Review of Truth Without Objectivity by Max Kölbel
This book takes up the cause of relativism with an enjoyable mix of zeal and
careful argumentation. According to its author, Max Kölbel, relativism is the best
solution to the “problem of excess objectivity.” Standard truth-conditional semantics
presupposes the truth-evaluability of all declarative sentences. Assertion of a false
sentence, moreover, reflects an error in the speaker. Yet there are certain kinds of
assertoric discourse – morals, aesthetics, for example – in which disagreement is
compatible with the absence of error in both parties. In brief, then, standard truthconditional semantics appears to treat all declarative sentences as objective. Kölbel
identifies three possible solutions to the problem, which he takes to be jointly exhaustive:
(a) revisionism, (b) expressivism, and (c) the soft truth approach. Each is examined in
some detail in the book.
Revisionism is revisionist with respect to the contents of “non-objective”
sentences. The relevant revision introduces a parameter for a speaker. Thus, even
though “Licorice is tasty,” appears to be no more about the speaker than “Licorice is
candy,” in fact it is: it expresses the content I find licorice tasty. The problem with this
approach, for Kölbel, is simply that it fails to make sense of disagreement. If you say
“Licorice is tasty,” and I say, “No, it isn’t,” I’m disagreeing with you, but I don’t disagree
with you about whether you find licorice tasty. Nor does it do any good to introduce a
parameter for a community, for similar problems arise.
Chapter 4, on expressivism, is one of the most useful in the book. Expressivists
about a region of declarative discourse hold that its sentences are not truth-evaluable,
because they are standardly used to express attitudes rather than beliefs. Kölbel divides
expressivist theories according to how they treat the relevant expressive terms (e.g.,
moral terms), as force- or as content-indicators . Simon Blackburn has developed the
former approach in detail,1 and the latter, as far as I can see, is akin to the “besire” theory,
because it recognizes distinctive contents (e.g., moral contents) but associates them with
distinctive states of mind (besires rather than beliefs). I will consider Kölbel’s criticisms
of the force-indicator approach.
All sides acknowledge that the chief obstacle to (force-indicator) expressivism is
the so-called Frege-Geach problem: giving an adequate account of the meaning of
expressive sentences in unasserted contexts. As Bob Hale has pointed out,2 logical
connectives can connect descriptive and expressive sentences, creating mixed compound
sentences. Such connectives are what Kölbel calls globalizers with respect to the relevant
set of expressive sentences (e.g., moral sentences). What should expressivists say about
the meaning of globalizers like “if” in mixed sentences? Here Kölbel formulates a
dilemma to show that expressivists must regard globalizers as univocal (63-4). I will
simplify his discussion a bit. It is assumed that if “if” has a meaning M in a conditional,
then M operates on both the antecedent and the consequent. Now if (1) is true, ME can
operate on descriptive sentences, and so we have no need to postulate a separate meaning
1
See in particular his Spreading the Word, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1984, and Essays in Quasi-Realism,
Oxford: OUP, 1992.
2
In his papers “The Compleat Projectivist” (Philosophical Quarterly 36: 65-84 (1986) and “Can There Be
a Logic of Attitudes?” in Crispin Wright and John Haldane (ds), Reality, Representation and Projection, pp.
337-63, Oxford: OUP, 1993.
MD. The only meaning is ME. If (2) is true, a similar argument will show that we have
no need of ME in addition to MD. If (3) is true, then, implausibly, we have many
meanings for “if”, one for each kind of mixture. The immediate conclusion is that
expressivists should assign only one meaning to “if”. But, accepting horn (2) is not an
option for expressivists, because the truth-functional meaning of “if” cannot operate on
attitudes (64). Thus, the expressivist should accept horn (1). This means giving up the
standard truth-conditional theory even for descriptive sentences. Thus, Kölbel claims
that expressivists ought to apply their theories to all areas of discourse over which the
globalizer operates; they should accept radical expressivism (63-4). Kölbel does allow
that if a discourse had no globalizers, the expressivist might be able to resist
radicalization (68).
My main worry about this dilemma is that it may prove too much. We know “if”
can connect imperatives and indicatives (“If you enter, close the door behind you”), as
well as optatives and indicatives (“If he decides to run, may he win.”), and it is plausible
to think that imperatives and optatives lack truth-value. This requires giving up the
univocality of “if” across these regions of discourse. Still, we can presumably identify a
core element of meaning here, present in the several distinct meanings in different
mixtures. Now “if” may not, strictly speaking, be a globalizer with respect to imperatives
or optatives, because “if” is rather choosy in what follows it. It can only be followed by a
declarative (which is peculiar given that “only if” can be preceded by an imperative or
optative). Still, the dilemma really doesn’t depend on “if” being a globalizer, but only its
connecting sentences of the different classes.
Another well-known worry about expressivism, at least of the kind developed in
Blackburn (1984), is due to Crispin Wright.3 Wright claims that the combination of
approving of A, Disapproving of B, and approving of following an approval of B upon an
approval of A does not make one guilty of a logical mistake, but only of guaranteeing
that one fails to conduct one’s mental life as one wants to conduct it. This is not to say
that no clashes of attitudes have the character of logical mistakes; a good candidate is
both approving of a state of affairs and of its negation. This objection does not, as far as I
can see, beg the question against expressivists (contra Kölbel 134n11), but points out a
problem. (The objection is especially powerful when one imagines treating violations of
modus ponens in descriptive contexts this way. The problem with violating modus
ponens is not that one guarantees that one has false beliefs about how one conducts one’s
mental life.)
Kölbel is unhappy with expressivism as a solution to the problem of excess
objectivity, because it leads to radical expressivism, which abandons truth-conditional
semantics even for descriptive discourse. An adequate solution should stay within the
bounds of truth-conditional semantics.
Under the soft truth approach, non-objective sentences are counted as truthevaluable (unlike under expressivism), and as having non-revisionist content (unlike
revisionism). The main tasks, then, are to explain in what sense their truth is “soft,” and
how soft truth explains non-objectivity. Whatever soft truth is, disagreement over soft
truths need not indicate error. But if one party asserts something false, that is an error
(contra Wright) (25-6). The solution is to relativize truth itself (100). “Licorice is tasty”
See his “Realism, Anti-realism, Irrealism, Quasi-Realism,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12: 25-49,
1992.
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may be true relative to my perspective, but false relative to yours. So if I assert it and
you deny it, neither of us need be making an error. Ah, but are we disagreeing? Kölbel
says yes. Our content is the same; I affirm it and you deny it. We disagree, but we’re
both right, I relative to my perspective, you relative to yours.
For Kölbel, perspectives are simply functions from contents to truth-values:
perspectives assign true or false to given contents (100). Now there are no mysteries
about how functions assign values to arguments, because functions just are sets of such
assignments. But we can ask, as Kölbel recognizes, what it is for a person to possess a
perspective. He tells us, roughly, that possession is whatever relation between people and
perspectives satisfies three constraints, the first two of which together in effect state that
non-objectivity is a matter of truth in some but not all perspectives and the third that one
should believe only what is true in one’s perspective (102-3). The first two are unhelpful:
we already know that perspective possession is supposed to solve the non-objectivity
problem; the issue is how. The third constraint will not help distinguish your perspective
from mine unless modified in some way (perhaps we all believe the same things). But if
we change the ‘only if’ to ‘if’ (adding, perhaps a clause like “and if you are entertaining
it”), the constraint will seem overly strong: must I, a lover of licorice, believe licorice is
tasty? Certainly not in the same sense that I ought to believe Bush is the American
President.
My main concern about Kölbel's relativism is whether it can accommodate
disagreement over putatively non-objective matters. Recall that the key to his account is
that when I say “licorice is tasty” and you say “licorice isn’t tasty” we’re expressing
beliefs with logically incompatible contents. This incompatibility consists the
impossibility of their joint truth in any perspective. Compare the relativization of truth to
times (an analogy Kölbel himself makes). I write to you “it’s sunny in Chicago” on
Monday and you write to me “it’s not sunny in Chicago” on Tuesday. I believe, on
Monday, the content <It’s sunny in Chicago> and you believe, on Tuesday, the negation
of that content. The content <it’s sunny in Chicago> is true in the temporal perspective
determined by my utterance (the Monday perspective) and the content <it’s not sunny in
Chicago> is true in that determined by yours (the Tuesday perspective). Of course, our
contents are incompatible in this sense: they cannot be true in the same temporal
perspective. So, is this disagreement? Suppose we have this little exchange over email.
When I receive your email “No, Chicago is not sunny,” I may think you’ve disagreed
with me. But once I see the “date sent,” I will realize we were just talking past one
another. Why isn’t it the same under Kölbel's relativism? Why isn’t his hypothesis this:
we’re under the illusion that we disagree over morals, aesthetics, tastes, etc., but in fact
we merely differ? The notion of disagreement seems essentially linked to the normative
notions of correctness, incorrectness, being “right,” and “being mistaken.” Consider: “if
we disagree, we can’t both be right; one of us is mistaken.” It seems to me that Kölbel
makes too much of the difference between relativizing truth and relativizing content (à la
revisionism). If we discovered that the contents of our assertions about taste are speakerrelative, we would certainly conclude that there is only differences over tastes, not
disagreement. By the same token, if we discovered that the correctness conditions for our
assertions about taste are speaker-relative, we would react similarly. Both reactions are
explained by the essential normativity of the notion of disagreement.
There are many other worthwhile discussions in the book in addition to those I
have touched upon here, including an illuminating account of the role of truth Davidson’s
semantic programme (chapter 5) and a helpful comparison of perspective relativism with
Allan Gibbard’s norm-expressivism (chapter 6). Kölbel’s book is invaluable for
philosophers interested in the prospects for relativism or in problems of objectivity in
general.4
4
Thanks to Max Kolbel and Claire Horisk for helpful comments.