Vol. 32 No. 2 (2012)
Articles

Modulación para predicados evaluativos blandos

Nicolás Lo Guercio
CONICET / G[af]

Published 2012-11-01

Keywords

  • Contextualismo,
  • Relativismo,
  • Modulación,
  • Desacuerdos sin falta
  • Relativism,
  • Modulation,
  • Faultless disagreements,
  • Contextualism

Abstract

In this paper I will defend a contextualist treatment for evaluative predicates, i.e. the idea of building the relevant perspective into the content of the utterance. However, my proposal differs from other contextualist approaches (indexicalism, unarticulated constituents theory). I'll Show that a theory that postulates a pragmatic enrichment of utterances involving soft evaluative predicates is preferable to indexicalism, the theory that postulates a hidden variable in the logical form of such sentences. I will argue that the content of utterances like "Apples are delicious" may vary according to the standard of taste relevant in the context of utterance due to a modulation process that adjusts the semantic content expressed by the predicate. Finally, I will argue that there is no such thing as faultless disagreements, thus answering the main relativist objection against contextualists proposals.

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