Conversations about Taste, Contextualism, and Non-Doxastic Attitudes. (2nd September 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zouhar, Marián
• Is Part Of: Philosophical papers. Volume 47:Number 3(2018)
• Page Start: 429
• Page End: 460
• Publication Date: 2018-09-02
• Subjects: Philosophy -- Periodicals; Philosophy, African -- Periodicals; 105
• DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2018.1450159
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0556-8641

Abstract

Abstract: It is sometimes argued that conceptualism cannot explain (dis)agreements concerning matters of personal taste because it treats sentences involving predicates of taste as indexical. I aim to weaken this charge. Given the idea that people sometimes use indexical sentences to express (dis)agreements about taste, two kinds of (dis)agreement are distinguished, namely doxastic and non-doxastic. Taste (dis)agreements are better explained in terms of the later kind, in which case they become amenable to contextualist treatment. It is argued that if something instantiates a taste property (like being tasty for A ), it has to instantiate a corresponding attitudinal property (like being liked by A ). Based on this, utterances of taste sentences express propositions that concern tastiness of something (e.g., that X is tasty for A ) and these propositions entail other propositions that concern non-doxastic attitudes the speakers bear toward something (e.g., that X is liked by A ). One speaker is claimed to (dis)agree with another speaker provided their respective entailed propositions feature (in)compatible non-doxastic attitudes. Although this explanation is similar to hybrid accounts that are currently growing in popularity, it departs from them in some notable respects.