conditionally accepted for publication in Mind
First-Person-Oriented Genericity and Relative Truth*
Friederike Moltmann
IHPST, Paris
fmoltmann@univ-paris1.fr
In natural language, there is an important class of generic sentences that bear a particular
connection to the first person. In English first-person-oriented generic sentences are especially
those that contain the generic pronoun one or its empty counterpart socalled arbitrary PRO (as
generative syntacticians call it). One important use of such sentences is for drawing a
generalization on the basis of the speaker’s own, perhaps onetime, experience or action. An
example with generic one is that in (1a) and with its empty counterpart PROarb in (1b):
(1) a. It is nice when one is walking in the park.
b. It is nice PROarb to walk in the park.
(1a, b) are naturally used as an expression of the speaker’s own evaluation of his walking in
the park. But at the same time (1a) and (1b) express a generalization: for anyone x, x’s
walking in the park is nice for x.1
With first-person-based genericity thus illustrated an agent generalizes a self-ascription of
a property by abstracting from the particuliarities of his own situation and thus ascribing the
property to anyone else (or anyone the agent can assume is as normal as he himself).
Besides first-person-based genericity, first-person-oriented pronouns have other uses, one
of them being the expression of a generalization aimed at a first-person aascription, especially
on the part of the addressee. This is the case with deontic sentences as in (2), whose purpose
is generally meant to influence the addressee’s practical reasoning:
(2) One should not lie.
Thus, first-person-oriented pronouns, to use the more generally term, give rise to first-personoriented genericity.
2
First-person-oriented genericity is involved not only in sentences containing first-personoriented pronouns like generic one, but also in a range of other expressions, all of which give
rise to intuitions of relative truth, that is, intuitions that the truth value of the proposition
expressed depends on an additional context besides the context of utterance, a context
containing not only a world (and time) of evaluation, but other parameters as well, such as an
agent or an aesthetic or epistemic standard. In particular, first-person-based genericity is
involved, I will show, in the semantics of predicates of personal taste and epistemic modals.
Sentences with first-person-oriented pronouns like generic one give themselves rise to the
intuitions of relative truth. I will argue that the notion of first-person-based genericity gives a
better account of those intuitions than standard relativist accounts, which face a range of
conceptual and empirical problems. In particular, first-person-based genericity allows for a
better account of faultless disagreement and for an explanation why intuitions of relative truth
arise with only certain types of context-dependent expressions and not others.
Recognizing the first-person-orientation of sentences with generic one or its empty
counterpart can explain a number of peculiarities of such sentences that go beyond their usual
truth conditions, including the use of such sentences in philosophical discourse about
subjectivity, selfknowledge, and consciousness. First-person-oriented generic sentences
express self-locating propositions and as such, following Lewis (1979), can be taken to
express properties. But first-person-oriented generic sentences involve self-reference in a
quite different way than the familiar cases of de se interpreted pronouns: Whereas in the
familiar cases, self-reference with pronouns interpreted de se is always at the same time
reference to the actual person; the self-reference involved in first-person-oriented generic
sentences is self-reference detached from the actual person. It is in fact best viewed as
reference to an impersonal self or the ‘objective self’ in the sense of Nagel (1983, 1986).
Thus, with generic one self-reference takes place even while the speaker projects himself onto
another person or simulates entirely counterfactual conditions. Moreover, the acceptance or
assessment of an assertion of a generic one-sentence always means self-application of the
property expressed, unlike in the familiar cases of de se-pronouns, which keep referring to the
speaker.
In the first part of the paper, I will present a semantic account of the generic pronoun ‘one’
and its empty counterpart and discuss the particular kind of self-reference that is involved in
first-person-oriented generic sentences. In the second part of the paper, I will discuss the
notion of relative truth as it seems involved in sentences with predicates of personal taste as
well as sentences with generic one and show that the notion of first-person-based genericity
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gives a better account of the relevant intuitions. I conclude with a discussion of how the
account may be carried over to other expressions that seem to give rise to relative truth.
1. First-Person-Oriented Pronouns
1.1. Some general linguistic facts
While generic one (with its empty counterpart) is the most important first-person-oriented
pronoun in English, it is at the same time a somewhat problematic expression. Generic one in
American English is increasingly replaced by you and its uses show a significant range of
instability. The present interest, however, is not so much the linguistic details of a particular
pronoun in English, but rather an important semantic ’strategy’ that most obviously expressed
by generic one and that is also involved in a great variety of other expressions or uses of
expressions across languages in general.
Also, there remains even in American English at least one stable source for uses of
generic one and these are the uses of generic one in the philosophical literature on
subjectivity, consciousness, selfknowledge, and simulation, uses which illustrate extremely
well some of the most important semantic properties of that expression. Thus, first-personbased genericity is expressed by generic one in (3a)-(3b) and with it empty counterpart,
arbitrary PRO in (4):
(3) a. One cannot be mistaken about the content of one’s own mental states.
b. Speaking of oneself is incompatible with not knowing that the subject one is speaking
of is oneself. (Anscombe 1975)
c. One cannot be presented to oneself as an object in introspection.
d. One can predict other people’s actions by putting oneself into their shoes.
(4) There is something it is like PROarb to be a bat. (Nagel 1974)
In (3) one is in fact the best expression to use; hardly replaceable by another. Similarly,
Nagle’s famous statement in (4) can hardly be formulated in another way, not making use of a
first-person-oriented pronouns like arbitrary PRO. This is so obviously because the
generalizations expressed in (3) and (4) are based on an irreducible first-person ascription.2
Generic one alternates with arbitrary PRO, which as its empty counterpart occurs in those
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contexts in which an empty pronominal element, rather than an overt noun phrase is required.
This can be seen first from the fact that arbitrary PRO and generic one can covary in contexts
like (5a, b) (that is, they take the same semantic values under the relevant assignments), and
second from the fact that arbitrary PRO may act as the antecedent for one, the possessive
one’s or the reflexive oneself, as in (6):
(5) a. PROarb to live a great life is to realize one’s true potential.
b. PROarb to have been diagnosed with a serious illness means that one cannot easily
get a new insurance.
(6) a. The tailor knows what PROarb to wear at one’s own wedding.
b. It is nice PROarb to see one’s parents.
c. It is great PROarb to be able to teach oneself.
Before giving a semantic analysis of generic one, a few words are necessary about the
semantic status of one as a pronoun.3 First, generic one always occurs in generic sentences.
As such it can occur in apparently two distinct ways: as genericity-inducing, as in the first
occurrence in (7), and as a bound variable, as in the second occurrence in (7):
(7) One sometimes thinks one’s life is too short.
Nonetheless, as I have argued in Moltmann (to appear), in both occurrences generic one is
best taken to be an expression that introduces a variable subsequently to be bound by a
sentential generic operator Gn, as in (8):
(8) Gen x
x sometimes thinks that x’s life is too short.
There are two main reasons for that. First, different occurrences of one (PROarb) may covary,
without either being in a position in which it could act as a quantifier binding the other, as in
(5a, b), and also in (9a, b):
(9) a. If one is French, one is European.
b. PROarb to be happy is PROarb to live a good life.
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Second, the generic quantifier associated with genericity-inducing one always takes wide
scope over any other quantifier or operator in the sentence, unlike nominal quantifiers and
regardless where in the sentence generic one occurs:
(10) a. One cannot always recognize everyone.
b. Not everyone recognizes one at night.
(10a) cannot mean ‘not always is there mutual universal recognition’, but only ‘for anyone x:
x does not always recognize everyone’. Similarly, (10b) cannot mean ‘some people fail to
recognize anyone at night’, but only ‘for anyone x, not everyone recognizes x at night’.
The generic quantifier Gn in (8) is supposed to be simply the kind of operator used in the
linguistic literature on genericity (see for example Krifka et al. 1995, Cohen 2002). While it is
agreed that the operator represents a quantifier that allows for exceptions and has modal force
(ranging not just over actual individuals), there is a lack of agreement as to how the operator
should be interpreted. A plausible way of understanding it, quite suited for present purposes,
is to take the operator to be a combination of a universal quantifier ranging over possible
worlds, restricted by some accessibility relation R (relating the actual worlds to the ‘normal’
worlds), as well as a universal quantifier ranging over individuals, possibly restricted by a
contextually given property C:
(11) w x (wRwo & C(x)  P(x))
The contextual restriction C on the generic operator is needed to account for why one in (10),
for example, may range only over the students in a particular class:
(12) One has to hand in the essay tomorrow.
Of course, the logical form in (8) does not yet capture the particular first-person-oriented
meaning of generic one. To account for that, the simple variable ‘x’ in (8) will later be
replaced by a complex variable, with an additional component representing the ‘first-personorientation’. The first-person-oriented meaning is needed not only to account for the firstperson-based genericity observed in (1)–(4), but also for the observation that genericityinducing one is subject to severe restrictions on which predicates it can go with. For example,
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the following predicates are hardly acceptable with generic one, though they are fine in other
generic sentences:
(13) a. ?? One has a nose.
b. The typical person has a nose.
(14) a. ?? One lives in a big city.
b. People live in a big city.
(13a) is impossible; whereas (13b) is acceptable as well as true. Also (14a) is hardly
acceptable, whereas (14b) is fine, though false. Other examples where generic one is
unacceptable or highly unnatural are those in (15):
(15) a. ?? One has a passport.
b. ?? One has parents.
c. ?? One has a soul / a body.
d. ?? One breathes.
e. ?? One gets up in the morning.
f. ?? One is nervous.
g.?? One has fever.
h. ?? One went home.
Again such predicates are fine in other simple generic sentences such as with people or the
typical person.
The restriction on predicates is not strict, though: all the examples in (15a) – (15h) can be
made acceptable when understood (as far as possible) as a fulfilment of a script or plan or as a
state of affair that is also a fulfilment of a general requirement or norm.
There are also contexts in which generic one imposes no restriction on the predicate
whatsoever. First, when occurring as a bound variable, generic one imposes no restrictions:
(16) a. Sometimes one forgets that one has a nose.
b. One can doubt that one has a soul.
Second, generic one imposes no restrictions on the predicate at all in conditionals:
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(17) a. If one lives in a big city, one lives in a city.
b. If one has a nose, one can breathe.
c. If one is nervous, one should take a tranquillizer.
d. If one is human, one has a soul.
e. If one has a significantly increased temperature, one has fever.
There are thus no strict restrictions as such on which predicates generic one can co-occur
with. Given this, rather than trying to rule out unacceptable examples by imposing lexical
restrictions, a better question to ask is: under what circumstances is generic one possible?
There are two types of ‘semantic strategies’ that can be distinguished with which generic one
is made possible in a sentence:
Strategy 1: Inference from the First Person (first-person based genericity)
Generic one (and arbitrary PRO) is licensed in a (simple) sentence establishing a
generalization based on a first-person application of the predicate.
Strategy 1a: Inference from the Simulating Self
Generic one (and arbitrary PRO) is licensed in a sentence expressing an inference from the
first person pretending to meet certain conditions.
Strategy 2: Inference to the First Person (first-person targeted genericity)
Generic one (and arbitrary PRO) is licensed in a (simple) sentence stating an (already
established) generalization that is to allow for an immediate application to the first person in
the reasoning relevant in the context.
That is, a sentence with generic one is acceptable if it either expresses a generalization on the
basis of the first person (or the pretending first person) or else the sentence is meant to be
immediately applicable to the first person. These two strategies are not entirely independent,
as we will see: at least with predicates of moral evaluation (It is wrong to do X), generic one
and arbitrary PRO are licensed both on the basis of Inference from the First Person and
Inference to the First Person.
Strategy 1a, though a special case of Strategy 1, is to account for an apparently very
different range of cases than Strategy 1, namely occurrences of generic one in conditionals.
1.2. Strategy 1: Inference from the First Person
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The first-person-orientation of generic one and arbitrary PRO concerns not only the speaker,
but also, in embedded contexts, whoever may be the described agent of the reported attitude
or speech act:
(18) a. John said that one can see the picture from the entrance.
b. John said that it is nice PROarb to walk in the park.
In attitude contexts, the first-person-orientation of generic one is particularly transparent.
Thus, the strategy Inference from the First Person is quite obvious when a generic onesentence is embedded under an epistemic predicate:
(19) a. John found out that one can see the picture from the entrance.
b. John confirmed that one can see the picture from the entrance.
For (19a) to be true it is sufficient that John has had the experience of seeing the picture from
the entrance. Similarly for (19b) to be true all John needs to have done is having gone to the
entrance and having seen the picture from there. Generic one-sentences differ thus from
universally quantified and other generic sentences, such as those in (20):
(20) a. John found out that people can see the picture from the entrance.
b. John confirmed that everyone can see the picture from the entrance.
In (20a, 20b), John has to have made sure in other ways that people other than himself can see
the picture from the entrance.
The same point is made by the contrast between (21a) and (21b):
(21) a. John found out that one gets sick when one eats these mushrooms.
b. John found out that people gets sick when they eat these mushrooms.
For (21a) to be true it suffices that John found out that he himself got sick (provided he can
assume he is sufficiently normal), whereas for (21b) to be true John has to find that out about
other people than himself as well:
Even with the non-factive attitude verb imagine does the difference show up, arguably
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also an epistemic verb (cf. Currie/Ravenscroft 2002):
(22) a. John imagines a way one could cross the river.
b. John imagines a way people / a person could cross the river.
For (22a) to be true it is sufficient that John imagines himself crossing the river. By contrast,
John’s imagination needs to involve other people than himself in (22b).
There are other semantic contexts than those expressing physical possibility that allow for
generic one by making use of first-person-based genericity, namely sentences describing
experiences in certain types of situations or the frequency of acts or experiences, as in (23):
(23) a. One feels tired after such a long day.
b. One sometimes thinks one’s life is too short.
The relevant (and most natural) reading of (23a) is one on which the speaker, by uttering the
sentence, expresses his own state of tiredness. The speaker at the same time, though,
generalizes by abstracting a type of situation from the situation he finds himself in. Similarly,
(23b) naturally expresses a generalization of the speaker’s own occasional thoughts of his
life’s shortness.
The first-person-orientation of generic one and arbitrary PRO manifests itself also in the
ability of those pronouns to serve in an immediate description of a first-person experience, as
seen in the following examples:
(24) a. I find that one can easily forget one’s own past experiences.
b. I now know what it feels like PROarb to be treated like a king.
The embedded sentences in (24a, b) naturally serve as direct descriptions of a first-personal
psychological state, though of course the generalizing force is there as well. (24a) and (24b)
thus differ markedly from (25a) and (25b), where the attitude described takes as its immediate
source third-person observations, or else has a derived content, obtained only inferentially
from a first-person experience:
(25) a. I find that people / a person can easily forget their / his past experiences.
b. I now know what it feels like for people to be treated like a king.
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First-person-based genericity is clearly the only way of generalizing irreducibly subjective
experiences as types of experiences, a point made quite apparent by the linguistic structure of
the philosophical examples in (3) and (4).4
While first-person-oriented pronouns provide the most suited expression for generalizing
essential first-personal situations, such as experiences, actions, or intentions, they can also be
used for generalizing states of affairs that are not essentially first-personal, and thus serve a
wider purpose, for example in (26):
(26) One can be listed in the phone book without an address.
First-person-based genericity involves the ability of abstracting from the particularities of
one’s own person and situation, judging oneself to be normal in relevant respects, and then
generalizing to anyone meeting the same conditions. This way of generalizing selfattributions of properties is thus a form of abstraction, involving a distinction between
relevant and irrelevant features of a given person and his situation. First-person based
genericity can also be viewed as a form of simulation, though, as generic simulation.
Simulation Theory (cf. Goldman 1989, 1995, Gordon 1986, 1995a, 1995b, Heal 1989) has
been developed as a theory about how people ascribe propositional attitudes to others and
predict or explain their behavior. Simulation Theory is fundamentally a first-person approach
to the attribution of attitudes to others and to the prediction and explanation of their behavior.
According to Simulation Theory, third-person ascriptions of attitudes and explanations and
predictions of actions are based on first-person ascriptions: by pretending to be the other
person or taking the other person’s point of view – in other words by simulating the other
person. Simulation Theory thus contrasts with the more traditional view about the ascription
of attitudes and the explanation / prediction of actions of others, the Theory Theory. The
Theory Theory is a third-person approach to the attribution of attitudes to others and to the
prediction and explanation of their behavior: according to the Theory Theory, propositional
attitudes and actions are attributed directly, on the basis of a tacit theory about other people’s
behavior, a theory based in particular on observations about how other people’s behave.
First-person-based genericity, one might then say, is genericity based on simulation,
rather than theory about others: a property is attributed to anyone (meeting relevant
restrictions) on the basis of the speaker’s attributing that property as if to himself, while
abstracting from the particularities of his own person and situation.
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Generic simulation is somewhat different from the kind of simulation discussed in the
literature on Simulation Theory. The simulation-theoretic literature has concerned itself only
with specific simulation, the attribution of properties to a specific person in whose situation
the agent puts himself. In the case of generic simulation, the relevant intentional agent
generalizes simply his own situation, abstracting from the features of his situation that are
particular to himself. The agent then does not need to make any adjustments to adopt another
person’s point of view, but simply needs to abstract from the particularities of his own
situation to attribute the property in question to others.
The notion of simulation helps understand the particular way the first person is involved in
first-person-based genericity: first-person-based genericity does not require the agent to
actually have the relevant property himself. The agent may just identify himself with (i.e.
simulate) a person that does. Thus, (27a) can be uttered even by a blind man if he is confident
enough that people in general can see the picture, and (27b) does not display any conflict
between the grammatical first person and generic one because one here obviously involves
identification with people different from the speaker:
(27) a. One can see the picture from the entrance.
b. One can see me from the entrance.
Thus first-person-oriented pronouns involve self reference in a way entirely detached from the
relevant agent’s actual person: it may involve self-attributing a property while identifying
oneself with someone else. This is an important feature of first-person-oriented pronouns,
which I will return to in the next section.
1.3. First-person-oriented propositional content
The formal semantic analysis that I propose to account for the first-person-based genericity or
more generally the first-person-oriented genericity expressed by sentences with generic one is
actually a fairly simple one. The analysis does not itself involve a notion of simulation or
pretence. It involves simply a complex variable, an ordered pair which consists of an
‘ordinary’ variable and what one may view as a ‘mode of presentation’, the latter roughly
representing the relevant intentional agent’s ‘self’.
Intuitively, the ‘ordinary’ variable concerns the truth conditions of a one-sentence,
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whereas the mode of presentation is to govern the applicability of predicates, providing as
such either the epistemic basis or the practical purpose for applying the predicate. Let us take
such a mode of presentation to simply be a property. Then, for a complex variable <x, M> as
introduced by generic one and a predicate P, P(<x, M>) is true with respect to an assignment
g just in case P holds of the value d that g assigns to x as if d was M, that is, on the basis of d
being viewed as if it was M.
The question now is how to conceive of the mode of presentation of the relevant
intentional agent’s self? There are the same reasons as for de se interpreted pronouns not to
posit any qualitative mode of presentation for an agent’s self: In attitudes de se, the agent
need not have any conception of himself at all, and of course, the self should not play a role as
an entity in a propositional attitude de se.5 This is what is avoided on the Lewis (1979)
account of attitudes de se as self-ascriptions of properties. On that view, attitudes de se do not
take propositions, but properties as their content. I will make use of that view together with
the formal semantic analysis on which an attitude verb like expect takes a property, not a
proposition, as an argument (cf. Chierchia 1990). Thus, (28a), which has an obligatory de se
reading, would be represented as in (28b), rather than as in (28c), which corresponds to an
interpretation de re:
(28) a. John expects [PRO to win].
b. expect(John, x[win(x)])
c. expect(John, ^ he will win)
How then should the property that represents the first-person orientation of generic one be
construed formally? Here again it is helpful to turn to Lewis. On Lewis’ view, all ascriptions
of properties to individuals take place under some description, which are relations of
acquaintance. The self-ascription of a property is then the ascription of a property to oneself
under the relation of identity, ‘a relation of acquaintance par excellence’ (Lewis 1979). Thus,
the first-person-orientation of generic one would then naturally be the property x[x = y] (for
‘y’ being the variable corresponding to the relevant agent). Given this, (29a) will have the
analysis in (29b):
(29) a. One can see the picture from the entrance.
b. Gn x can see the picture from the entrance(<x, z[z = y]>)
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Generic-one sentences such as (29a) in fact will themselves express a property, as in (29c):
(29) c. y[Gn x can see the picture from the entrance(<x, z[z = y]>)
Even though I have sofar followed Lewis in construing the content of first-person-oriented
generic sentences like the content of sentences with a pronoun interpreted de se, there are
some fundamental differences between the two kinds of sentences. In both cases the
properties the sentences express are self-ascribed when acting as contents of propositional
attitudes. However, when acting as objects of assertions, they behave quite differently: Joe’s
assertion that he himself is a hero aims at making the addressee accept that Joe is a hero, not
that he, the addressee is a hero. That is, accepting the assertion by a of sentence with a
pronoun X interpreted de se means accepting the corresponding content where the semantic
value of X is now the actual person. Let us say then that familiar cases of pronouns
interpreted de se involve reference transfer in that sense.6, 7 This also holds when such
contents are evaluated as true of false by other people than the relevant agent. Thus, when Bill
says in regard to Joe’s assertion that he himself is a hero that’s true, he means that it is true
that Joe is a hero, not that he, Bill, is a hero. The situation is quite different with the contents
of first-person-oriented generic sentences. Accepting Joe’s assertion that it is nice to walk in
the park or his assertion that one can see the picture from the entrance can only mean selfapplying the properties in question. Moreover, when Joe says that it is nice to walk in the park
and Mary says that’s true, this can only mean that Mary evaluates the content as true when
applied to her, not to Joe. Also, when Mary agrees with Bill that one can see the picture from
the entrance she reapplies the content to herself, rather taking it over from its application to
Bill. Thus, no reference transfer, but reapplication of a property takes place with first-personbased generic sentences.8
This difference between first-person-oriented generic pronouns and familiar cases of de se
interpreted pronouns can be linked to the possibility of detached self-reference with generic
one, that is, reference to oneself while abstracting from one’s own person and identifying with
another person or group of people, a possibility entirely unavailable for de se interpreted
pronouns.
The difference between first-person-oriented generic pronouns and familiar cases of de se
interpreted pronouns also manifests itself in the fact that generic one when used so as to
include the speaker does not imply reference de se in the traditional sense. Consider (30a, b):
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(30) a. Sometimes one thinks that through great deeds one can become a hero without
realizing that one oneself can become a hero that way.
b. Sometimes one thinks one should help others without realizing that one oneself
should help others.
Even though at first sight (30a) and (30b) seem impossible, indicating a standard de se
reading, the sentences can become acceptable in a situation in which the speaker simply does
not apply the generalization he believes in to his own person.9
Lack of a standard de se reading with generic one also occurs in the following variation of
an example by Mach (reported in Perry 1996). In the situation in question, Mach is looking at
a mirror in the bus without recognizing the man he sees there as himself. In this case, (31) is
perfectly acceptable:
(31) Mach noticed how one looks with unkempt hair and shabby clothes.
This again stresses the point that the application of a predicate ‘as if to oneself’ does not mean
applying the predicate as if to one’s own person.
The behaviour of generic one in conditionals, which I turn to now, provides further
support for this crucial feature of generic one.
1.4. Strategy 1a: Inference from the Simulating Self
Strategy 1a of licensing generic one, ‘Inference from the Simulating Self’, is involved in
indicative conditionals:
(32) a. If one is young, one has lots of energy.
b. If one has a nose, one can smell.
c. If one has to take an exam, one gets nervous.
d. If one is 2 meters tall, one is taller than John.
As was noted earlier and illustrated here again, both in the antecedent and in the consequent
of conditionals predicates are acceptable with generic one that are impossible in
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nonconditional sentences.
Why is generic one possible in conditionals without imposing any semantic restrictions on
the predicate? I will argue that this follows simply from the analysis of conditional onesentences in (33) which the present account would give them, together with the view that the
type of self-reference involved is that to a detached self:
(33) Gn x P(x, z[z = y])  Q(x, z[z = y]))
(33) says that for any d, if P were to hold of d as if it were to hold of the intentional agent
himself, then Q would hold of d as if it were to hold of the intentional agent himself.
Given (33), it is not too difficult to see why generic one is acceptable in conditionals:
according to (33), the intentional agent simulates anyone having the property P, and it is said
that under such pretence the agent also has Q. The first-person orientation of generic one
allows an agent to verify a generic conditional just on the basis of himself pretending to have
the antecedent property, rather than having to involve other people as well. That is, the first
person-orientation of generic one in conditionals serves the purpose of an easy verification of
conditional sentences.
This account of generic one in conditionals receives support from an independently
motivated view of conditionals themselves. A common view about (indicative) conditionals is
that conditionals involve hypothetically adding the antecedent to one’s present state of
accepted information and then verifying that the consequent follows from the resulting
information state (cf. Ramsey 1931, Gaerdenfors 1986). Given this view, the hypothetical
addition of the antecedent to one’s stock of beliefs, the attitude of acceptance, is, as Recanati
(2000) has emphasized, a form of simulation: it is simulated belief. Thus, according to the
view in question, indicative conditionals as such involve a form of simulation. On the present
account, it is just that the agent engages in generic simulation as well, identifying himself
with anyone meeting the condition expressed by the antecedent.
A particularly interesting feature of conditional generic one-sentences is the choice of the
mood of the antecedent. The conditional can be an indicative conditional even if the speaker
does not fulfil the condition expressed by the antecedent, as in (34a, b):
(34) a. If one is an angel, one is neither human nor divine.
b. If one is a Martian, one is not susceptible to human disease. (Safir 2000)
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Thus, with an indicative conditional with generic one, the agent does not just abstract from
the particularities of his own situation, but rather may have to take the point of view of an
entirely different situation, a situation in which he has quite different properties than he
actually has. Given any standard semantics of indicative conditionals, this means that the
pretence of having those counterfactual properties takes place directly, without any
comparison between an actual and a counterfactual situation being made. This in turn
supports a point made already in regard to Strategy 1: the self-reference involved in generic
one is not reference to the actual person, but allows for a potentially complete detachment
from the actual person: it is reference to the objective self in Nagel’s (1983, 1986) sense, the
self that can detach itself entirely from the actual physical and psychological person and thus
can take an objective point of view of the world. First-person-oriented pronouns, in their
behaviour in indicative conditionals and in their ability to allow for self-reference under
pretence, thus give linguistic support for there being a notion of an objective self, as part of
our cognitive system.10
The same point made by indicative conditionals with generic one in regard to the objective
self can be cast in simulation-theoretic terms in the following way: the behaviour of generic
one in conditionals supports one of two views of simulation, namely that of Robert Gordon,
as opposed to that of Alvin Goldman. On Goldman’s (1989, 1995) view, an agent when
simulating another person puts himself into the other person’s situation and sees what he
himself would do or what mental states he would be in, under those circumstances; only then
will he attribute that same behavior or those attitudes to the other person. On that view, one
would expect the subjunctive in sentences such as (34a, b): the agent puts himself
counterfactually into the situation of anyone meeting certain conditions and then sees whether
he would in that situation also satisfy the consequence. On Gordon’s (1986, 1995a, 1995b)
view, by contrast, an agent, when simulating another person, ‘imaginatively transforms
himself into the target’, by taking directly the perspective of the other person, in order to
predict the behavior of that person or to attribute mental states to him. On that view, the
simulator does not try to see how he himself would be in the other person’s situation, but
rather focuses on how the world would be from the very perspective of that other person.
With Gordon’s view of simulation, the agents’ own situation will play no role in conditionals
when the agent takes the position of anyone meeting the conditions of the antecedent, and
thus no subjunctive mood is to be expected.
Generic one is also possible in counterfactual conditionals:
17
(35) If one were an angel, one would be neither human nor divine.
The question of course is: Why is the subjunctive mood used when even in conditionals the
speaker needs to satisfy the conditions given by the antecedent? In counterfactual
conditionals, it appears, one is associated with a contextual restriction that is incompatible
with the counterfactual condition expressed by the antecedent. By contrast, in the case of
indicative conditionals there is either no contextual restriction or else the contextual
restriction is not in conflict with the content of the antecedent. The counterfactual then
requires counterfactual reasoning about those beings fulfilling the contextual restriction.
Conditionals with generic one express a generalization on the basis of the first person,
with the first person being used for a generalizing inference rather than providing an
experience or action from which the generalization is made. With generic one-sentences, the
agent pretends to meet the condition expressed by the antecedent and then sees whether he
also meets the condition expressed by the consequent. What is crucial for the use of one in
conditionals is the recognition that an inference involving the agent himself is generalizable,
rather than, as with first-person-based genericity, the recognition that a particular kind of
experience or action is generalizable. Unlike in sentences expressing first-person-based
genericity, generic one in conditionals, as expected, is not a required choice: an indefinite like
someone or a person in the antecedent and a definite pronoun in the consequent would have
the same overall effect:
(36) a. If one is 2 meters tall, one is tall.
b. If someone is two meters tall, he is tall.
Generic one in conditionals just allows verifying a conditional in a particular way: on the
basis of inference involving the first person. The same generalizing inference, though, could
have been made on the basis of an arbitrarily chosen third person, and hence the nearequivalence of conditional one-sentences and conditionals with indefinites such as someone.
1.5. Strategy 2: Inference to the First Person
Strategy 2 for licensing generic one does not start out with a particular experience or action of
the speaker, but rather with a generalization that has been established independently. This
18
generalization, however, is presented with the intention to be at least potentially applied in a
first-person way by the speaker or, more likely, the addressee, or both. As with Strategy 1,
there is a range of contexts in which generic one can be licensed by the second strategy.
Most importantly, the second strategy is used in deontic sentences:
(37) a. One is not allowed to enter the room.
b. One should not lie.
c. One should be respectful toward the elder.
Examples with arbitrary PRO are those with indirect questions below:
(38) a. The tailor knows what PROarb to wear.
b. John knows how PROarb to behave oneself.
Whereas with Strategy 1, the speakers’ own experience leads to the generalization expressed
by the one-sentence, in these cases the speaker presents an internalized, but already
established generalization, a law, general requirement or general recommendation. The
generalizations expressed in (37a-c) crucially play a role in the speakers’ reasoning for his
actions, or better are meant to play a role in the addressee’s reasoning. For example, if the
addressee accepts (37a), then this is likely to prevent him from entering the room. That is,
deontic one-sentences are generally uttered with the intention that they play a future role as
premises in the addressee’s practical reasoning.
The reason why generic one-sentences making us of Inference to the First Person are so
suited for governing an agent’s practical reasoning is that they are allow for an immediate
first-person application by anyone who accepts them.
As before, ‘first-person application’ need not be understood as application to one’s own
actual person: generic one-sentences can be used in such a way that the speaker identifies with
a group of human beings not including himself:
(39) One has to hand in the essay today. (teacher to students)
One–sentences using Inference to the First Person are targeted at possible actions on the
part of the relevant intentional agent. They naturally act as premises for practical reasoning,
19
that is, reasoning whose conclusion is an action (or at least the description of an action) on the
part of the relevant agent. To make this more precise, consider a typical practical syllogism,
involving the first person:
(40) a. I intend to do E.
I think that unless he does (I do) X, he cannot (I cannot) bring about E.
I do X.
By including a deontic condition, this basic practical syllogism can be extended by making
use of generic one:
(40) b. I intend to do E in the way C.
I think that unless I do X, I cannot bring about E.
Doing X, one conforms with C
I do X.
Generic one is justified in sentences using Strategy 2 because such sentences are meant to
lead to inferences, in particular practical inferences, in which selfreference is essential. Onesentences are the only sentences truly suited for that purpose: they express generality and
imply an immediate self-application by anyone who accepts them.
There are use-related differences between one-sentences and universally quantified and
ordinary generic sentences that confirm the point:
(41) a. One is not allowed to enter the room.
b. Noone is allowed to enter the room.
In order to prevent the addressee from entering the room, a speaker would most naturally utter
(41a), rather than (41b). (41b) may involve an implicit contextual restriction that will preclude
the addressee. Laws and general advice are in fact typically formulated using generic one. The
reason is that generic one carries both a general force and a first-person orientation. A deontic
generic one-sentence commits an agent who accepts it to act in certain ways, having to make
the sentence a premise in his practical reasoning.
The first-person connection of sentences with generic one or arbitrary PRO using Strategy
2 can also be seen from the suitedness of such sentences for the expression of practical
20
knowledge as in (42a, b), where generic one or arbitrary PRO could not be appropriately
replaced by another generic NP, as in (42b):
(42) a. I know what one can do.
b. I know what PROarb to do.
c. I know what people can do.
Strategy 2 is not always independent of Strategy 1. We have already seen examples,
sentences expressing physical possibility, which could be licensed by either Strategy 1 or
Strategy 2. With evaluative predicates, in fact, both Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 could be at play.
With predicates of moral evaluation as in (43), Strategy 2 will be clearly involved, whereas
with predicates of some form of emotional evaluation, Strategy 1 will generally be the
relevant one:
(43) a. It is wrong PROarb to do X.
b. PROarb to take the exam is obligatory.
At the same these generalizations are not strict: predicates of moral evaluation involve not
only hypothetical practical reasoning, but also emotions of various sort (I am outraged to have
to done X, that you have done X). Similarly, predicates of emotional evaluation will not just
involve an inference from a first person emotional state, but also will govern future practical
reasoning. Even for predicates of personal taste, this may be the case, as Blackburn (1998,
Chap. 1) emphasizes. Thus we can say that evaluative predicates involve the two directions:
inference from the first person (generalizing first person mental states or acts states), and
inference to the first person (anticipating potential practical reasoning).
2. Relative Truth with Predicates of Personal Taste
2.1. The intuitions of relative truth
Evaluative sentences in general display a context-dependency in which it is not the
proposition expressed that is dependent on a context of utterance, but rather the truth value of
the proposition. That is, evaluative sentences display intuitions to the effect that their truth
21
value is relative, more precisely, that the truth of the proposition they express depends not
only on a possible world (and perhaps time), but also other elements such as an agent or
parameters of evaluation or personal taste.11 Thus, in addition to a context of utterance which
helps determine the proposition a sentence expresses, an additional context appears to be
needed for the evaluation of the proposition as true or false, a context of evaluation or what
MacFarlane (2005a) calls a context of assessment, a context which as such should include not
only a world (and time) of evaluation, but other elements as well.. In what follows, we will
see that the same intuitions of relative truth arise with sentences containing first-personoriented pronouns. I will argue that the account of first-person-oriented genericity that I have
given can be carried over (to a great extent) to other sentences displaying the intuitions of
relative truth. Moreover, I like to show that the notion of first-person-based genericity gives a
better account of those intuitions than standard relativist accounts. I will focus on one
particular class of sentences which also the recent literature on relativism has focused on,
namely sentences with predicates of personal taste such as is nice, is tasty, and is fun. I will
later turn to the question to what extent the account can be extended to other sentences giving
rise to the same intuitions, in particular sentences with epistemic modals and evaluative
predicates.
There are three kinds of intuitions of relative truth that motivate a relativist account of
context dependence.
2.1.1. Faultless disagreement
One main indication for the truth value of a sentence being relative is the possibility of
faultless disagreement (Koelbel 2003). Faultless disagreement consists in a situation in which
two agents disagree about the truth of a proposition, with neither apparently being at fault.
Thus, below, neither A nor B may be at fault, yet they disagree:
(44) A: White chocolate tastes good.
B: No, I disagree, white chocolate does not taste good.
In fact A and B subsequently may enter a dispute, let’s say whether they should start
producing white chocolate. Faultless disagreements can arise not only in a situation of
conversation, but also consists in intuitions about two agents being involved in different
conversations (MacFarlane, ms 2) or about two agents’ beliefs (Koelbel 2003). What is
22
crucial about faultless disagreement is that both agents seem to be right in their claims or
beliefs, but yet they disagree. Faultless disagreement does not arise with sentences that
express different propositions when uttered by different speakers. Moreover, faultless
disagreement does not arise with evaluative sentences in which the ‘judge’ is made explicit,
as in (45):
(45) A: White chocolate tastes good to me.
B: White chocolate does not taste good to me.
An observation generally disregarded in the literature is that faultless disagreement does not
arise with purely subjective attitudes, such as find or think (on a ‘subjective’ reading):
(46) a. A finds / thinks that white chocolate tastes good.
b. B finds / thinks that white chocolate does not taste good.
It only arises with ‘truth-directed attitudes’, such as believe:
(47) a. A believes that white chocolate tastes good.
b. B believes that white chocolate does not taste good.
The same contrast holds for speech acts: expressive speech acts do not give rise to faultless
disagreement, only truth-directed ones, such as assertions, do:
(48) a. ? John expressed his surprise that the wine tastes good. Mary disagreed with him.
b. John claimed that white chocolate tastes good. Mary disagreed with him.
The difference between the two kinds of propositional attitudes and illocutionary act types
obviously has to do with the fact that attitudes like find and (non-truth-directed) think as well
as expressive speech acts do not aim at truth, but are limited to inherently subjective contents.
By contrast, attitudes and speech acts whose aim is truth are incompatible with such purely
subjective contents, and instead will choose what one may call the ‘generic closure’ of such
contents, the corresponding contents that represent first-person-based genericity.
It is important to notice, though, that truth-directed attitudes and speech acts allow for
evaluative contents in which the ‘judge’ is made explicit:
23
(49) I believe / claim that white chocolate tastes good to me.
This tastes good to me is not a subjective, but an objective content, an objective content about
a subjective evaluation.
2.1.2. Retraction
Another intuition for the truth of a sentence being relative is the possibility of retracting a
proposition, once truthfully asserted or believed, at some later point in time. Retraction, as a
matter of fact, can be viewed simply as faultless disagreement involving the same agent at
different times. The possibility of retraction has been most often discussed with epistemic
modals. Thus, the content of an utterance of John may be in France, correctly asserted at
some point in time may later be withdrawn in view of evidence that excludes John’s being in
France. Retraction is also possible, though, with sentences involving predicates of personal
taste. Thus, John may withdraw the content of his ‘faultless’ claim or belief that Bouilly tastes
good, at some later point in his life, having changed or refined his taste of wine. But John was
of course not at fault in his belief that Bouilly tastes good at the earlier time and thus was
right at both occasions.
2.1.3. Sharing
By ‘sharing’ I mean the possibility of sharing of propositional contents by agents involved in
different contexts of evaluation. Sharing is a phenomenon actually not considered in the
recent literature on relative truth. However, it has been discussed at length in regard to moral
predicates by Schiffer (1990). If a sentences S involves relative truth, then sharing of
propositional contents consists in the intuition that agents, even if they are clearly involved in
different contexts of evaluation, share the same propositional content when they have a
propositional attitude that S. A linguistic manifestation of that is the validity of the inference
in (50), assuming that A’s and B’s criteria for evaluating wine are known to be quite different
(A, but not B, lets say, being a connoisseur):
(50) A thinks the wine tastes good.
B thinks the wine tastes good.
24
A and B think the same thing.
Such an inference holds with any propositional attitude or speech act verb. Evaluative
predicates, in licensing the inference, differ from other context-dependent expressions such as
demonstratives. Thus (51) is clearly invalid:
(51) John thinks that Mary is there (in New York).
Bill thinks that Mary is there (in Boston).
John and Bill think the same thing.
The criterion of sharing does not hinge on some ‘looseness’ of uses of the expression the
same thing. With free relatives as in (52a) and conjunctions (of noun phrases) as in (52b), the
same observation can be made, assuming again that John’s and Mary’s taste parameters are
rather different:
(52) a. John thinks what Mary thinks, namely that the wine tastes good.
b. John and Mary, my best friends, think that the wine tastes good.
The ‘linguistic’ criteria, inferences such as (51), are not the only criteria for establishing
shared meaning when different contexts of assessment are involved. There are also a range of
other intuitions that indicate that the meaning, that is, ‘conceptual role’ of evaluative
predicates when used by different agents is the same even if the agents’ criteria for applying
the predicates are rather different. This point has been made rather thoroughly, in the context
of a discussion of moral predicates, by Schiffer (1990). Schiffer discusses various intuitions
that show that moral predicates have the same meaning for two agents even if the agents
differ in their moral criteria and principles for applying the predicates. For example, even if
two agents have different moral principles, their concepts of good and wrong are the same
given the roles of those concepts in determining how the agents want the world to be, given
the kinds of emotional responses they trigger, given the relation of those concepts to related
ones (ought, just), given that the concepts involve the same process of moral training (of
punishment and reward), and given the predicates’ common ‘point’, in getting people to
behave in a certain way. Needless to say similar criteria for the individuation of conceptual
roles can be found for predicates of personal evaluation as well.
25
The crucial point that the three intuitions, faultless disagreement, retraction and sharing,
appear to establish is that the propositional content of sentences with predicates of personal
taste is the same even when the context-dependent criteria of evaluation involved, such as
standards of taste etc., are clearly distinct.
2.2. Problems for standard accounts of relative truth
The relativist theory accounts for the intuitions of relative truth by postulating additional
parameters as part of the context relative to which the truthvalue of a proposition is to be
evaluated. Thus truth will be relative in the following sense:
(53) Relative Truth
The truth of a sentence S is relative iff for an utterance context u, the proposition that S
expresses in u is true or false only relative to a context c that contains not only a world
(and time), but other elements as well.
There are different views as to what the context of assessment may contain. On one view, it
may contain whatever parameters seem necessary for the evaluation of the expression in
question, such as parameters of taste or epistemic standards (MacFarlane 2005a, b). On
another view, it will just contain, besides a world (and perhaps time) of evaluation, the
relevant agent, or equivalently, a centered world (a pair consisting of a world and an agent)
(Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson (2005), Lasersohn (to appear)). It appears that a relativist
account, especially on the first version, is problematic in several respects.
2.2.1. Explaining disagreement
The most important problem for the relativist account, it seems to me, is that it does not really
explain faultless disagreement. The problem is, why on the relativist account can there be
disagreement when the truth of an utterance is to be evaluated relative to different contexts of
assessment. How can the relativist really account for the difference between white chocolate
tastes good to me on the one hand and white chocolate tastes good on the other hand? Here
the answer would depend on the way the context of evaluation is supposed to be determined.
26
Suppose that the context of evaluation depend in fact on the speaker’s own choice, his
taking a particular perspective or choosing a context for evaluating the proposition. If the
context of assessment depends on an agent’s own choice, then there appears to be an overall
contextually completed intended meaning of white chocolate tastes good that will include the
chosen context of evaluation. This contextually completed meaning would then not be
relevantly different from the meaning of chocolate tastes good to me (or chocolate tastes
good to d, where d is the relevant judge). But we have see that the latter does not give rise to
faultless disagreement, whereas the former does.12, 13
The common version of a relativist account, in particular that of MacFarlane (), takes the
context of assessment to be uniquely determined by whoever assesses the truthvalue of the
proposition. This version obviously would not predict an identity of the intended meaning of
white chocolate tastes good and white chocolate tastes good to d (for d being the relevant
agent). The problem with this version, it seems, is its inability to distinguish the content of a
truth-directed speech act from a merely subjective content (such as that of the attitude
expressed by find): if a speaker utters chocolate tastes good then, knowing the semantics of
the sentence, he will know that the content of his communicative contribution will target only
his own context, and thus his overall contribution, from his point of view, will be about just
his own context. From his point of view, no considerations need to be made that the content
of his utterance also target (be evaluable as true at) the context of the addressee. The
addressee, in turn, given his knowledge of the relativist semantics of the sentence uttered, will
of course know that. It will thus remain a mystery why the situation should give rise to
disagreement. The situation appears entirely undistinguishable from one where the speaker
expresses his own subjective opinion without targeting the addressee’s parameters of
evaluation in any way.
Another potential problem for the account arises with the parameter for the relativization
of truth, which is individuated externally. Given the circumstances of the utterance situation
or propositional attitude, the additional parameters for the evaluation of truth should be
equally accessible and identifiable for all the interlocutors. It is then puzzling why a truthconditionally complete content could not be identified in a given context by each one of the
interlocutors and understood as the content to be communicated. That is, why should
agreement or disagreement not pertain to such a truth-conditionally completed content, rather
than the content expressed by a sentence relative to a context of utterance? 14, 15
The relativist account is also difficult to maintain for the content of chocolate tastes good
when it acts as the object of belief. There are two options of how to construe the object of
27
belief in this case. First, the object of belief could be viewed as a pair consisting of a
proposition and context of assessment. But again this could not give justice to the intuition
that two people one of whom believes that white chocolate tastes good and the other of whom
believes that white chocolate does not taste good disagree, rather than have different, but
compatible overall beliefs. Alternatively, the content of belief could be taken to be a truthrelative proposition with the judge being identified with whoever is the believer
(Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson 2005). The problem then is that this would not give justice to
the distinction between the purely subjective content of attitudes like think or find and the
content of belief that aims at truth. Intuitively, if John thinks or finds that white chocolate
tastes good and Joe thinks or finds that it does not taste good, then they have different
thoughts or rather ‘tastes’, but they do not disagree. However, when John believes that white
chocolate tastes good and Joe believes that it does not taste good, then the intuition is that
they disagree. Taking the contents of the two sorts of attitudes to be exactly the same fails to
account for this crucial difference.16
We can thus summarize that the relativist account takes care of the intuition that the same
propositional content is involved in the relevant examples, thus explaining the possibility of
retraction and sharing. But it does not provide a real explanation of why there is
disagreement.
2.2.2. The meaning-intention problem
The first version of the relativist account posits parameters, such as parameters of taste, as
part of the context of assessment. The problem with such entities is the same as arises in a
number of cases in which entities of a certain sort are posited as implicit arguments, namely
what Schiffer (1987) has discussed as the meaning-intention problem. A speaker generally
would not be able to identify entities such as parameters of taste as part of a context relative to
which he intends his utterance to be made. A speaker may be entirely justified in uttering a
sentence like this tastes good without in any way being able to identify a ‘taste parameter’ as
part of his intentions. This problem of cognitive accessibility is a natural generalization of
Schiffer’s meaning-intention problem.
2.2.3. The first-person orientation
28
Relativist accounts of the second sort allow for readings involving error through
misidentification that in fact do not exist. Suppose that Joe reads a description of someone
that he fails to realize is description of himself and that misdescribes him as someone that
likes white chocolate when Joe in fact does not. In this case, given a relativist account, of
either sort, Joe believes that white chocolate tastes good would be true (though Joe’s belief
would not). An agent d could not believe p to be true relative to a taste parameter that d does
not believe to be his own, that is, d could not believe p to be true relative to d without
recognizing that d is himself. In other words, an agent must identify himself as the judge
when standing in an attitudinal relation to an evaluative propositional content. The problem
for the relativist account consists in that it assigns to the additional parameter of assessment a
status of a value of a pronoun interpreted de re, when in fact it should have the status of a
pronoun interpreted de se.
2.2.4. Predictions about attitude contexts
It is not quite clear what the predictions of the relativist account are for attitude reports.
McFarlane (2005b) assumes that the additional parameter of assessment of the embedded
proposition always becomes the parameter of the assessment of the entire sentence. This is
adequate, however, only for nonattitudinal embedding predicates, such as modal and temporal
ones, as in (54):
(54) It could be the case that chocolate tastes good.
In (54), the taste parameter is clearly that of the speaker. This is different with attitude reports:
(55) John thinks that chocolate tastes good.
Clearly the standard of taste in (56) is that of John, not the speaker’s. In general, with
embedding attitude verbs, the ‘additional parameter’ will be the one of the described agent.
This is not problem for a relativist account as such, though. As Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson
(2005) make clear, for a truth-relative proposition p, an attitude report d believes that p can be
made to be understood as: d believes p to be true relative to d.
2.2.5. Explaining the kind of context dependency involved
29
A final problem for the standard relativist account is that it does not explain why the
phenomena in question give rise to a relativization of truth rather than context-dependency in
the traditional sense. The approach makes it look like an accidental fact that evaluative
predicates give rise to an enrichment of the context of assessment, rather than the context of
use as with, for example, spatial indexicals. This objection does not obtain for all relativist
accounts, though, namely not for those that only admit an inclusion of the relevant agent in
the context of assessment (Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson (2005), Lasersohn, to appear).
2.3. Relative truth and first-person-oriented pronouns
The account of first-person-oriented pronouns that I have given can shed a significant light on
the issue of relative truth. Not only do sentences with first-person-oriented pronouns exhibit
the same intuitions of relative truth as predicates of personal taste, but also the present
analysis of first-person-oriented pronouns accounts for those intuitions in a way that avoids
the problems that standard accounts of relative truth face. The analysis, moreover, can and in
fact should be carried over to sentences with predicates of personal taste. Not only do firstperson-oriented pronouns and predicates of personal taste lead to the same intuitions of
relative truth, but also there is the possibility of a linguistic link between predicates of
evaluation and first-person-oriented pronouns in a given sentence
The main problem for the standard relativist theories is that they disregard the fundamental
first-person character of ‘relative truth’ as well as the genericity that is involved in the
sentences in question. At least with predicates of personal taste, the intuitions giving rise to
relative truth can be traced to the first-person-based genericity that is involved in the
semantics of such predicates in just the same way as in the semantics of generic one. That is,
the properties [1] – [3] will be explained as going along with first-person-based genericity.
This account does entirely away with such entities as parameters of taste or epistemic states as
part of a context of assessment, as they are posited on the one version of the relativist
approach. Moreover, rather than making use of a context of assessment enriched by an agent,
as on the other version of the relativist approach, the account will construe the first-personorientation involved in terms of the nature of the propositional content itself.
2.3.1. Relative truth intuitions with sentences involving first-person-oriented pronouns
30
The intuitions of relative truth exhibited by predicates of personal taste are all shared by
sentences with first-person-oriented pronouns
As a point of departure, let us observe that the semantic relation of (56a) to (56b) is about
the same as the relation of (57a) to (57b):
(56) a. I can see the picture from the entrance.
b. One can see the picture from the entrance.
(57) a. Chocolate tastes good to me.
b. Chocolate tastes good.
Just as (56b) is a generalization of (56a), (57b) is a generalization of (57a).
Unlike predicates of personal taste, however, generic-one-sentences do not display any
difference in content with truth-directed and purely subjective attitudes and speech acts:
(58) a. John believes that one can see the picture from entrance.
b. John thinks / finds that one can see the picture from the entrance.
The content of the embedded sentence in (59b) is as generic as that in (59a). This supports the
view that predicates of personal taste are ambiguous in their meaning in a sentence,
depending on the kind of attitude or speech act involved.
Faultless disagreement is possible with generic one-sentences in just the same way as with
predicates of personal taste. Thus, one person might be right in asserting (59a), whereas
another person, used to a greater level of comfort, may be right in his way in asserting (59b):
(59) a. One can sleep on this sofa.
b. One cannot sleep on this sofa.
Yet the two clearly disagree.
Also retraction is possible with generic one-sentences. Someone who previously was
correct in asserting (56b) may retract his assertion later when the place of the picture has
changed.
Finally, two people, with quite different experiences as their epistemic source, may share
the content of a generic one sentence. Thus, an inference of the following sort is always valid:
31
(60) A found out that one can see the picture from the entrance.
B found out that one can see the picture from the entrance.
A and B found out the same thing (namely that one can see the picture from the
entrance).
Free relative clauses and conjunction support the property of sharing with generic onesentences. Thus, (61a, b) are equally possible as conclusions of (60):
(61) a. A found out what B found out, namely that one can see the picture from the entrance.
b. A and B found out that one can see the picture from the entrance.
Returning now to the analysis of generic-one-sentences that I have given, it is not difficult to
see how the intuitions of relative truth follow from it.
2.3.2. Explaining relative truth intuitions with first-person-based genericity
On the present analysis, generic-one-sentences (on one reading) express a generalization
based on a self-ascription of a property, and as such express a first-person-oriented content (a
property). This analysis accounts for the intuitions of relative truth while avoiding the
problems that standard accounts of relative truth face, or so I like to show.
One of the main advantages of the analysis is that it gives a better account of faultless
disagreement. The problem with the standard theories of relative truth was that sentences
giving rise to faultless disagreement are not treated fundamentally different (in their meaningintention) from sentences expressing merely subjective opinion. The present analysis of
generic one-sentences analyses them as expressing both a self-ascription of a property and
drawing a generalization on the basis of that. It is clear that the self-ascription part itself
cannot be the source of the disagreement (lets say because the interlocutor refuses to selfapply the content in question). For the account would then not be significantly different from
standard relativist theories, leading to the same problem of distinguishing subjective opinion
from disagreement. Rather the source of the disagreement is the genericity expressed by
generic one-sentences. If a generalization is claimed or believed, it will be in conflict with the
negation of that claim. Such a disagreement is faultless though because the source of the
32
generalization is a first-person ascription -- or in the case of the negation of that
generalization, the failure of a first-person ascription.
In this regards it is important to note that the negation of a generic-one sentence will
always affect the self-ascription and not just the generalization. This can be seen in the
contrast between (62a), which seems contradictory, and (62b) with an ordinary universal
quantifier:
(62) a. ?? It is not the case that one can see the picture from the entrance, though I can.
b. It is not the case that everyone can see the picture from the entrance, though I can.
This follows from the account: not attributing a property P to someone d (meeting relevant
conditions) as if d was oneself, means not attributing P to oneself.17 Thus, the faultlessness of
a disagreement is due to the first-person source of the generalization expressed.
It is also clear why generic one-sentences allow for the possibility of retraction: retraction
will go along with a resetting of the source of the generalization (such as a different
experience), with two different generalizations then being in conflict with each other.
Sharing of contents of generic one-sentences by different agents is possible for just the
same reasons as sharing of contents of sentences involving de se pronouns is possible on
Lewis’ (1979) account: it is simply sharing of a property, a property that is to be self-ascribed
in the attitudinal state involved. Lewis himself in fact took the possibility of sharing of the
contents of self-locating beliefs to be a piece of evidence for his account.
2.3.3. Connections between first-person-oriented pronouns and predicates of personal
taste
Given the way the present analysis of generic-one sentences accounts for the intuitions of
relative truth and given that predicates of personal taste involve a first-person ascription as
well, in is natural to carry over the analysis of generic one-sentences in such a way that
chocolate tastes good would be first-person-based generic sentence of just the same sort.
There are in fact numerous parallels between generic one-sentences and sentences with
predicates of personal taste, which together give strong support for carrying the analysis over
in that way.
2.3.3.1. Genericity
33
Like generic-one-sentences expressing first-person-based genericity, the application of a
predicate of personal taste is generally grounded in a first-person ascription. That is,
generally, when a speaker utters white chocolate tastes good, it implies that white chocolate
tastes good to him. However, while predicates of personal taste involve a self-application of
the predicate, this is not all there is to predicates of taste. We have seen that faultless
disagreement arises only with truth-directed attitudes and speech acts, not with purely
subjective attitudes as expressed by the verbs find or (certain uses of) think. This would mean
that in truth-directed contexts, sentences with predicates of taste have a generic interpretation,
the kind of generic interpretation that is obligatory for generic-one-sentences in any context.
Truth-directed propositional attitudes and speech acts thus will along with a generic
interpretation of predicates of personal taste whereas propositional attitudes and speech acts
of individual judgment will go along with a subjective interpretation. Note that as with
generic-one-sentences, a single first-person experience suffices to make the generalization
expressed by a sentence with a predicate of personal taste in a truth-directed context:
(63) John just found out that chocolate tastes good.
Even though the source for the epistemic attitude described in (63) is most likely a single
first-person experience, the content of the attitude is a generalization.
2.3.3.2. The first-person connection
If the analysis of generic one carries over to predicates of personal taste, we expect that
predicates of personal taste display the same kind of first-person connection as generic-onesentences. In particular they should involve the detached, ‘objective’ self and not generally
the actual person of the speaker. This is indeed the case.
We had seen that with generic-one sentences an inference to the first person is not always
possible. This is so also for predicates of personal taste. That is, there are counterexamples to
the inference in (64):
(64) Chocolate tastes good.
Chocolate tastes good to me.
34
For example, a mother may persuade a child to eat by uttering (65), without thereby
expressing her own taste judgment:
(65) Applesauce tastes good.
The same point can be made with because-clauses and questions:
(66) a. John took another spoon because it tasted so good.
b. Does this taste good?
Here the speaker may just identify with (or projects himself onto) John (in 66a) or the
addressee (66b), not being interested in his own taste judgments.18
2.3.3.3. The analysis
Given that predicates of personal taste have either a subjective or a generic interpretation and
given that the generic interpretation is based on the subjective interpretation, the first question
to answer is, how should the subjective interpretation be treated formally? Should the
dependence on an agent be represented by a bound variable or by a shiftable contextual
parameter. While some authors such as Lasersohn (to appear) and Stephenson (2006) treat
them as shiftable contextual parameters, there are two important reasons to treat them as
bound variables. One of them is the possibility of the variable being bound by quantified NP,
as in (67):
(67) Everyone thinks that chocolate tastes good.
The variable could either be part of an implicit for-phrase or occupy an argument position of
the predicate of personal taste. For present purposes, let us simply augment the relevant
argument position of the predicate of taste. Then the meaning of chocolate tastes good in the
context of (68a) would be represented as in (68b), whereas in the context of (69a) as in (69b):
(68) a. I find that chocolate tastes good.
b. λx[tastes good(c, x)]
(69) a. I believe that chocolate tastes good.
35
b. λx[Gn y tastes good(c, <y, λz[z = x]>)]
Sentences with predicates of personal taste in truth-directed contexts (and without an overt
subject being specified) always express first-person-based genericity, the generalization being
made from a first-personal subjective experience to anyone like the agent in question.
The second reason for positing a ‘judge’-variable is the possibility of a link between
generic one and predicates of taste. In fact this possibility is what gives significant plausibility
for the analysis in (69b) in the first place. The relevant examples include those the paper
started out with, repeated below:
(70) a. It is nice when one is walking in the park.
b. It is nice PROarb to walk in the park.
In (70a, b), the understood judge is the same as, or rather covaries with, the referent of generic
one and arbitrary PRO. This means that both generic one / arbitrary PRO and what is
understood as the ‘implicit judge’ introduce variables that would have to be bound by a single
generic operator, as in the analysis of (70b) in (71):19
(71) Gn z nice(λk[walk in the park(k, λy[y = x]], <z, λy[y = x]>)
Also in the contexts below is the implicit judge of predicates of personal taste understood as
covarying with arbitrary PRO or else generic one:
(72) a. It is sometimes more pleasant when one walks home than when one drives.
b. One should walk home because it is so pleasant.
c. When one drinks this with milk, it is delicious.
d. When one is young, rollerblading is lots of fun.
The possibility of a single operator binding both the ‘judge’ variable and the variable
introduced by generic one or arbitrary PRO means that the genericity involved in predicates
of personal taste cannot be a matter of the lexical meaning of those predicates (or of one of
their lexical meanings). Instead it must be tied to the presence of a generic operator in the
semantic structure of the sentence which is able to bind other elements as well.
36
2.3.3.4. Avoiding the problems of relativist accounts
The explanation of faultless disagreement, retraction, and sharing with sentences containing
predicates of personal taste will now be the same as for generic one-sentences. We can also
see that the analysis avoids the particular problems that standard relativist theories face.
First of all, the present analysis won’t face the meaning-intention problem: no additional
parameters such as standards of taste are postulated, but simply a first-person application of
predicates of taste. The analysis moreover will not generate a de re problem for the judge
parameter: the analysis incorporates self-ascription and thus an obligatory ‘de se reading’ of
the understood judge. In attitude contexts, the analysis predicts that the judge is the described
agent or whoever the described agent may identify with, whereas in independent and modal
contexts, the judge clearly could only be the speaker (or whomever the speaker may identify
with).
The content of sentences expressing first-person-oriented genericity has been construed as
a property. This means that beliefs with such a content will involve a self-ascription of that
property, and the acceptance of assertions of such a content the self-ascription of the property
by the addressee. How does the notion of truth apply to contents construed as properties? At
first sight it looks like the account coincides in that respect exactly with relativist accounts
that posit an agent as part of a context of assessment: Obviously for evaluating a propositional
content that is a property as true or false the content needs to be relativized to an agent.
However, there is an alternative not requiring a relative notion of truth. In Moltmann (2003), I
argued that for both linguistic and philosophical reasons, it should not be propositions that are
bearers of truth values, but intentional objects of the sort of assertions and beliefs. If it is
primarily John’s assertion that chocolate tastes good, rather than a propositional content
expressed by chocolate tastes good, then the notion of truth does not need to be relativized;
rather the truth bearer would incorporate already the necessary ‘relativization’.
2.4. Other kinds of expressions involving relative truth
Until now I have focused on intuitions of relative truth with first-person-oriented pronouns
and predicates of personal taste, making use of the notion of first-person-oriented genericity.
The question then is in what way and to what extent the account can be carried over to other
expressions or constructions that have been argued to involve a notion of relative truth.
37
First of all, other evaluative predicates in general exhibit the intuitions of relative truth,
that is, moral predicates, aesthetic predicates, and relative adjectives such as tall or rich.20
With such predicates it is less obvious in which sense they express genericity based on a firstperson ascription, though. Any ‘subjective’ application of an aesthetic or moral predicate
obviously involves considerations of universal applicability. But with aesthetic predicates,
first-person aspects of meaning (triggering emotions) are obviously essential as well. With
moral predicates, both emotional aspects of meaning and practical orientation (guidance of
actions) require an essential first-person ascription. The meaning of such evaluative predicates
is then just more complex, involving first-person ascription of possibly different sorts as only
part of their meaning. This may also be said for relative adjective in an evaluative use as
discussed by Richard (2004). The conclusion then would be that first-person-oriented
genericity is involved in the semantics of evaluative predicates in general. Note that moral
predicates also display the interaction with first-person-oriented pronouns, though it will more
likely be based on the strategy Inference to the First Person than Inference from the First
Person:
(73) It is good PROarb to treat others with respect.
Epistemic modals are an often discussed class of expressions displaying the intuitions of
relative truth (Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson 2005, Egan (to appear), MacFarlane, ms 1). They
clearly display faultless disagreement: one person may believe or claim that John may be in
Paris, while another person with more knowledge disagrees. Epistemic modals also allow for
retraction: a person may at a given point have believed or claimed that John may be in Paris,
but withdraw the content of that belief or claim later in view of more evidence. Epistemic
modals also lead to sharing of content, as indicated by the validity of the following inference:
(74) A believes that it may rain (because she heard the weather forecast).
B believes that it may rain (because he noticed the cloud formation).
A and B believe the same thing (but for different reasons).
Standard relativist accounts of epistemic modals pose the same problems as arise with
standard relativist accounts of predicates of personal taste. The standard account takes the
proposition expressed by a sentence with an epistemic modal to have a truth value only
relative to either an epistemic state (MacFarlane ms 1) or an agent
38
(Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson 2005). This again poses the problem of why there should be
disagreement, and with epistemic states, it poses the meaning-intention problem (the problem
of how a speaker might be able to identify the epistemic state in question).
The notion of first-person-based genericity applies naturally to epistemic modals as well.
First, we observe that epistemic modals allow the knower to be made explicit, as in (75),
whereas without specification of the knower, as in (76a) we seem to have a use equivalent to a
use specifying the knower as ‘one’, as in (76b), the only use of epistemic modals that give rise
to faultless disagreement:
(75) For all I know, John may be in Paris.
(76) a. John may be in Paris.
b. For all one knows, John may be in Paris.
Thus, the analysis of epistemic modals that suggests itself would be one according to which
John may be in Paris could be paraphrased as ‘It is compatible with my epistemic state, as far
as it is generalizable to anyone of relevance, that John is in Paris’. As with first-personoriented pronouns and predicates of taste, however, the self-reference involved here allows
identifying with another agent, such as the addressee. Thus Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson
(2005) note that (77) could be uttered by a speaker who knows better but identifies himself
with a person trying to find a way out of a maze:
(77) The exit may be this way.
With epistemic modals, again the question arises how to represent the dependence on an
agent. We can note again that with a quantificational subject, we get binding of the firstperson-oriented content:
(78) Everyone thinks that John may be in Paris.
Let us therefore assume that epistemic modals involve an implicit argument position and thus
introducing a variable. This variable will then be bound by a generic operator, with an
application ‘as if to oneself’, as in (78), where M represents the epistemic modal in question:
(79) λx[Gn y (M(<y, λz [z = x]>, p))]
39
Faultless disagreement would now be explained as before: it is disagreement about what from
the point of view of the two agents is the common epistemic state. Again the crucial notion is
first-person-based genericity, which in this case means genericity based on first-personal
access to one’s own epistemic state insofar as it is generalizable.21
Relative truth is closely tied to the first person: it arises because a generalization is made
on the basis of a first-person application of a predicate. Unlike relativist accounts, this
predicts that the only relativity of truth there is is relativity with respect to the first person.
This explains why relative truth does not arise with other indexical expressions such as there
or here, but only with those we have discussed, that is with expressions whose content is tied
to an essential first-person aascription.22
3. Conclusion
First-person-oriented genericity is a form of generalization that is associated with the meaning
of a wide range of expressions and most explicitly in English with generic one. It is clearly
also a central cognitive notion. First-person-oriented genericity leads to self-locating beliefs
and assertions, but it involves self-reference in a quite different way than familiar cases of
pronouns interpreted de se, involving the notion of a self that can detach itself from the actual
person. First-person-based genericity, one manifestation of first-person-oriented genericity, is,
I have argued, at the heart of various phenomena that have been argued require a notion of
relative truth. First-person-based genericity can explain why certain kinds of contextdependent expressions display intuitions of relative truth and only those expressions, namely
precisely the expressions whose application conditions involve an essential first-person
ascription. It is thus no accident that spatial indexicals, for example, do not give rise to a
relative notion of truth and that conversely evaluative predicates and epistemic modals do not
allow for a contextualist or implicit-argument account. It is clear also that given the present
account, an absolute notion of truth can be maintained as the aim of belief as well as, in a
certain sense, assertion.
Notes
* I would like to thank the editor and Peter Lasersohn for very useful comments as well as
audiences at SPR05 in San Sebastian and at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris for
discussion.
40
1
The reading of (1a) on which it expresses a generalization of the speaker’s own experience,
though clearly the most natural one, is not the only reading that is possible. For (1a) to be true
it could also be the case that the speaker actually has not seen the picture, but puts himself
into the position of ‘the normal person’ who can see the picture. I will discuss this reading in
time, as a case of self-ascription to the detached self.
2
Interestingly, instead of generic one, the non-generic pronoun I can be used for
philosophical purposes (generalizing first-personal knowledge) in just the same way, as was
pointed out to me by Francois Recanati:
(1) I cannot be mistaken about the contents of my own mental states.
I can generally not replace one in other contexts (physical possibility, deontic predicates,
generalizing from one’s own experiences, conditionals). The reason, it appears, is that
generalizing I-sentences, as one may call them, are possible only when they express
metaphysical truths, based on first-person knowledge. They cannot be used to express
empirical self-knowledge or to make deontic statements. This is an indication that the
generalization is not part of the semantics of generalizing I-sentences themselves, but follows
from the fact that such sentences, with their literal meaning, are meant to express a
metaphysical truth, which by nature is generalizable. The generalizing effect thus is a
conversational implicature. The use of I in such contexts necessarily implies what one would
express in those same contexts.
3
For a linguistically much more detailed discussion of what follows see Moltmann (to
appear).
4
Nagel (1974) is in fact interested not in just individual subjective experiences -- for some x
‘what it is like for x to be a bat’ -- but in types of subjective experiences, thus first-personbased genericity.
5
See Castaneda (1966, 1967), Evans (1982), and Perry (1979) for relevant discussions.
6
This does not mean that the semantic analysis of de se interpreted pronouns needs to posit an
operation of reference transfer. Rather, more plausibly, it means that de se interpreted
pronouns in the familiar sense involve both reference to the actual person and the definition of
a property as the content of the embedded sentence. In view of the analysis of generic one, I
will give later, this means that (1a) below would have the analysis in (1b):
(1) a. John thinks that he himself is a hero.
b. think(John, λx[hero(<John, λy[x = y]>)])
That is, he himself semantically contributes a pair consisting of the actual person John and a
mode of presentation ‘being identical to himself’.
7
Stalnaker (1981) in fact takes the behaviour of sentences with de se interpreted pronouns to
be grounds for rejecting Lewis account of such sentences as expressing properties. Stalnaker
instead takes them to express propositions like any other sentences. Of course Stalnaker’s
critique of Lewis account does not apply to evaluative sentences and others that involve
relative truth.
41
8
Egan (to appear) discusses the same distinction with a sentence like my pants are on fire and
sentences with epistemic modals (see Section 2.4.). He argues that my pants are on fire cannot
be asserted when expressing a self-locating proposition and gives a pragmatic account of why
this is so. It is clear however, that the distinction strictly resides in pronouns interpreted de se
as opposed to expressions giving rise to relative truth, see Section 2.
9
Note that the examples indicate the construction he himself or one oneself does not as such
indicate self-reference, but self-reference together with reference to the actual person (de se in
the familiar sense).
10
The special ability of generic one to refer to the objective self is nicely illustrated by
Nagel’s (1986, p.9) own use of the pronoun. When taking the point of view of the objective
self, Nagel uses generic one:
‘Withdrawing into this element [the objective self] one detaches from the rest and develops an
impersonal conception of the world and, so far as possible, from the elements of self from
which one has detached. That creates the new problem of reintegration |…]. One has to be the
creature whom one has subjected to detached examination, and one has in one’s entirety to
live in the world that has been revealed to an extremely distilled fraction of oneself.’
It is significant that in the next paragraph, when Nagel takes the point of view of the actual
person ((generic) self-reference in the traditional sense), he switches to a generic use of we:
‘It is necessary to combine the recognition of our contingency, our finitude, and our
containment in the world with an ambition of transcendence, however limited may be our
success in achieving it.’
We in such a generic use, cannot refer to the detached self, indicated by the fact that it is
impossible in indicative ‘counterfactual’ conditionals:
(1) ?? If we are angels, we are neither human nor divine.
11
There are in fact two different versions of the relativist approach: one version makes the
truth value of sentences relative to a context of use and a context of assessment; another that
that makes the truth value of a propositional content, partly determined by a context of use,
relative to a context of assessment. For present purposes this distinction will not be of interest.
12
Lasersohn (to appear) allows the context of evaluation to an extent to depend on the speaker
taking one perspective perspective, so that the context of evaluation, to an extent will be a
matter of the speaker’s choice. At the same time, though, Lasersohn emphasizes that this
should not be taken to mean that the context if dependent on the speaker’s intentions. Thus
Lasersohn’s account may not be a clear case of this version of the relativist account.
13
Stevenson proposes that when Chocolate tastes good is asserted (as opposed to just
thought), the intended judge is in fact not the speaker, but rather an imagined ‘common
judge’. The common judge is what is needed when a sentence like Chocolate tastes good is to
be made part of the common ground. The problem with making use of the notion of the
common ground is that this could not account well for the intuition of faultless disagreement
arising even with beliefs.
14
MacFarlane (2003) takes the intuitions of relative to require a modification of the notion of
assertion, truth not being the aim of assertion anymore.
42
15
The examples were chosen with sentential operators because negation in the same sentence
is not expected to take wide scope over generic one.
16
Lasersohn (to appear), actually, proposes a third option according to which the belief
relation is a three-place relation between agents, contexts of evaluation and propositions. This
is needed because for Lasersohn the context of evaluation depends on whose perspective the
agent takes, not on the agent directly.
17
For the examples of because-clauses see Egan/Hawthorne/Weatherson (2005); for the
example with questions see Lasersohn (to appear). Of course for those authors the examples
support somewhat different accounts.
18
An account in the same direction is suggested in Koelbel (2003), who proposes that
chocolate tastes good be relativised to a ‘perspective’ quite simply because the conditions on
the possession of the concept tastes good involve a first-person application, which means the
content of chocolate tastes good could not be grasped otherwise than by a self-application.
However, again, unless perspective is understood differently than as a centered world, it is not
obvious how the content of chocolate tastes good could be understood differently on a
standard relativist account.
19
This covariation is not obligatory in all cases, for example not in:
(1) It is incomprehensible to have treated someone like this.
The natural reading of (1) is one on which the speaker generalizes his own evaluation of
incomprehensibility of the kind of behaviour the addressee has engaged in. What we have
here is in fact a first-person based genericity of evaluation of a second-person-based
genericity of acting; in addition to engaging in first-person-based genericity, the speaker also
identifies with the addressee and generalizes (a behaviour) from that point of view. There are
thus two generic operators involved in the semantic structure of the sentence.
20
See Koelbel (2002) for discussion and Richard (2004) in particular for relative adjectives
such as rich.
21
There is one further kind of expression that in the literature has been taken to involve
relative truth, namely future contingents. Here first-person genericity hardly gives further
insights. Rather the relativity here appears tied to relativity of future itself.
More controversially, the verb to know has been argued to lead to relative truth
(MacFarlane, 2005).
22
For this point see also Stephenson (2006).
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