Publication Details

Abstract

The paper deals with the so-called predicates of taste. There seems to be the following conflict concerning such predicates: Let “… P…” be a sentence involving a predicate of taste, P. It may happen that one speaker, A, utters “… P…” and another one, B, utters “It is not the case that … P…” without contradicting each other. On the other hand, it may also happen that if A utters “… P…” and B utters “It is not the case that … P…” they do contradict each other. The purported conflict is solved within a theory called minimal indexicalism. It is claimed that the conflict disappears when we admit that, in the first scenario, A and B, though using the same words, express different propositions and that, in the second scenario, A and B adopt different criteria for evaluating the same proposition.