Two posts I want to write in the near future, and a silly question about deodorant

Here are three nascent ideas.  Well…two nascent ideas.  The third is just a little bit of silliness.  But the first two, they’re ferreal…potential blog posts, potential papers, potential considerations that could figure into a broader position on relativism, perspectivalism, and the relationship between the two.

Hybrid Perspectival Realism

Relativism is a semantic thesis that allows two speakers to truly assert incompatible attitudes towards a single proposition. I have suggested that relativism is best assessed by looking to the most plausible metaphysical story that could undergird such a position: first-person perspectival realism.  In particular, I have given a perspectival account of the linguistic data that predicates of personal taste are relativistic in their correct tokenings.  There are two other areas of discourse that relativists often point to: epistemic modals and future contingents.  Even though both of these are the favorite stomping ground of relativists, who are interested in two people asserting true propositions that are incompatible with one another, it’s notable that one of them is initmately tied up with modality (given different sets of background information, different things are possible/likely/certain) and with temporality (different propositions about what events obtain on monday are assertable, depending on whether it is sunday or tuesday).  Interestingly, this involves the semantic thesis of agential relativism, which I have attempted to link with the metaphysical thesis of terms of first-personal perspectivalism, with modality and temporality, two other subjects concerning which perspectivalism is a live metaphysical thesis.  I have this suspicion: we can make sense of these relativized areas of discourse by considering a hybrid perspectivalism, one that regards facts as embedded in certain first-personal-modal perspectives (in the case of epistemic modals) and first-personal-temporal perspectives (in the case of future contingents).  The structure of such a proposal is the sort of thing that I won’t know until I try to write it.  That’s why I want to try to write it.

Standards of Taste

Relativists often talk about predicates of personal taste figuring into propositions that are true relative to a standard of taste.  For instance, “oysters are tasty” is true relative to Raleigh’s standard of taste, and false relative to Ethan’s standard of taste.  I have been tinkering with this notion…a ’standard of taste’.  The idea seems to be used in order to suggest that predicates of taste are symmetrical to gradable adjectives, and epistemic predicates, which also figure into propostions that are true relative to a standard (standard of justification, standard of tallness).

I’m struck by the structural differences between a ’standard of taste’ and standards that are operative in neighboring discourses.  For instance, consider epistemic standards.  The reason that ‘I know that I have hands’ is true on the street and false in the philosophy room is because the epistemic standards are different.  But the structure of this difference is very straightforward.  When two situations invite different epistemic standards, characters from both sides could potentially agree that they know they are justified in believing they have hands to-extent-a, and that they aren’t justified to-extent-b, and that b is greater than a.  They’re disagreeing on where on this linear spectrum they should place the “justified enough” index, but they agree on the existence of the spectrum and the relative positions on that spectrum.  Likewise with gradable adjectives.  When we argue about whether the child is tall, we’re not arguing about what is tall for a child, or what is tall for a basketball player, or the child’s height.  We’re arguing on where (on an agreed upon standard) the ‘tall enough to be tall’ index is placed.

The case is strikingly different with taste.  If you and I disagree over whether licorice is tasty, we’re not agreeing that it is tasty to a certain extent, but disagreeing on where the ‘tasty enough to be tasty’ index is placed.  We could make this clear by thinking of situations in which this *is* what we’re doing…say, when i’m being a coffee snob.  If I disagree with you on whether Foldger’s is tasty, it’s fair to say that we actually (might) agree to the extent to which Foldger’s is tasty, but we disagree on how tasty coffee has to be before it deserves to be called tasty.  This is the circumstance in which personal taste is analagous to epistemic standards/gradable adjectives, etc.  But in normal circumstances, this symmetry doesn’t hold.  You and I could disagree on the entire spectrum, and still not be accused of changing the subject.

To try and make the point in one more way:  consider implication relations.  If I have basketball players in mind, and you have children in mind, it might be that you think something is tall, when I think it is not tall.  But it couldn’t be that I think something is tall and you think it’s not tall (if i think something is tall, you’ll think it’s *very* tall).  If I’m in the philosophy room, and you’re on the street, you might think that a belief is justified when I think it’s not.  But I can’t imagine a situation where I would think a belief is justified and you would think it’s not; you would think it was *very* justified.  In these cases,  being tall relative to standard-1 implies being tall relative to standard-2, but not vis versa.  These implication relations do not hold with respect to taste.  You think cotton candy is tasty and I disagree; I think oysters are tasty, and you disagree.  Neither of the propositions that are true relative to a standard of taste imply anything about the propositions that are true from a different standard of taste.  On the other hand, if a proposition is true relative to one epistemic standard (for instance) it does have implications about what propositions that are true from another epistemic standard.

I don’t know where this disanalogy might lead, but it strikes me as an important one to the nature of relativization in play when we’re talking about the semantic value of purportedly relativistic predicates.  I want to explore this structure further.

Odors you can’t smell

Finally, here’s the new ad campaign for Gillette deodorant:

I just want to point out their slogan:  ”help eliminate odor; don’t just cover it up”.

If I’m even mildly persuaded by irrealist arguments about color, I might think that there is no such thing as something’s looking green (in normal circumstances) without being green.  And I might think that if something has the same SRS as a frog on Twin earth, but it doesn’t look green (in normal circumstances), then it’s not green.

Is Gillette here assuming that an odor can exist, even if it can’t be smelt?  Is Gillette committing to realism about odors?

This entry was posted on 20. April 2010 at 09:08 and is filed under Perspectivalism, Relativism, Metaphysics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.