Online Papers - Brian Weatherson

Epistemic Modals in Context 285
(40) Vinny the Vulture: Rotting flesh tastes great.
John: Vinny thinks that rotting flesh tastes great.
(41) Ant Z: He’s huge (said of 5 foot 3 141 lb NBA player Muggsy Bogues)
Andy: Ant Z thinks that Muggsy’s huge.
(42) Marvin the Martian: These are the same colour (said of two colour swatches
that look alike to Martians but not to humans.)
Brian: Marvin thinks that these are the same colour.
In all three cases the report is accurate, or at least extremely natural. And in all three
cases it would have been inappropriate for the reporter to continue “and he’s right”.
But crucially, in none of the three cases is it clear that the original speaker made a
mistake. In his context, it seems Vinny utters a truth by uttering, “Rotting flesh
tastes great”, for rotting flesh does taste great to vultures. From Ant Z’s perspective,
Muggsy Bogues is huge. We assume here, a little controversially, that there is a use
of comparative adjectives that is not relativised to a comparison class, but rather to
a perspective. Ant Z does not say that Muggsy is huge for a human, or for an NBA
player, but just relative to him. And he’s right. Even Muggsy is huge relative to an
ant. Note the contrast with (36) here. There’s something quite odd about Leopold’s
statement, which intuitively means that someone said Terrell is old and slow for a
graduate student, when all that was said was that he is old and slow for an NFL
player. 30 And, relative to the Martian’s classification of objects into colours, the two
swatches are the same colour. So there’s something very odd going on here.
The following very plausible principle looks like it is being violated.
TRUTH IN REPORTING If X has a true belief, then Y ’s report X believes that S
accurately reports that belief only if in the context Y is in, S expresses a true
proposition. 31
Not only do our three reports here seem to constitute counterexamples to TRUTH
IN REPORTING, Watson’s report in (30) is also such a counterexample, if Moriarty
speaks truly (and sincerely). One response here would be to give up TRUTH IN
REPORTING, but that seems like a desperate measure. And we would still have the
puzzle of why we can’t say “and he’s right” at the end of an accurate report.
Another response to these peculiar phenomena would be to follow the universalist
and conclude that Moriarty, Vinny, Ant Z and Marvin all believe something false.
It should be clear how to formulate this kind of position: something tastes great iff
30Or perhaps something more specific than that, such as that he is old and slow for a player at his
position.
31One might also consider a ‘says that’ version of TRUTH IN REPORTING: If X speaks true, then Y ’s
report X says that S is accurate only if in the context Y is in, S expresses a true proposition. This is more
questionable, since it is questionable whether ‘says that’ constructions must report what is semantically
expressed by a speech, as opposed to what is merely communicated. See again the papers mentioned in
footnote 25.