Although moral relativists often appeal to cases of apparent moral disagreement between members of different communities to motivate their view, accounting for these exchanges as evincing genuine disagreements constitutes a challenge to the coherence of moral relativism. While many moral relativists acknowledge this problem, attempts to solve it so far have been wanting. In response, moral relativists either give up the claim that there can be moral disagreement between members of different communities or end up with a view on which (...) these disagreements have no “epistemic significance” because they are always faultless. This paper introduces an alternative strategy: accounting for disagreement in terms of “metalinguistic negotiation”. It argues that this strategy constitutes a better solution to the challenge disagreement poses for moral relativists because it leads to a nuanced understanding of the epistemic significance of moral disagreement between members of different communities. The upshot is a novel account of disagreement for moral relativists that has consequences for how moral relativism should be understood. (shrink)

There has been recent interest in the idea that speakers who appear to be having a verbal dispute may in fact be engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation: they are communicating information about how they believe an expression should be used. For example, individuals involved in a dispute about whether a racehorse is an athlete might be communicating their diverging views about how ‘athlete’ should be used. While many have argued that metalinguistic negotiation is a pervasive feature of philosophical and everyday (...) discourse, the literature currently lacks an account of this phenomenon that can be situated within a ‘mainstream’ view of communication. I propose an independently motivated account where individuals reconstruct metalinguistic propositions by means of a pragmatic, Gricean reasoning process. (shrink)

Philosophers interested in conceptual engineering take it for granted that the same concept can unproblematically play diverse functions, but this view overlooks the fact that conceptual and functional change often impair concepts and even functions themselves. I demonstrate that while conceptual and functional engineering may improve concepts and functions, they can also produce detrimental effects. Therefore, it is crucial to carefully assess the potential benefits or problems before making any modifications. Frequently, we overlook the fact that, for instance, adding extra (...) functions to our concepts modifies them; this may increase, but also impair, their theoretical and practical efficacy. I analyze and clarify these possibilities through a general classificatory framework encompassing concepts, functions, and conceptual and functional change. The larger aim of this paper is to bring attention to these complex and under-researched relationships and pave the way for further research in this area. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that metalinguistic negotiations are not as common as David Plunkett and Timothy Sundell assume. They make two related controversial claims: the claim that speakers don’t know what they say and the claim that they directly communicate metalinguistic contents. These two claims generate two challenges that the metalinguistic-negotiation view should meet. Firstly, it should clarify why speakers are oblivious to what they are saying and communicating, and secondly, it should explain the mechanism that transforms what seems (...) like a typical object-language disagreement into a metalinguistic dispute. I argue that the way in which Plunkett and Sundell meet these challenges is unsatisfactory. Regarding their answer to the first challenge, I’ll argue that the theoretical cost of postulating massive semantic and pragmatic blindness in otherwise competent speakers is too high. Regarding what they say in relation to the second challenge, I’ll claim that metalinguistic contents can only be conveyed when speakers uttering apparently contradicting claims know that they are using terms with different meanings. If my arguments are correct, then metalinguistic negotiations are certainly not ubiquitous. (shrink)

I argue against the view that metalinguistic usage is a form of conversational implicature. That view, suggested by Thomasson (Anal Philos 57(4):1-28, 2016) and Belleri (Philos Stud 174(9):2211–2226, 2017), has been most recently fleshed out by Mankowitz (Synthese 199:5603–5622, 2021). I provide two types of criticism to the implicature view. From an empirical point of view, metalinguistic usage differs in key respects from standard cases of conversational implicature. From a conceptual standpoint, I argue that the calculation algorithm provided by the (...) implicature view makes undesirable predictions. Although my main objective is negative, I end the paper by sketching an alternative neo-Stalnakerian view of metalinguistic usage, that can be gathered from work by Barker (Linguist Philos 25(1):1–36, 2002; Inquiry 56(2–3):240–257, 2013) and others. (shrink)