Article published In:
Language and DialogueVol. 5:2 (2015) ► pp.224–246
Disagreement and the speaker’s point of view
This article defends an intentionalist solution to cases of disagreement. Unlike conventionalist approaches, the paper shows that the truth-value of some sentences is shifted and relative to the concrete way the assertion is made. Unlike relativist accounts, it argues that cases of subjective meaning are just apparent, and really express normative content as included in embedded sentences. The paper advocates for a solution based on what I call the speaker’s point of view, which understands disagreement as expressing the speaker’s perspective in conversation about a particular matter without constraining the truth-value of the sentences of our natural language. Consequently, the speaker’s utterance is a speech act necessarily related to the interlocutor’s utterance, which is another speech act, since only by integrating the level of the communicative function into a dialogic interaction the real meaning of the utterances can completely show up.
References (54)
Austin, John L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Baker, Carl. 2012. “Indexical Contextualism and the Challenges from Disagreement.” Philosophical Studies 1571: 107–123. 
. 2014. “The Role of Disagreement in Semantic Theory.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 921: 37–54.
Charro, Fernando, and Juan J. Colomina. 2014. “Points of View beyond Models. Towards a Formal Approach to Points of View as Access to the World”. Foundations of Science 191: 137–151.
DeRose, Keith. 1991. “Epistemic Possibilities.” Philosophical Review 1001: 581–605.
. 2004. “Single Scoreboard Semantics.” Philosophical Studies 1191: 1–21.
Egan, Andy. 2007. “Epistemic Modals, Relativism and Assertion.” Philosophical Studies 1331: 1–22.
. 2010. “Disputing about Taste.” In Disagreement, ed. by Richard Feldman and Timothy Warfield, 247–286. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Egan, Andy, John Hawthorne, and Brian Weatherson. 2005. “Epistemic Modals in Context.” In Contextualism in Philosophy. Knowledge, Meaning and Truth, ed. by George Preyer and Georg Peter, 131–170. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1841. “Self-Reliance.” In Harper American Literature, ed. by John McQuade, 1032–1048. New York: Harper and Row.
Feller, Sebastian. 2010. Lexical Meaning in Dialogical Language Use. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Francén, Ragnar. 2010. “No Deep Disagreement for New Relativists.” Philosophical Studies 1511: 19–37.
Glanzberg, Michael. 2007. “Context, Content, and Relativism.” Philosophical Studies 1361: 1–29.
Hautamäki, Antti. 1983a. “The Logic of Viewpoints.” Studia Logica 421: 187–196.
. 1983b. “Dialectics and Points of View.” Ajatus 391: 218–231.
Huvenes, Torfinn. 2012. “Varieties of Disagreements and Predicates of Taste.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 901: 167–181.
. 2014. “Disagreement without Error.” Erkenntnis 791: 143–159.
Iacona, Andrea. 2008. “Faultless or Disagreement.” In Relative Truth, ed. by Manuel García-Carpintero and Max Kölbel, 287–295. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kaplan, David. 1989. “Demonstratives.” In Themes from Kaplan, ed. by John Almog, John Perry, and Howard Wetsttein, 481–563. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kölbel, Max. 2004. “Faultless Disagreement.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1041: 53–73.
. 2009. “The Evidence for Relativism.” Synthese 1661: 375–395.
Lasersohn, Peter. 2005. “Context Dependence, Disagreement, and Predicates of Personal Taste.” Linguistics and Philosophy 281: 643–686.
. 2008. “Quantifications and Perspective in Relativist Semantics.” Philosophical Perspectives 221: 305–337.
. 2009. “Relative Truth, Speaker Commitment, and Control of Implicit Arguments.” Synthese 1661: 359–374.
. 2011. “Context, Relevant Parts and (Lack of) Disagreement over Taste.” Philosophical Studies 1561: 433–439.
Lewis, David. 1980. “Index, Context, and Content.” In his Papers in Philosophical Logic, 21–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Liu, Mingya. 2009. “Adverbs of Comment and Disagreement.” In
Logic, Language, and Meaning. Proceedings of the Amsterdam Colloquium 2009, ed by M. Aloni, 335–344. Heidelberg: Springer.
López de Sa, Dan. 1999. Response-Dependencies: Colors and Values. PhD Dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona.
. 2008. “Presuppositions of Commonality: An Indexical Relativist Account of Disagreement.” In Relative Truth, ed. by Manuel García-Carpintero and Max Kölbel, 297–310. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2009. “Relativizing Utterance-Truth?” Synthese 1701: 1–5.
MacFarlane, John. 2003. “Future Contingents and Relative Truth.” Philosophical Quarterly 531: 321–336.
. 2005. “Making Sense of Relative Truth.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1051: 305–323.
. 2007. “Relativism and Disagreement.” Philosophical Studies 1321: 17–31.
Marques, Teresa. 2014a. “Relative Correctness.” Philosophical Studies 1671: 361–373.
. 2014b. “Doxastic Disagreement.” Erkenntnis 791: 121–142.
Percus, Oren. 2000. “Constraints on some other Variables in Syntax.” Natural Language Semantics 81:173–229.
Perry, John. 1993. “Thought without Representation.” Supplementary Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 601: 137–152.
Rattan, Gurpreet. 2014. “Disagreement and the First-Person Perspective.” Analytic Philosophy 551: 31–53.
Recanati, François. 2002. “Unarticulated Constituents.” Linguistics and Philosophy 251: 299–345.
. 2008. “Moderate Relativism.” In Relative Truth, ed. by Manuel García-Carpintero and Max Kölbel, 41–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richard, Mark. 2004. “Contextualism and Relativism.” Philosophical Studies 1191: 215–242.
Sainsbury, Mark. 2014. “Fishy Business.” Analysis 741: 3–5.
Sauerland, Uli, and Mathias Schenner. 2009. “Content in Embedded Sentences. A Typology by Context Shift.” In Multimodal Signals: Cognitive and Algorithmic Issues, ed. by Anna Esposito, Amir Hussain, and Maria Marinaro, 197–207. Heidelberg: Springer
Stalnaker, Robert. 1974. “Pragmatic Presupposition.” In Semantics and Philosophy, ed. by M.K. Munitz and P.K. Unger, 197–207. New York: NYU Press.
. 1978. “Assertion.” In Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9: Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 315–322. New York: Academic Press.
. 2002. “Common Ground.” Linguistics and Philosophy 251: 701–721.
Stephenson, Tamina. 2007. “Judge Dependence, Epistemic Modals, and Predicates of Personal Taste.” Linguistics and Philosophy 301: 487–525.
. 2010. “Control in Centred Worlds.” Journal of Semantics 271: 409–436.
Stojanovic, Isidora. 2007. “Talking about Taste: Disagreement, Implicit Arguments, and Relative Truth.” Linguistics and Philosophy 301: 691–706.
Vázquez, Margarita, and Manuel Liz. 2011. “Models as Points of View: The Case of System Dynamics.” Foundations of Science 161: 383–391.
Von Fintel, Kai, and Anthony S. Gillies. 2008. “CIA Leaks.” Philosophical Review 1171: 77–98.
Weigand, Edda. 2009. Language as Dialogue, Ed. by Sebastian Feller. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2010. Dialogue: The Mixed Game. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Zeman, Dan. 2012. “Unarticulated constituents, Variadic Function, and Relativism.” Logique et Analyse 541: 617–632.
Cited by (3)
Cited by three other publications
Miranda Vilchis, Rogelio
2023. Holding points of view does not amount to knowledge. Ratio 36:1 ► pp. 11 ff. 
Hautamäki, Antti
2022. Disagreement, Points of View, and Truth-Relativism. Acta Analytica 37:4 ► pp. 531 ff.
Colomina-Almiñana, Juan J.
2018. Pragmatic presupposition and unarticulated constituents. Lingua 206 ► pp. 112 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.