Feigning Objectivity: an Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes

Feigning Objectivity: An Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kathryn McFarland, B.S., M.A.S. Graduate Program in Philosophy The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: William W. Taschek, Advisor Richard Samuels Stewart Shapiro ii Copyright by Kate McFarland 2015 iii Abstract In this dissertation, I reconsider core cases of alleged “faultless disagreement,” beginning with disputes about matters of taste. I argue that these cases demand no revisions to traditional truth-conditional semantics and that, instead, their interesting features—those features that theorists have thought to pose difficulties to traditional semantics—are in fact best explained at the level of pragmatics, rhetoric, and sociolinguistics. Specifically, I maintain that such disputes arise in situations in which, given conversational aims, it is rhetorically effective for disputants to feign contradiction—posturing as if their dispute concerned the truth of an “objective” proposition, even if this is not in fact the case. I demonstrate, moreover, than many canonical cases of so-called “merely verbal” disputes share these same interesting features of “faultless” disputes about taste—and that these disputes as well can be explained as rhetorically effective instances of merely “feigned” objectivity. Philosophical discussion of both types of disputes has been hampered by their uncritical assimilation to canonical “faultless” disputes—despite the differences in social role that become evident when the disputes are situated in their context of production—and this has led philosophers too often to neglect other important social and rhetorical reasons for which speakers express disagreement. ii Acknowledgements This dissertation owes its existence, first and foremost, to my advisor, Professor William Taschek. I could not have initiated this project—let alone completed it—without his support, encouragement, engaging discussions, and tactfully phrased criticism. (The rides home from campus were also greatly appreciated, as was the whiskey, if not strictly indispensible.) My other dissertation committee members, Professor Stewart Shapiro and Professor Richard Samuels, also provided invaluable feedback and support throughout the development of this work. As a member of my candidacy exam committee, Professor Justin D’Arms also offered helpful discussion of earlier work that would evolve into this dissertation. Additionally, I would like to thank the members of 2012 Fink Committee— Professor Allan Silverman, Professor Neil Tennant, and Professor Stewart Shapiro—for reading and commenting on a shorter paper containing many of the key ideas in this dissertation and, especially, for selecting this paper as the winner of the prestigious Fink Award. Needless to say, receiving this honor provided a immense inspirational boost. The companionship of my graduate student colleagues has helped to sustain me throughout the process. Where my dissertation is concerned, I owe specific thanks to my colleagues in Dissertation Seminar, especially my commentators Michael Miller and Owen King, for useful feedback on earlier drafts of several chapters. Most significantly, I iii thank Erik Wedin for the numerous informal philosophical and pseudo-philosophical conversations that lay behind the burst of inspiration in which I compiled my first complete draft—and for continued emotional and practical support right down to late- night word-processing research during the final edits. Finally, I owe special credit to Pierre Bourdieu and Erving Goffman for implicit influence and inspiration through their visionary insights into culture and conversation. iv Vita October 1984.....................................................................Born, Lancaster Ohio 2002 .................................................................................Lancaster High School 2006 ..................................................................................B.S. Mathematics The Ohio State University 2009 ..................................................................................Master’s of Applied Statistics, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Philosophy v Table of Contents Abstract......................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements....................................................................................................iii Vita.............................................................................................................................v Introduction................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Reconsidering “Faultless Disagreement”.................................................7 Chapter 2: “Feigning Objectivity” in Taste Disputes ................................................37 Chapter 3: The Pervasiveness of “Faultless” Disputes..............................................73 Chapter 4: Classification and Implicit Evaluation.....................................................117 Chapter 5: Concluding Remarks................................................................................174 Appendix A: On Epistemic Modal Sentences ...........................................................202 References..................................................................................................................219 vi Introduction In this dissertation, I reconsider core cases of alleged “faultless disagreement,” beginning with disputes about matters of taste. I argue that these cases demand no revisions to traditional truth-conditional semantics and that, instead, their interesting features—those features that theorists have thought to pose difficulties to traditional semantics—are in fact best explained at the level of pragmatics, rhetoric, and sociolinguistics. Specifically, I maintain that such disputes arise in situations in which, given conversational aims, it is rhetorically effective for disputants to feign contradiction—posturing as if their dispute concerned the truth of an “objective” proposition, even if this is not in fact the case. I demonstrate, moreover, than many canonical cases of so-called “merely verbal” disputes share these same interesting features of “faultless” disputes about taste—and that these disputes as well can be explained as rhetorically effective instances of merely “feigned” objectivity. Philosophical discussion of both types of disputes has been hampered by their uncritical assimilation to canonical “faultless” disputes—despite the differences in social role that become evident when the disputes are situated in their context of production—and this has led philosophers too often to neglect other important social and rhetorical reasons for which speakers express disagreement. In Chapter 1, taking disputes about taste as a case study, I reanalyze the 1 characteristics of these linguistic exchanges that have been alleged to require radical revisions to traditional frameworks in linguistics and philosophy of language. My aim in this chapter is to unearth precisely what features of these “faultless disagreements” have helped to convince some theorists of the need to allow for sentences that express mutually true but jointly inconsistent propositions. Noting that pre-theoretical notions of “faultlessness” and “disagreement” do not entail (respectively) truth and contradiction, I attempt to identify what it is about the particular senses of “faultlessness” and “disagreement” observed in taste disputes that have lead some philosophers to postulate that these disputes involve contradiction and mutual truth—yet I attempt to do so without, as some authors have done, building this semantic interpretation into the very description of the data to be explained. The proposed redescription of the explananda, which I call “FD-Shape,” lays the groundwork for reassessing several debates within the philosophy of language and metametaphysics. As I close Chapter 1, I argue that FD-Shape is sufficient to motivate relativism about predicates of personal taste given common assumptions about conversational norms (which I call “truth norm” and “contradiction norm”). In the remainder of this dissertation, I argue that the assumption that truth norm and contradiction norm govern disputes about taste (and, as I will show, other similarly structured disputes)—and assumption that philosophers and semanticists typically take on without question—is precisely what must be denied if we are to provide an explanation of the striking features of the disputes captured by FD-Shape. Then, in Chapter 2, I argue that the peculiar features of disputes about taste are 2 best explained by denying that speakers in such exchanges obey the conversational norms mentioned above. Instead, I claim, stereotypical disputes about taste occur in situations in which it is rational to violate these norms for rhetorical effect. I maintain that—rather than demanding any novel semantic solution—the “shape” of these disputes is best explained as a communicative strategy somewhat akin to hyperbole or overstatement, in which disputants “feign objectivity” to lend emphasis or intensity to their taste claims. Armed with the latter explanation, one can account for the verbal behavior observed in objectively-framed taste disputes

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