CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Desacuerdos con Falta Nicolás Lo Guercio Abstract Many authors have recently noted the existence of some statements, paradigmatically those involving soft predicates as "Apples are delicious" or "Matisse is better than Picasso", which give rise to what has been called faultless disagreement. Consider the example: Juan: Apples are delicious. Pedro: Apples are not delicious, they are awful. The intuition is that, assuming speakers are sincere, neither of them can be at fault in saying what they say. It is assumed that one cannot make mistakes about apples tasting delicious or not. However, this intuition conflicts with another, equally strong, namely, that John and Peter are contradicting each other. In fact, it seems that Peter denies exactly what John asserts. This is a disadvantage because, were that the case, we should conclude that one of them is saying something false. But if truth is a norm of assertion (even if it is the weakest norm of assertion) one of them is at fault. Here is the dilemma: if we respect our intuitions about the first person authority we must concede that both John and Peter say something true, but that is incompatible with the idea that they are contradicting each other. On the other hand, if we focus on the intuition of contradiction, we must conclude that one of them says something false. But if that is the case then we are forced to concede that either Peter or John is at fault. Standard contextualism, it is often argued, is not enough to account for the phenomenon. If John asserts a different content than that Peter denies, they do not seem to disagree more than in appearance, and if they assert the same content, but this is something like "Apples are delicious to our standard" it seems like one of them is necessarily at fault. Instead, some philosophers like MacFarlane (2008) have argued that a relativistic theory can provide a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. If they are right, faultless disagreement is a reason to endorse relativism. In this work i will argue for three thesis: A) there are no such things as faultless disagreement. There is disagreement, or there is fault. This can be shown if one considers how a discussion that begins with the statements 1) and 2) might continue. The different plausible scenarios are such that speakers acknowledge that there was a misunderstanding, or carry on a disagreement with fault, or disagree not about apples but about what judge is relevant to assess the assertion´s truth. B) even if there were faultless disagreements, nor the moderate nor the radical relativism could account for them. Moderate relativism is not sufficient to explain the phenomenon of faultless disagreements. This theory states that the content of sentences 1) and 2) is invariant, but its truth depends on the circumstances of evaluation at which is assessed, and these should include as a parameter (a non-standard parameter) a standard of taste. But this only guarantees that Juan and Pedro will disagree in the sense that John asserts the same proposition that Peter denies. This is not the sense of disagreement that appears to be at stake, but a stronger one, by which conversation participants can not accept the claim of his opponent without changing their minds. However, within this framework, both could make true assertions, as the circumstances the content must be evaluated at are different in each case. Thus, it is clear that John can accept what Peter says, as is true for Peter´s standard of taste , without changing his mind about his own assertion, which is true at its own standard. Radical relativism cannot account for faultless disagreements neither. In this matter i find convincing the arguments provided by Isidora Stojanovic. If terms like "delicious" behaved in a relativistic way, speakers should be competent with the relativistic meaning and truth conditions of sentences containing such terms. They should know that the truth value of a sentence containing the word "delicious" can vary according to the standard of taste the content of such sentence is evaluated at. But if that were so, it would be difficult to see why speakers would consider themselves as disagreeing. C) however, it is true that there are cases that look like faultless disagreements. Both the standard contextualism and moderate relativism-understood in a certain way-, can account for these appearances, but not the radical relativism. If two speakers believe they share a standard (be such standard part of the content or part of the circumstances of evaluation) they will regard themselves as disagreeing, even if they are not (and therefore none of them is at fault).

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