Synthese, Volume 166, Number 2 (January 2009), pages 231–250.

Main authors discussed: Herman Cappelen, Keith DeRose, Nikola Kompa, Ernie Lepore, Jason Stanley

On what is arguably the standard view in contemporary philosophy of language, an expression is context sensitive if its semantic contribution to what a sentence containing that expression says or expresses when asserted in a context of use depends on features of that context. Personal pronouns are a prime example. When I utter:

‘I am hungry’,

I express that Iris is hungry. When Paul utters the same words, he expresses that Paul is hungry. Our utterances have the same linguistic meaning but express different contents. Contextualism is of interest beyond the narrow confines of the philosophy of language because it has been maintained with respect to less obvious kinds of expressions, such as moral terms (“is morally permissible”), metaphysical vocabulary (“exists,” “is an object”), epistemological vocabulary (“knows”), and evaluative vocabulary (“beautiful,” “tasty,” “funny”). Thus, when I utter:

‘Pre-marital sex is morally permissible’,

I say something like pre-marital sex is morally permissible on the moral standards in place in my community. When I utter:

‘Sets exist’,

I say something like sets exist according to my conceptual schema. When I utter:

‘Paul knows he has hands’,

I say something like Paul knows he has hands on the justificatory standard currently in place.

Whether, and in what form, contextualism is correct about some philosophically significant range of vocabulary has obvious implications for those areas of philosophy that essentially draw on that range.

John MacFarlane diagnoses that the standard conception of context sensitivity conflates two concepts that are profitably kept apart:

1. An expression is context-sensitive iff its extension at a context depends on features of the context.
2. An expression is indexical iff its content at a context depends on features of the context.

He shows that both proponents and critics of contextualist accounts tend to assume that the only way the extension, i.e.  the truth value of a sentence, can depend on the context of use is by expressing different propositions in different contexts where these different propositions determine different truth values. Teasing apart indexicality and context sensitivity opens conceptual space for a new position, non-indexical contextualism, according to which a sentence expresses the same propositional content in different contexts of use where that content determines different truth values in different contexts.

The distinction is nicely illustrated by contrasting an indexical contextualist (”eternalist”) with a nonindexical contextualist (”temporalist”) account of tensed sentences. Suppose Socrates is sitting at t and not sitting at t’ and consider two utterances of

‘Socrates is sitting’,

one utterance (Ut) at t , the other utterance (Ut’) at t’. According to eternalists, Ut expresses that Socrates is sitting at t – a proposition that is eternally true – and Ut’ expresses that Socrates is sitting at t’ – a proposition that is eternally false. According to temporalists, Ut and Ut’ express the same time-neutral proposition – one which is true at t and false at t’.

MacFarlane goes on to show how the conflation of the two concepts has muddied the disputes between proponents and critics of contextualism. For example, critics charge that epistemic contextualists cannot do justice to cross-context reports of knowledge-attributions. Suppose Sam says in a context governed by one epistemic standard, “I know that my car is in the driveway.” If Barry says, in a context governed by a different standard, “Sam asserted that he knew that his car was in the driveway,” we take him to correctly report what Sam asserted. But, says the critic, the contextualist has Barry attribute to Sam the assertion of a different content than the one that Sam expressed. The nonindexical contextualist can avoid this charge. Another example: Some contextualists take so called context shifting arguments to establish that a given sentence expresses different contents in different contexts. Suppose S is true when uttered in C1 but false when uttered in C2. Doesn’t that show that S expresses different contents in C1 and in C2? “No,” says MacFarlane. All it shows is that S is context sensitive. And that is compatible with expressing the same proposition in both contexts.

MacFarlane considers a series of considerations against the idea, crucial to nonindexical contextualism, that propositional truth may be relative to more than a world. For instance, against the Fregean charge that such a proposition would be “incomplete” he argues that we cannot in general require that all the features that propositional truth depends on be factored into propositions. For instance, the truth of a sentence that expresses a contingent proposition on an occasion of use depends on what world that use of the sentence occurred in, yet worlds are typically not factored into propositions (except when the sentence expressing the proposition involves, say, an actuality operator). If they were, every proposition would be necessarily true or necessarily false. But then incompleteness as such cannot be a problem. Against Jason Stanley’s objection that we should accept features that truth is relative to only when the language we are interpreting contains operators that can shift this feature, MacFarlane argues that there is no good reason for such a requirement. On the contrary, even if we spoke a language without any modal operators, we’d still want propositional truth to be relative to worlds.

Finally, MacFarlane argues that the nonindexical, unlike the indexical, contextualist has to replace the principle:

(P) An utterance of S at C is true iff the proposition expressed by S at C is true,

with a relativized version:

(P’) An utterance of S at C is true iff the proposition expressed by S at C is true relative to C.

This is in order to avoid contradiction: If Janet’s utterance of ‘S’ in C1 is true and Barry’s utterance of ‘S’ in C2 is not true, where both utterances of ‘S’ express the same proposition p, then (P) would imply that p is both true and not true.

This is an an interesting paper that offers attractive semantic options not just to temporalists and relativists about matters of personal taste but also to moral and ontological relativists.

Reviewed by Iris Einheuser
Duke University

3 Comments

• By Cihan Baran, June 3, 2009 @ 4:39 pm

  Hello,

  Would you care to clarify the distinction between “extension” and “content”?

  Thanks,
  Cihan
• By Iris Einheuser, June 3, 2009 @ 5:05 pm

  Sure: The extension of a sentence (on an occasion of use) is its truth value while its content is the proposition it expresses (on that occasion of use). Sentences expressing different contents can nonetheless have the same extension.

  The extension of a predicate is the set of objects that the predicate applies to. The content expressed by a predicate is the concept associated with it. Again, predicates expressing different concepts can have the same extension.

  Maybe some of the other terminology for that distinction is more familiar: `Extension’/`Intension’ or `Bedeutung’/`Sinn’.
• By CI, October 5, 2009 @ 5:34 pm

  Sure: The extension of a sentence (on an occasion of use) is its truth value while its content is the proposition it expresses (on that occasion of use). Sentences expressing different contents can nonetheless have the same extension.

  The extension of a predicate is the set of objects that the predicate applies to. The content expressed by a predicate is the concept associated with it. Again, predicates expressing different concepts can have the same extension.

  Maybe some of the other terminology for that distinction is more familiar: `Extension’/`Intension’ or `Bedeutung’/`Sinn’.

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