014. “Degrees of Assertion. Dissertation”. Ben-Gurion University of the

Negev. https://sites.google.com/site/wolflavi/.

Wolf, Lavi, and Ariel Cohen. 2011. “Clarity as Objectivized Belief.” In Vagueness

and Language Use, edited by Paul Egre and Nathan Klinedinst, Palgrave s, 165–

190. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Documents

Predicates of Personal Taste and the Evidential Step