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    MacFarlane's relativism conflates the pragmatic phenomeno... — Carmelics
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    Challenges→Propositions expressed by epistemic modal sentences can vary in truth-value depending on the context of assessment, not just the context of utterance.

    MacFarlane's relativism conflates the pragmatic phenomenon of retraction with the semantic phenomenon of propositional truth-value variation.

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    Reasons For

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    • 1.Retractions occur pragmatically when speakers withdraw assertions due to conversational norms, independent of semantic truth conditions.
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    • 2.If truth-value varies with context, MacFarlane must explain why we retract rather than merely update context, which suggests pragmatic, not semantic, shift.
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    • 3.The same sentence can be retracted without semantic re-evaluation, suggesting retraction tracks speaker commitment, not propositional truth.
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    Reasons Against

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    • 1.The pragmatic/semantic distinction itself is unclear—retraction behavior can reveal underlying semantic facts about context-dependence.
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    • 2.MacFarlane's account explains why certain sentences are retractable precisely because their truth-values genuinely vary with assessor's context, making the distinction artificial.
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    • 3.If pragmatic retraction tracked only speaker commitment, it would occur equally for indexicals and non-indexicals; systematic differences suggest semantic variation.
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    Modality & Possibility1 linkedPhilosophy of Language1 linked

    Related

    If pragmatic retraction tracked only speaker commitment, it would occur equally ...If truth-value varies with context, MacFarlane must explain why we retract rathe...MacFarlane's account explains why certain sentences are retractable precisely be...Propositions expressed by epistemic modal sentences can vary in truth-value depe...
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    Retractions occur pragmatically when speakers withdraw assertions due to convers...The pragmatic/semantic distinction itself is unclear—retraction behavior can rev...The same sentence can be retracted without semantic re-evaluation, suggesting re...

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