Vol. 36 No. 2 (2016)
Articles

Modeling Truth-Relativistic Assertion

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  • Ramiro Caso
Ramiro Caso
Universidad de Buenos Aires - ANPCyT
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2016.23

Published 2016-11-01

Keywords

  • Assertion,
  • Truth Relativism,
  • Nonindexical Contextualism,
  • Evaluative Disagreement
  • Aserción,
  • Relativismo de la verdad,
  • Contextualismo no indéxico,
  • Desacuerdo evaluativo
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

I present an extension of Stalnaker’s (1978) framework for modeling the conversational effects of assertion, so that it may be applied to the assertion of propositions whose truth is relative to parameters beyond a possible world. I develop two ways in which the new framework may be applied to the assertion of evaluative propositions, depending on whether the assessment of evaluative utterances reflects a moderate or a radical conception of their correctness conditions. I argue that, in virtue of this difference in the conceptualization of assertion, radical relativism has an advantage over moderate relativism, for moderate relativism faces problems with respect to the interpretation of evaluative disagreement.

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