Normative Sentences and Evaluation Sensitivity

Abstract

Our language is not merely descriptive: many of our daily expressions assess the entities that surround us, from predicates of taste to expressions like “interesting” or “funny”. Sentences containing them are assessment-sensitive: their truth-value depends on contextually salient evaluative standard, and their assertion gives raise to hard disagreements. This paper examines the extension of this category to sentences containing normative predicates and verbs (from ethic, epistemic, procedimental and deontologic discurses). Special attention is payed to the possibility of these sentences of issuing hard disagreements, in the frame of a theory that construes assertion in terms of the acquisition of discursive commitments.