Abstract
I distinguish two notions of agreement (disagreement) in belief: (a) believing the same (contradictory) content(s) versus (b) having beliefs that necessarily coincide/diverge in normative status. The second notion of agreement (disagreement), (b), is clearly significant for the communication of beliefs amongst thinkers. Thus there would seem to be some prima facie advantage to choosing the conception of content operative in (a) in such a way that the normative status of beliefs supervenes on their content, and this seems to be the prevailing assumption of many semanticists. I shall argue that de se beliefs and assertions provide a motivation to depart from this assumption, and so do beliefs and assertions concerning what is epistemically possible. I conclude by offering two models of assertoric communication that are compatible with the abandonment of the assumption, and suggesting schematically that each model applies to different cases.
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Notes
Two comments: (1) This assumption will not be shared, for example, by neo-Russellians about names, such as Perry (1977, 1979), Salmon (1986), Soames (2002) or Nelson (2002). Thus, the framework I am assuming here excludes these accounts. However, the possibility of dropping assumption A2 will be considered explicitly below. (2) It might be thought that believing the content asserted is not sufficient for sincerity because one’s assertion might be causally unconnected to the belief and therefore not be sincere. However, it is doubtful whether credible such cases will arise independently of an opaqueness of content thesis. Thanks to Bryan Pickel and an anonymous referee for raising the issue.
The question of how the semantic contents of sentences are related to the contents of assertions that are performed by uttering these sentences is in fact one that has generated some discussion (see Lewis 1979; Dummett 1991; Stanley 1997; Egan 2007; Moss 2012; Rabern forthcoming a, b). The very simple assumption made here (i.e. the relation is that of identity) is just the simplest extension of the framework in Kaplan (1977/1989), see ibid. p. 522. I will be revisiting this point below, i.e. I will consider dropping assumption A3.
This framework is described in some more detail in Kölbel (forthcoming).
This not only makes room for concepts that vary in their extension from one thinker, time, place to another (which is relevant for our purposes here) but also for concepts that have vague extensions in the sense that they vary with a range of permissible sharpenings, none of which is privileged by the practices of the community in question. For discussion of this, see Kölbel (2010).
On a view like Jonathan Schaffer’s “necessitarianism”, propositions are individuated in such a way that they do not vary in truth-value with the possible state of the world. Thus, on a such a view, A4 is at best pointless because vacuously true. For why should we treat contents as having truth-values relative to a point of evaluation, if their truth-value does not vary from one point to another. See Schaffer (forthcoming).
If we were working in a framework of “flat” contents, i.e. a theory according to which there is only one necessary content (the content that has the value true with respect to all points of evaluation), and only one contradictory content (the content that is false with respect to all points of evaluation), such as those of Stalnaker (1984) or Lewis (1986), then we might instead be exploring the hypothesis that agreementC and agreementN coincide (and this was in fact the focus of the talks from which this paper derives). However, in order to be general and include frameworks of structured propositions [such as the “metaphysical picture” of Kaplan (1977), or King (2003)], I am exploring merely the hypothesis that agreementN supervenes on content, so that agreementC entails agreementN.
Given Frege’s theory of the concept of truth, namely that it, when applied to a thought, yields the same thought, perhaps this is false: I can assert and think the thought Bismarck expresses when he says “I am Bismarck.” by simply saying “What Bismarck asserted is true.” and thinking the thought this expresses. But this depends on Frege’s problematic theory of truth, which, incidentally, seems to be in conflict with Frege’s own criterion of thought-difference: if the same person can rationally accept thought t1 and reject thought t2, then t1 ≠ t2 (see Frege 1892).
The potential belief expressed by an utterance is the belief one would need to have in order for the assertion to be sincere.
More accurately: some beliefs will make utterance D2 sincere, but not utterance D1—this is what the scenario is supposed to illustrate. Some might deny even this. They might insist that if utterance D2 were sincere, then so would utterance D1. But this would cause the bump to go up in a different place again. In our scenario, I might have forgotten that I am MK and have the D2-belief. Still, I might want to pretend to an audience that I am MK: “MK’s pants are on fire—that’s me! My pants are on fire!”. Utterance D1 here seems to be a lie. The theorist who claims that the D1-belief and the D2-belief have the same content, and who holds on to (A2) would have to say either that it is not a lie, or that some lies are sincere.
More precisely: the D1-belief together with a desire to avoid pain and certain typical means-ends-beliefs will be sufficient to motivate self-saving measures, while the D2-belief will not.
See Lewis (1979).
For an overview of the issues and some references see Kölbel (2008, forthcoming). Sample relativist accounts of epistemic modals are Egan, Hawthorne and Weatherson (2005), Egan (2007) and MacFarlane (2009). Sample contextualist accounts are those given in von Fintel and Gillies (2008) and in Dowell (2011).
Contextualists might deny that the belief expressed, and the assertion effected, by the utterance of E1 in S is correct. The idea is that a sufficiently sophisticated version of contextualism may predict that the contextually relevant knowledge includes Bert’s knowledge, so that the content expressed by E1 in S is, roughly, a content that is true iff the knowledge shared between Bert and Alfred is compatible with Dan’s being in Paris. In response, I would insist that the utterance of E1 in S at least appears to be correct, and that saying it is not correct is a theoretical cost, a cost that may well be compensated for by other advantages, and that may well be mitigated by some pragmatic explanation for the appearance of correctness. Another move would be to modify the example and consider assessments by eavesdroppers instead of Bert’s E1r and E2r (see Egan 2007). In any case, the quick argument given here is merely meant to give a taste of the kind of motivation that motivates a relativist semantics for epistemic modals.
Contextualists may be able to overcome this difficulty, so this is not a conclusive objection, and not meant to be one. For one thing, contextualists might point out that the interpretation of phrases like “That’s wrong.” is in any case quite complicated. It depends not only on the previous utterance and the features of context that I defined for S but rather on what is the question at issue. Thus, for example, if Alfred’s utterance of E2 were to be a response to the question “Where is Dan?”, then E2R would suddenly seem incorrect. Thanks to Craige Roberts for discussion.
At least if we leave problems concerning the de se aside for a moment. More about this in a moment.
This still leaves the question of how communications proceeds when contents are not locally portable. In the special case of epistemic modals, there may be an imperative for participants of a conversation mutually to adjust their evidence in such a way that epistemic modal contents are locally portable. In other cases (e.g. Lasersohn 2005’s “exocentric uses”) the presupposed location of participants may converge, even if actual locations diverge. But there are presumably also assertions that are unsuccessful in some sense because they are assertions of contents that are not locally portable.
This proposal offers a new answer to the problem of communication with “centered contents”, as it has recently been discussed by, for example, Torre (2010), Ninan (2010a, b), Stojanovic (2012), Kindermann (2012), or Weber (forthcoming). It is novel in offering two distinct communicative models for two distinct types of centered content (classic de se contents and relativistic contents). It is also novel in showing how a surrogate content approach need not introduce fully portable surrogates. Rather, locally portable surrogates are sufficient.
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Kölbel, M. Agreement and Communication. Erkenn 79 (Suppl 1), 101–120 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9447-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9447-2