Extract

In ‘Reversibility or Disagreement’ (this journal), we posed a dilemma for invariantists about epistemic expressions—that is, for those who claim that expressions such as ‘might’ and ‘probably’ make a context-invariant contribution to the truth conditions of the utterances to which they belong. The crux of our dilemma is simple: invariantists, we argued, cannot make sense of a phenomenon that we dubbed reversibility without sacrificing the claims about disagreement to which they appeal in arguing for their position over the contextualist alternative. In ‘Disagreement and Attitudinal Relativism’ (this journal), Jack Spencer claims to have ‘found a path between the horns of Ross and Schroeder’s dilemma’ (p. 33). He argues that by adopting a position that he calls ‘attitudinal relativism’, the invariantist can account for reversibility ‘ and for the disagreements that go missing under contextualism’ (p. 4, emphasis in original). He writes:

Ross and Schroeder claim to ‘cast doubt on the putative data about disagreement’ that is often used to motivate invariantism. In my view, however, no doubt has been cast. The Argument from Lost Disagreement withstands the scrutiny to which Ross and Schroeder subject it. (p. 33)

In this reply, we will argue that Spencer’s attempt to avoid the two horns of our dilemma is unsuccessful. To this aim, we will begin with a review of the dilemma that Spencer aims to resolve. We will then explain how attitudinal relativism is meant to resolve it. And we will conclude by showing that this solution fails.

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