Perspectival Plurality

DESCRITPION

Perspectival plurality is the phenomenon whereby a sentence containing two or more "perspectival expressions" (predicates of taste, epistemic modals, aesthetic adjectives, moral terms, epistemic vocabulary etc.) requires access to two or more perspectives for its semantic interpretation (example: "We took the kids to a resort in Italy this summer. The wine was delicious and the water slide was great fun." (Kneer 2015)). This phenomenon has been taken to raise problems both for contextualism (Lasersohn 2009) and for relativism (Kneer, Vicente and Zeman 2017) about such expressions. However, neither the range of the phenomenon nor it's various manifestations have been extensively studied. This workshop purports to contribute towards that aim. In the same connection, questions about how treatment of the phenomenon in relation to speech and attitude reports will be tackled, as well as about "the acquaintance principle" (the idea that one can use perspectival expressions felicitously only after having certain experiences of the relevant objects).

Among the main questions tackled by the presentations at the workshop are the following:
- How robust and widespread is perspectival plurality?
- What are the best accounts of it?
- What problems does perspectival plurality raise to extant semantic accounts of perspectival expressions?
- What is the best account of speech and attitudes reports that can be extended to cover this phenomenon? 
- What is the status of "the acquaintance principle"? Etc.


ORGANIZATION

The workshop is part of the project Semantic Relativism about Perspectival Expressions: A Reassessment and Defense (OPUS 17 project no. 2019/33/B/HS1/01269) and is organized by Dan Zeman, with the support of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. The workshop will be in hybrid form. Please write to [email protected] or [email protected] if you want to participate online.


PROGRAM

(All times are in CEST)

FRIDAY, MAY 27

9.45: Welcome 10.00-11.15: Hazel Pearson (Queen Mary University of London), "Impersonal Pronouns and the Acquaintance Inference"

11.30-12.45: Julia Zakkou (Bielefeld University) & Alexander Dinges (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg), "Acquaintance Entailments"

Lunch

14.30-15.45: Markus Kneer (University of Zurich), "Perspectival Plurality for Predicates of Personal Taste and Epistemic Modals"

15.45-17.00: Elsi Kaiser (University of Southern California), "On the Relation between Perspective-sensitive Anaphors and Predicates of Personal Taste: Implications for Perspectival Plurality" [ONLINE]

17.15-18.30: David Rey (University of Valle), "Against the Argument from Expressive Power" [ONLINE]

SATURDAY, MAY 28

10.00 - 11.15: Lixiao Lin (University of St Andrews): "Knowledge-why Norm and the Acquaintance Inference"

11.30-12.45: Dilip Ninan (Tufts University): "You're Allowed to Reason Aloud”

Lunch

14.30-15.45: Dan Zeman (University of Warsaw), "Perspective-Shifting in Relativist Semantics"

15.45-16.30: Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska (University of Warsaw), "Perspectival Contradictions?" [ONLINE]

16.45-18.00: Justina Berškytė (University of Manchester), "Perspectival Plurality, Expressive-Relativism and Expressive Terms"