TY - CHAP
T1 - Is Relativity a Requirement for Mind-Dependence?
AU - Brynjarsdóttir, Eyja M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Genthiner Str. 13, 10785 Berlin.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - According to a common intuition, a property is subjective or minddependent if it is a matter of taste whether an object possesses it or not, and such matters are open to so-called faultless disagreement. For instance, assuming that funniness is subjective, two people may disagree about whether something is funny, yet both be right. If this intuition is correct, the possibility of subjective properties seems to depend on the possibility of faultless disagreement, which again seems to rely on some type of relativism about truth or facts. Given that relativism is a contested view, this reliance is not a fortunate one for subjective properties. Those rejecting the possibility of faultless disagreement include indexical relativists. In this paper, I argue that the mind-dependence of properties does not require faultless disagreement and that indexical relativism, or contextualism, has the resources needed for a coherent notion of subjective property. While contextualism may have its flaws, failure to account for subjective properties is not one of them.
AB - According to a common intuition, a property is subjective or minddependent if it is a matter of taste whether an object possesses it or not, and such matters are open to so-called faultless disagreement. For instance, assuming that funniness is subjective, two people may disagree about whether something is funny, yet both be right. If this intuition is correct, the possibility of subjective properties seems to depend on the possibility of faultless disagreement, which again seems to rely on some type of relativism about truth or facts. Given that relativism is a contested view, this reliance is not a fortunate one for subjective properties. Those rejecting the possibility of faultless disagreement include indexical relativists. In this paper, I argue that the mind-dependence of properties does not require faultless disagreement and that indexical relativism, or contextualism, has the resources needed for a coherent notion of subjective property. While contextualism may have its flaws, failure to account for subjective properties is not one of them.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105042305905
U2 - 10.1515/9783110227772.5.317
DO - 10.1515/9783110227772.5.317
M3 - Chapter
SN - 1-282-78409-9
SN - 9786612784095
SN - 3-11-022777-0
SN - 3-11-022776-2
T3 - Mouton Series in Pragmatics
SP - 317
EP - 332
BT - Context-dependence, Perspective, and Relativity in Language and Thought
A2 - Recanati, François
A2 - Stojanovic, Isidora
A2 - Villanueva, Neftalí
PB - Walter de Gruyter GmbH
ER -