The acquaintance inference with 'seem'-reports

Some assertions give rise to the acquaintance inference: the inference that the speaker is acquainted with some individual. Discussion of the acquaintance inference has previously focused on assertions about aesthetic matters and personal tastes (e.g. 'The cake is tasty'), but it also arises with reports about how things seem (e.g. 'Tom seems like he's cooking'). 'Seem'-reports give rise to puzzling acquaintance behavior, with no analogue in the previously-discussed domains. In particular, these reports call for a distinction between the specific acquaintance inference (that the speaker is acquainted with a specific individual) and the general acquaintance inference (that the speaker is acquainted with something or other of relevance). We frame a novel empirical generalization -- the specific with stage-level generalization -- that systematizes the observed behavior, in terms of the semantics of the embedded 'like'-clause. We present supporting experimental work, and explain why the generalization makes sense given the evidential role of 'seem'-reports. Finally, we discuss the relevance of this result for extant proposals about the semantics of 'seem'-reports. More modestly, it fills a gap in previous theories by identifying which reports get which of two possible interpretations; more radically, it suggests a revision of the kind of explanation that should be given for the acquaintance behavior in question

A closer look at the perceptual source in copy raising constructions

Simple claims with the verb ‘seem’, as well as the specific sensory verbs, ‘look’, ‘sound’, etc., require the speaker to have some relevant kind of perceptual acquaintance (Pearson, 2013; Ninan, 2014). But different forms of these reports differ in their perceptual requirements. For example, the copy raising (CR) report, ‘Tom seems like he’s cooking’ requires the speaker to have seen Tom, while its expletive subject (ES) variant, ‘It seems like Tom is cooking’, does not (Rogers, 1972; Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012). This contrast has led some theorists to hold that the matrix subject in CR constructions is uniformly interpreted as the perceptual source (p-source) (Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012; Rett and Hyams, 2014). Others, based on examples of CR reports that seem not to require perception of the referent of the matrix subject, have taken the p-source interpretation instead to be non-uniform across CR reports (Landau, 2011; Doran, 2015). We reconsider these theoretical approaches to copy raising in light of new experimental work probing the sensitivity of these requirements to the matrix verb, the embedded ‘like’-clause, and the context. While we find some motivation for a non-uniform p-source analysis, it comes from importantly different cases than those others have relied on. Furthermore, our findings cast doubt on the prevalent assumption that the perceptual requirements of CR reports are to be captured solely by the presence or absence of the p-source interpretation. We suggest that the data motivating a non-uniform p-source view are better captured by an alternative approach, which makes use of a more minimal evidential source role, in place of the perceptual source role. We close by considering the relationship between English copy raising and evidential constructions cross-linguisticall

Against Conventional Wisdom

Conventional wisdom has it that truth is always evaluated using our actual linguistic conventions, even when considering counterfactual scenarios in which different conventions are adopted. This principle has been invoked in a number of philosophical arguments, including Kripke’s defense of the necessity of identity and Lewy’s objection to modal conventionalism. But it is false. It fails in the presence of what Einheuser (2006) calls c-monsters, or convention-shifting expressions (on analogy with Kaplan’s monsters, or context-shifting expressions). We show that c-monsters naturally arise in contexts, such as metalinguistic negotiations, where speakers entertain alternative conventions. We develop an expressivist theory—inspired by Barker (2002) and MacFarlane (2016) on vague predications and Einheuser (2006) on counterconventionals—to model these shifts in convention. Using this framework, we reassess the philosophical arguments that invoked the conventional wisdom

Conceptual Exploration

Conceptual engineering involves revising our concepts. It can be pursued as a specific philosophical methodology, but is also common in ordinary, non-philosophical, contexts. How does our capacity for conceptual engineering fit into human cognitive life more broadly? I hold that conceptual engineering is best understood alongside practices of conceptual exploration, examples of which include conceptual supposition (i.e., suppositional reasoning about alternative concepts), and conceptual comparison (i.e., comparisons between possible concept choices). Whereas in conceptual engineering we aim to change the concepts we use, in conceptual exploration, we reason about conceptual possibilities. I approach conceptual exploration via the linguistic tools we use to communicate about concepts, using metalinguistic negotiation, convention-shifting conditionals, and metalinguistic comparatives as my key examples. I present a linguistic framework incorporating conventions that can account for this communication in a unified way. Furthermore, I argue that conceptual exploration helps undermine skepticism about conceptual engineering itself

Talking about Appearances: Experience, Evaluation, and Evidence in Discourse

When we say that a dress looks blue, or that a musical instrument sounds off-key, or that a soup smells like it contains nutmeg, what do we communicate? With claims about appearances like these we seem to communicate both about the objective world and about our subjective experience. This comes out in two puzzling features of appearance claims.Faultless disagreement arises when speakers disagree, and yet neither seems to be mistaken. Speakers may faultlessly disagree about appearances, for instance if one holds that a dress 'looks blue', and the other that it doesn't. There is a felt incompatibility here, just as with disagreement over objective claims. But assuming the speakers have different visual experiences of the dress, neither seems to be mistaken. Which appearance claim a speaker correctly makes depends not just on the objective world, but on their subjective experience as well. Faultless disagreement thus precludes viewing appearance claims as straightforwardly objective or subjective.The acquaintance inference is the inference from an utterance to the conclusion that the speaker has relevant first-hand acquaintance. For instance, if a speaker says that the dress looks blue, one will infer that they have seen it. The utterance is infelicitous if they haven't. However, this inference is not an ordinary entailment. Just because I haven't seen the dress, doesn't mean it doesn't look blue. Again, this phenomenon precludes taking appearance claims to be straightforwardly objective or subjective.I defend an expressivist analysis of appearance claims, on which they are used to express speakers' experiential states. On this view, faultless disagreement arises when speakers express incompatible experiential states, while nonetheless expressing experiential states they are in fact in. And the acquaintance inferences arises because when a speaker makes an appearance claim, one can infer that they are in an experiential state of the sort expressed by the utterance.My analysis covers not only appearance language, but experiential language more generally, which encompasses both appearance language and the evaluative language of personal taste (e.g. 'tasty', 'interesting'). Indeed, both faultless disagreement and the acquaintance inference have been associated primarily with evaluative vocabulary. I argue, however, that these features are not especially associated with evaluative language. The language of personal taste falls in the intersection of the evaluative and the experiential; but these puzzling features are due to experientiality. The investigation of appearance language is crucial for identifying the source of these features, for it includes claims that are experiential but not evaluative.Appearance discourse also offers insight into epistemic notions, like adequacy of evidence. This comes out in my investigation of the acquaintance inference with appearance claims, which examines behavior with no analogue in the more widely-discussed evaluative cases. Some appearance claims (e.g. 'Tom looks like he's cooking') require acquaintance with a specific stimulus (Tom), while others (e.g. 'Tom looks like he's well organized') just require acquaintance with something evidentially-relevant (like Tom's clutter-free office). Making use of experimental work, I argue that these two forms of acquaintance inference display our sensitivity, in discourse, to fine-grained evidential distinctions, for instance between transient properties (like cooking) and standing ones (like being well-organized). Appearance claims can thus serve to express our evidence. This integrates smoothly with the expressivist analysis I offer, as experience is a source of evidence about the world. Thus, in expressing experiential states, we can at the same time express our evidence

Acquaintance and Evidence in Appearance Language

Assertions about appearances license inferences about the speaker's perceptual experience. For instance, if I assert, 'Tom looks like he's cooking', you will infer both that I am visually acquainted with Tom (what I call the "individual acquaintance inference"), and that I am visually acquainted with evidence that Tom is cooking (what I call the "evidential acquaintance inference"). By contrast, if I assert, 'It looks like Tom is cooking', only the latter inference is licensed. I develop an account of the acquaintance inferences of appearance assertions building on two main previous lines of research: first, the copy raising literature, which has aimed to account for individual acquaintance inferences through the "perceptual source" semantic role; second, the subjectivity literature, which has focused on the status of acquaintance inferences with predicates of personal taste, but hasn't given much attention to the added complexities introduced by appearance language. I begin by developing what I take to be the most empirically-sound version of a perceptual source analysis. I then show how its insights can be maintained, while however taking anything about perception out of the truth conditions of appearance sentences. This, together with the assumption that appearance assertions express experiential attitudes, allows us to capture the acquaintance inferences of bare appearance assertions without making incorrect predictions about the behavior of appearance verbs in embedded environments

Differences of Taste: An Investigation of Phenomenal and Non-Phenomenal Appearance Sentences

In theoretical work about the language of personal taste, the canonical example is the simple predicate of personal taste, 'tasty'. We can also express the same positive gustatory evaluation with the complex expression, 'taste good'. But there is a challenge for an analysis of 'taste good': While it can be used equivalently with 'tasty', it need not be (for instance, imagine it used by someone who can identify good wines by taste but doesn't enjoy them). This kind of two-faced behavior systematically arises with complex sensory-evaluative predicates, including those with other appearance verbs, such as 'look splendid' and 'sound nice'. I examine two strategies for capturing these different uses: one that posits an ambiguity in appearance verbs, and one that does not. The former is in line with an approach to 'look'-statements prominent in work in philosophy of perception, and I consider how the motivation given in that tradition carries over to the present context. I then show how the data used to support the verbal ambiguity approach can equally be captured on the second strategy, which appeals only to independently-motivated flexibility in adjective meaning. I close by discussing some considerations that are relevant for choosing between the two options