An Expressivist Theory of Taste Predicates

1. Introduction

Imagine that we’re at a dessert party and you’re wondering what to eat. If I tell you that the crème caramel is really delicious, you would ordinarily assume that I had actually tasted it, and am not just basing my judgment on the say-so of others. If I were instead simply relying on testimony, it would be better for me to hedge in some way, to say, for example, that I’d heard that the crème caramel is delicious. Claims about deliciousness contrast here with more straightforwardly factual ones: if, for example, I tell you the crème caramel contains cardamom, you need not reach any very specific conclusion about the basis for my assertion.

This observation has appeared in both the aesthetics literature and the literature on predicates of taste,¹ and appears to have its roots in some remarks of Kant’s:

For someone may list all of the ingredients of a dish for me, and remark about each one that it is otherwise agreeable to me . . . yet I am deaf to all these grounds, I try the dish with my tongue and my palate, and on that basis . . . do I make my judgment.²

The phenomenon at issue here is not restricted to gustatory taste. Consider other so-called ‘predicates of personal taste.’ If I tell you that Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday is hilarious, you will normally assume I’ve seen it, and am not just basing my judgment on having read the reviews. If I tell you that spelunking with Sue is fun, you will again normally infer that I myself have spelunked with Sue. A similar phenomenon arguably arises in connection with aesthetic predicates (e.g., beautiful, dainty, dumpy), and indeed the present linguistic observation seems to have first arisen in discussions of aesthetic testimony.³ But the phenomenon doesn’t seem to be restricted to predicates that are in some sense evaluative; note, for example, that if I tell you that the soup tastes like it contains saffron, you will again infer that I’ve actually tasted it, even though tastes like it contains saffron would not seem to be an evaluative predicate in the relevant sense.⁴ To simplify matters, we will focus on predicates of gustatory taste (tasty, delicious); but I believe that most of what we say in what follows can be extended to a wider class of predicates.

In earlier work, I called the inference hearers are apt to draw from an utterance of a simple taste sentence an acquaintance inference (Ninan, op. cit.); here, I shall speak interchangeably of an acquaintance requirement. Note that in my discussion of this inference/requirement I have been hedging: I’ve been saying that utterances of simple taste sentences typically give rise to an acquaintance inference, which suggests that they don’t always do so. But under what conditions does this inference fail to arise? As a number of authors have observed, ‘exocentric’ readings of taste predicates provide one class of exceptions (Ninan, op. cit., 291–292). Ordinarily, when I call something delicious, I am guided by my own tastes and sensibilities; this is an autocentric use. But sometimes I may call something delicious in order to say (roughly) that some salient person or group finds it delicious; this is an exocentric use.⁵ Consider, for example, the following exchange:

B’s utterance here would not suggest that B has tasted the seafood in Sardinia. But while B’s utterance doesn’t give rise to a speaker acquaintance inference, it may give rise to some other sort of acquaintance inference, since it does seem to suggest that Sue has tasted the seafood in Sardinia.⁶

Why do taste predicates give rise to the acquaintance inference? One attractive idea is that the inference arises because simple taste sentences are vehicles not simply for stating facts but for expressing our reactions to experiences we’ve had.⁷ When you taste the crème caramel and you like it, you are in a certain psychological state, a state you can report by saying I like the taste of the crème caramel. Thus, perhaps when you sincerely say The crème caramel is delicious, you are expressing this psychological state, expressing your ‘liking’ of the taste of the crème caramel. If that thought is correct, then it would seem to explain why the acquaintance inference arises, for it would seem that you can only be said to like the taste of something if you have actually tasted it.

This idea is a form of expressivism about taste predicates, for it maintains that in saying The crème caramel is delicious, one is expressing a certain kind of psychological state, one that is not a belief. Moreover, the psychological state one is expressing does not seem to be one that can be assessed for truth or falsity. (What is it for ‘my liking’ of the crème caramel to be true? What is it for it be false?) But expressivism has a troubled history, and can seem to raise more problems than it solves. For just how is it that an utterance of The crème caramel is delicious comes to be associated with a psychological state of this sort? Note also that when that sentence is embedded in certain complex sentences, utterances of those complex sentences need not express the psychological state in question. For example, I can say (2) even if I have not tasted the crème caramel before and so cannot truly be said to like it:

How is this observation to be made compatible with the claim that, when unembedded, The crème caramel is delicious expresses my liking of the crème caramel? Doesn’t that sentence mean the same thing whether embedded or not?⁸

While much has been said about these problems in the literature on metaethical expressivism, a sober-minded semanticist might wonder if a more conservative solution is available. In what follows, I have two principal aims. The first is to show that at least two ‘more conservative’ approaches face a number of problems, problems that motivate re-considering the expressivist approach (Sections 2–3). The second is to argue that there is a form of expressivism—a ‘lightweight’ expressivism—that actually is quite conservative. For as we shall see, there is a way of taking a fairly standard semantics for taste predicates and overlaying it with a supervaluational account of assertion that implements the above expressivist idea (Section 4). The resulting view is compatible with a variety of approaches to truth and content (e.g., contextualism, relativism, and ‘pure’ expressivism) and also extends our understanding of the relevant empirical terrain. Indeed, the principal argument in favor of this account is that it correctly predicts a wide range of data concerning how the acquaintance requirement interacts with Boolean connectives, generalized quantifiers, epistemic modals, and attitude verbs.⁹

2. The epistemic view

In this and the next section, we discuss two of the main approaches to the acquaintance requirement found in the literature: the epistemic view (Section 2) and the presupposition view (Section 3). In earlier work (Ninan, op. cit. 2014), I discussed the epistemic view sympathetically, but here I want to raise some problems for that approach.

The epistemic view consists of two principal claims. The first is the following ‘norm of assertion’:

knowledge norm

For any context c, s_c may assert $\varphi$ in c only if s_c knows ${⟨\varphi ⟩}^c$ in c.¹⁰

Here s_c is the speaker of context c and ${⟨\varphi ⟩}^c$ is the proposition expressed by sentence $\varphi$ in c. We may think of this as a particular way of formulating Grice’s Maxim of Quality.¹¹ The second claim is a principle in the epistemology of taste:

acquaintance principle

Normally, if c is an autocentric context, then s_c knows in c whether $⟨$o is delicious$⟩{}^c$ is true only if s_c has tasted o prior to t_c in w_c.¹²

We restrict ourselves to autocentric contexts for the moment. Suppose a speaker asserts o is delicious. Then, by the Knowledge Norm, this will likely implicate that the speaker knows that o is delicious, since the speaker will normally be assumed to be attempting to comply with that norm. But if the speaker knows that o is delicious, then the Acquaintance Principle will imply that the speaker has tasted o. Thus, the acquaintance inference emerges as a Quality implicature.

The epistemic view correctly predicts a number of facts about how the acquaintance requirement projects out of various linguistic environments (Ninan, op. cit. 2014). Given a sentential operator O, a sentence $\varphi$, a context c, and a property F that $\varphi$ has in c, we say that F projects over O in c just in case $O\varphi$ also has F in c. And we can say, more simply, that F projects over O just in case for most normal contexts c, F projects over O in c. Note that the acquaintance requirement appears to project over negation:

The epistemic view predicts this because the Acquaintance Principle is a constraint on knowing whether o is delicious. So it implies that if one knows that o is not delicious, one must have tasted o. Given the Knowledge Norm, this means that an assertion of (3b), for example, will also typically implicate that the speaker has tasted the crème caramel.

Note that the acquaintance inference disappears under epistemic modals and in the antecedents of indicative conditionals:

The epistemic view seems to predict this as well, since Quality implicatures likewise disappear in these environments:

Despite these attractions, the epistemic view also has its share of problems. Willer and Kennedy, op. cit., 848 argue on lingusitic grounds that that the Acquaintance Principle is false,¹⁴ while Anand and Korotkova, op. cit., 63 point out that the foregoing account does nothing to explain why exocentric uses of taste predicates give rise to exocentric acquaintance inferences.¹⁵ These are important objections, but I want to set them aside here in order to focus on some challenges that arise when we consider how the acquaintance requirement interacts with disjunction and with quantification, since these observations will guide our later discussion.

To see the problem concerning disjunction, start with an observation due to Fabrizio Cariani.¹⁶ Cariani points out that a disjunction of simple taste sentences tends to give rise to a disjunction of acquaintance requirements:

In (6b), the acquaintance requirements do not project over the disjunction operator, but they do not disappear either. The fact that each disjunct carries an acquaintance requirement when it occurs as a standalone sentence appears to affect the interpretation of the disjunction.

What does the epistemic view tell us about B’s utterance of (6b)? Assuming B is in a position to assert (6b), the Knowledge Norm tells us that B knows that either the crème caramel is delicious or the panna cotta is delicious, i.e., $\mathcal{K}(Ta\vee Tb)$.¹⁷ But . . . now we’re stuck. For the Acquaintance Principle only tells us that acquaintance is a requirement for knowing atomic taste sentences or their negations, sentences of the form $Ta$ and $\neg Ta$. It simply says nothing about what is required to know a disjunction of atomic taste sentences, sentences of the form $(Ta\vee Tb)$.

Note that this doesn’t show that the epistemic view is false—it merely shows that the view fails to predict an aspect of the phenomenon. So, perhaps if we supplement the epistemic view with some further principles, the resulting view would yield the desired prediction. One possibility would be to add the following claim to the epistemic view:

general disjunction principle

Normally, one knows $(\varphi \vee \psi )$ only if one knows $\varphi$ or one knows $\psi$.

$\mathcal{K}(\varphi \vee \psi )\hookrightarrow (\mathcal{K}\varphi \vee \mathcal{K}\psi )$

But this principle is quite clearly false: I may know that either the Celtics will win the Championship or the Warriors will (they’re the only two teams left) without knowing which of them will win.

But perhaps the General Disjunction Principle only fails because it is too general. Perhaps we should have adopted a disjunction principle more narrowly tailored to the present case, one that only concerns disjunctions of atomic taste sentence and their negations. Let’s say that a sentence $\varphi$ is a taste literal iff it is either an atomic taste sentence or the negation thereof. Then we might propose adding the following claim to the epistemic view:

disjunction principle

If $\varphi$ and $\psi$ are taste literals, then normally one knows $(\varphi \vee \psi )$ only if one knows $\varphi$ or one knows $\psi$.

$\mathcal{K}(\varphi \vee \psi )\hookrightarrow (\mathcal{K}\varphi \vee \mathcal{K}\psi )$, for taste literals $\varphi$ and $\psi$

If the Disjunction Principle were accepted, then the resulting epistemic view would predict that B’s utterance of (6b) implies that either B had tasted the crème caramel or B had tasted the panna cotta.

But there are at least three problems with the resulting view. First, unless more is said, it is ad hoc. As we saw above, it is not true in general that if one knows a disjunction then one knows one of its disjuncts, so why would that be true in this special case? Second, it doesn’t even seem true in this special case. The Disjunction Principle implies that, in the scenario described above, either B knows that the crème caramel is delicious or B knows that the panna cotta is. But it appears that B knows neither of these things. What B knows is that one of them is delicious, but he doesn’t know which one it is. After all, if he did know, e.g., that the crème caramel is delicious, wouldn’t the Maxim of Quantity enjoin him to say this instead of the disjunction that he in fact utters?

The third problem arises in connection with another of Cariani’s observations. For Cariani also points out that certain disjunctions of taste literals—namely, instances of excluded middle—do not imply a disjunction of acquaintance requirements:

But if the epistemic view is combined with the Disjunction Principle, the resulting view predicts that an assertion of (7) (in an autocentric context) should implicate that the speaker had tasted the crème caramel. That seems wrong. Whether a disjunction of taste literals gives rise to a disjunction of acquaintance requirements appears to depend on the logical relations between the disjuncts.

Quantifiers raise related problems for the epistemic view. Suppose, for example, that I say to you Something on the dessert table is delicious. This would typically imply that I had tasted something on the dessert table. But, again, this is not predicted by the epistemic view. My utterance of the existentially quantified claim $som{e}_x(Dx)(Tx)$ will, by the Knowledge Norm, imply that I know that claim, i.e., $\mathcal{K}(som{e}_x(Dx)(Tx))$.¹⁸ But, once again, we are stuck, since the Acquaintance Principle is simply silent about what is required for knowing an existentially quantified claim. Other quantifiers also seem to imply quantified acquaintance requirements:

We might try to explain these facts by adopting yet another principle:

quantifier principle

Normally, one knows that Q F’s are delicious only if Q F’s are known by one to be delicious.

$\mathcal{K}(Q_x(Fx)(Tx))\hookrightarrow Q_x(Fx)(\mathcal{K}Tx)$

Here Q is being used as a schematic letter whose substituends are quantificational determiners (every, some, no, etc.). While this might suffice to handle the observations we’ve discussed so far, the generalization embodied in the Quantifier Principle turns out to fail when we consider certain other quantifiers. Consider nothing, for example:

This seems to imply that the speaker has tasted everything on the table. But when supplemented by the Quantifier Principle, the epistemic view only tells us that nothing on the table is known by the speaker to be delicious, i.e., no${}_x{}^{}(Dx)(\mathcal{K}Tx)$. But given the logic of the epistemic view, that appears to be compatible with the speaker’s not having tasted anything on the dessert table.

Unlike some and every, the quantificational determiner no fails to be ‘right upward monotonic’ (rum): while Every girl runs quickly entails Every girl runs, No girl runs quickly does not entail No girl runs.¹⁹ Other non-rum determiners create trouble for the Quantifier Principle as well. For example:

This again seems to imply that the speaker has tasted everything on the dessert table. The Quantifier Principle seems instead to predict that exactly two things on the dessert table are known by the speaker to be delicious. But given the logic of the epistemic view, this is compatible with the speaker not having tasted everything on the dessert table.

3. The presupposition view

Perhaps the epistemic view can be rescued by supplementing it with principles other than the ones canvassed above. But rather than investigate that possibility here, we move on to consider an alternative hypothesis.

As we saw earlier, the acquaintance inference projects over negation—recall (3). And note that this is also a characteristic feature of presuppositions:

Now, there are various ways of characterizing the relevant notion of presupposition, but it will suffice for the moment to simply say that the presupposition view is the hypothesis that the relationship between The crème caramel is delicious and I have tasted the crème caramel is essentially like the relationship between Sue stopped smoking and Sue smoked in the past. Furthermore, advocates of the presupposition view typically adopt the (fairly standard) assumption that a sentence with a false presupposition lacks a truth value, and so this is the version of the presuppostional view that we consider here.²⁰

Some of the other observations discussed above also support the presupposition view. For example, we saw earlier that a disjunction of (logically unrelated) taste literals typically gives rise to a disjunction of acquaintance requirements—recall (6b). Similarly, a disjunction of atomic sentences containing presupposition triggers typically gives rise a disjunctive presupposition:

We also saw earlier that when we place an atomic taste sentence in the scope of a universal quantifier, we get a universally quantified acquaintance requirement—recall (8). Again, something similar happens with presuppositions:

This is encouraging for advocates of the presupposition view, but there are disanologies as well. Recall our earlier observation that the acquaintance requirement disappears when we place an atomic taste sentence in the scope of an epistemic modal or in the antecedent of an indicative conditional (see the examples in (4)). This poses a prima facie problem for the presupposition view, since presuppositions typically project out of these environments:

Unless more is said, the presupposition view will predict, falsely, that the acquaintance requirement projects out of these environments as well (Ninan, op. cit., 298 (2014)).

Anand and Korotkova, op. cit. offer a solution to this last problem. Their idea is that the acquaintance requirement is essentially a presupposition, but one that can be obviated by certain markers of indirectness, such as epistemic modals. The basic strategy of their approach is that while o is delicious is defined in an autocentric context only if the speaker has tasted o before, o might be delicious is defined in every context, even those autocentric contexts in which the speaker has not tasted o. Thus, simple taste sentences carry the acquaintance requirement, while sentences of the form o might be delicious do not.

Anand and Korotkova formulate their semantics using the notion of a kernel, a set of propositions that constitutes an agent’s direct evidence on a given occasion (von Fintel and Gillies, op. cit.). They hypothesize that o is delicious presupposes that the relevant kernel directly settles whether o is delicious to the relevant individual (the ‘judge’). More precisely, let a point of evaluation consist of a world w, a judge j, and a kernel K, where K is a set of propositions (i.e., a set of partial functions from worlds to truth values). I assume that $(w,j,K)$ corresponds to a context only if for all $p\in K$, $p(w)=1$. Then Anand and Korotkova propose the following semantics for taste predicates:

${[[o𝑖𝑠\mathrm{𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠}]]}^{w,j,K}$ is defined iff K directly settles $[\lambda w^{\prime }.o$ is delicious to j in w′].

Where defined, ${[[o\mathrm{𝑖𝑠}\mathrm{𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠}]]}^{w,j,K}=1$ iff o is delicious to j in w.

A kernel K directly settles a proposition q just in case K contains a proposition p such that p entails q or p entails the negation of q. Anand and Korotkova assume that a kernel directly settles $[\lambda w^{\prime }.o$ is delicious to j in w′] only if it contains a proposition that entails $[\lambda w^{\prime }.j$ has tasted o in w′] (67). Thus, if an autocentric context is one in which the speaker is the judge, then o is delicious will be defined in such a context only if the speaker has tasted o before. To see this, suppose ${[[o\mathrm{𝑖𝑠}\mathrm{𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠}]]}^{w_c,j_c,K_c}$ is defined, where c is an autocentric context. Then K_c directly settles $[\lambda w^{\prime }.o$ is delicious to j_c in $w^{\prime }]$. So K_c contains a proposition p such that for all w, if $p(w)=1$, then j_c has tasted o in w. Since $(w_c,j_c,K_c)$ corresponds to a context and $p\in K_c$, $p(w_c)=1$. So j_c has tasted o in w_c. Since c is autocentric, j_c is the speaker of c. Given an appropriate lexical entry for negation, o is not delicious will likewise be defined in an autocentric context only if the speaker has tasted o before. So Anand and Korotkova predict the acquaintance requirement for atomic taste sentences and their negations.

Anand and Korotkova then hypothesize that epistemic modals obviate this presupposition by over-writing the kernel parameter (68). This has the effect of altering the presupposition so that it becomes trivial, which is essentially equivalent to saying that the sentence has no presupposition at all. Here, for example, is an entry for epistemic might that does the job:

${[[\mathrm{𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡}\varphi ]]}^{w,j,K}$ is defined iff ${[[\varphi ]]}^{w,j,\mathcal{P}(W)}$ is defined.

Where defined, ${[[\mathrm{𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡}\varphi ]]}^{w,j,K}=1$ iff for some $w^{\prime }\in \cap K$, ${[[\varphi ]]}^{w^{\prime },j,\mathcal{P}(W)}=1.$²¹

Here $\mathcal{P}(W)$ is the set of all propositions (the set of all partial functions from worlds to truth values). This set directly settles any proposition p, since p itself will be an element of $\mathcal{P}(W)$. The set $\cap K$ is:

$\{w^{\prime }:$ for all $p\in K,p(w^{\prime })=1$}.

We can show now that, on this approach, might (o is delicious) will be defined in every context. To see this, let $(w,j,K)$ be a context. Then we have:

${[[\mathrm{𝑚𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡}(o\mathrm{𝑖𝑠}\mathrm{𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠})]]}^{w,j,K}$ is defined iff ${[[o\mathrm{𝑖𝑠}\mathrm{𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠}]]}^{w,j,\mathcal{P}(W)}$ is defined.

And we have:

${[[o\mathrm{𝑖𝑠}\mathrm{𝑑𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠}]]}^{w,j,\mathcal{P}(W)}$ is defined iff $\mathcal{P}(W)$ directly settles $[\lambda w^{\prime }.o$ is delicious to j in w′].

Now, given Anand and Korotkova’s assumption, $\mathcal{P}(W)$ directly settles $[\lambda w^{\prime }.o$ is delicious to j in w′] just in case $\mathcal{P}(W)$ contains a proposition that entails $[\lambda w^{\prime }.j$ has tasted o in w′]. But since $\mathcal{P}(W)$ is the set of all propositions, it of course contains such a proposition: $[\lambda w^{\prime }.j$ has tasted o in w′] itself will do. Thus, since might (o is delicious) is defined in every context, it will be defined even in autocentric contexts in which the speaker has not tasted o. Thus, on this approach, might (o is delicious) will not give rise to an acquaintance inference.

While this is an elegant solution to the initial problem for the presupposition view, I see three potential problems for the resulting account.

First, I noted above that the presupposition view was supported by one of Cariani’s observations about disjunction. But recall Cariani’s other observation about disjunction, which is that $(Ta\vee \neg Ta)$ is assertable even if the speaker hasn’t tasted a before. But if the speaker of context c hasn’t tasted a before, this version of the presupposition view predicts that neither $Ta$ nor $\neg Ta$ will be defined at the point of evaluation $(w_c,j_c,K_c)$. It is thus hard to see how $(Ta\vee \neg Ta)$ could come out true at that point. For on standard trivalent theories of disjunction, if $\varphi$ and $\psi$ are both undefined, then so is $(\varphi \vee \psi )$.²²

Second, I also noted above that the acquaintance requirement interacts with the universal quantifier in much the same way that standard presuppositions do. But when we turn to other quantifiers—such as the non-rum quantifiers discussed earlier—we start to see disanalogies. Compare:

Earlier we suggested that (10) would ordinarily imply that the speaker had tasted everything on the dessert table. But (15) does not necessarily give rise to a corresponding universal presupposition, as B. R. George observes.²³ To see this, suppose there are ten students in my class, two of whom smoked in the past and no longer smoke, and eight of whom never smoked. According to George, (15) has a reading on which it is true in this situation.

These differences between delicious and standard presupposition triggers pose a prima facie problem for any theory that hopes to treat the acquaintance requirement as a standard presupposition. For suppose we construct a theory of presupposition that predicts that (15) has a reading on which it means:

Exactly two students in my class smoked in the past and do not smoke now.

If the theoretical machinery that produces this reading is simply applied without alteration to (10), the resulting theory will predict that (10) has a reading on which it means (approximately):

Exactly two things on the dessert table are such that I have tasted them and find them delicious.

But this does not seem to be a possible interpretation of (10). The upshot of this is that the presupposition view needs a further mechanism—beyond the obviation mechanism discussed above—in order to predict the behavior of taste predicates under non-rum quantifiers. But proponents of the presupposition view have yet to spell out the workings of such a mechanism.

The final issue I want to raise concerns what I regard as a conceptually awkward feature of the presupposition view. Suppose you haven’t tasted the crème caramel, but you believe that it is delicious—it looks delicious and everyone at the party is raving about it. This seems possible—it seems possible to believe that something is delicious even if you haven’t tasted it yet, as a number of authors have observed.²⁴ As we’ll see in a moment, the presupposition view can accommodate this fact. The trouble arises when we go on to ask the following question: given that you believe that the crème caramel is delicious, what should your attitude towards the content of the sentence The crème caramel is delicious be? The natural answer is: you should believe it, at least if you are in an autocentric context. But the presupposition view appears to predict otherwise: it appears to predict that you can believe that the crème caramel is delicious while at the same time rejecting the content of the sentence The crème caramel is delicious. This is an odd result.

To see why the presupposition view has this feature, note that our initial observation above—that you can believe that something is delicious even if you haven’t tasted it yet—suggests that believes also obviates the acquaintance inference. Note, for example, the felicity of the following:

This could be handled in Anand and Korotkova’s system by allowing believes to shift the kernel parameter:

${[[B_i \varphi ]]}^{w,j,K}$ is defined iff for all $w^{\prime }\in Do{x}_{w,s_c}$ ${[[\varphi ]]}^{w^{\prime },j,\mathcal{P}(W)}$ is defined.

Where defined, ${[[B_i \varphi ]]}^{w,j,K}=1$ iff for all $w^{\prime }\in Do{x}_{w,s_c}$, ${[[\varphi ]]}^{w^{\prime },j,\mathcal{P}(W)}=1$

Here, B_i translates I believe, and $Do{x}_{w,s_c}$ is the set of worlds compatible with what the speaker s_c believes in w. Because B_i shifts the kernel parameter to $\mathcal{P}(W)$, when we combine this with Anand and Korotkova’s account of taste predicates we get the desired result that I believe the crème caramel is delicious may be true in an autocentric context even if the speaker hasn’t tasted the crème caramel.

So far, so good. Now note that in frameworks like the one Anand and Korotkova employ, it is natural to provide a definition of the content of a sentence $\varphi$ relative to a context c (aka ‘the proposition expressed by $\varphi$ in c’).²⁵ Ordinarily, this is thought to be what someone who uttered $\varphi$ in c would thereby assert.²⁶ And it would be what a sincere utterance of $\varphi$ in c would add to the common ground of c.²⁷ If we adopted a contextualist approach to this notion, we would define it as follows:

The content of $\varphi$ in c is: $[\lambda w:{[[\varphi ]]}^{w,j_c,K_c}$ is defined. ${[[\varphi ]]}^{w,j_c,K_c}=1$].

So the content of $\varphi$ in c is a partial function from worlds to truth values. It is defined at a world w iff ${[[\varphi ]]}^{w,j_c,K_c}$ is defined. If defined at w, it maps w to truth iff ${[[\varphi ]]}^{w,j_c,K_c}=1$.

Now when we take this definition of the content of $\varphi$ in context c and combine it with the semantics for taste predicates that Anand and Korotkova offer, we get the result that the content of The crème caramel is delicious in an autocentric context c is the following proposition:

where s_c is the speaker of c. This is a ‘partial proposition,’ a partial function from worlds to truth values. It is defined at a world w iff s_c has tasted the crème caramel in w. Where defined, it maps w to truth just in case the crème caramel is delicious to s_c in w.

Now here is the problem. Suppose that I believe the crème caramel is delicious is true in an autocentric context c. Suppose further that the speaker s_c hasn’t tasted the crème caramel and that s_c believes that they haven’t tasted the crème caramel. Then it follows that if s_c’s belief state is non-empty, s_c does not believe proposition (a) in context c. To see this, let w be a world compatible with what s_c believes in c. Since s_c believes in c that they have not tried the crème caramel yet, it follows that s_c has not tried the crème caramel in w. Hence, (a) is not defined at w and so does not map w to 1. Thus, it follows that s_c does not believe proposition (a) in c. But since (a) is the proposition expressed by The crème caramel is delicious in c, it follows that although the sentence I believe the crème caramel is delicious is true in context c, the speaker does not believe the proposition expressed by The crème caramel is delicious in c.

But how can this be? How can I believe that the crème caramel is delicious, but not believe the proposition expressed by the sentence The crème caramel is delicious in my autocentric context? Don’t I have to believe that content, given that I believe that the crème caramel is delicious? Perhaps there is some story one could tell about sentences, contents, and beliefs that would make negative answers to these questions palatable, but I would prefer to see if we can formulate a theory that avoids this problem altogether.²⁸

What this last observation seems to show is that the acquaintance requirement should be thought of as a requirement on assertability, not on truth or on having a truth value. In order for The crème caramel is delicious to be assertable in a context, it is required that the speaker has tasted the crème caramel before. But in order for that sentence to be true in a context, it isn’t required that the speaker has tasted the crème caramel before. That is why you can believe the content of The crème caramel is delicious even if you haven’t tasted the crème caramel yet—you can believe it because it still might be true.

4. The expressivist view

Although I reject the epistemic view and the presupposition view for the reasons given, our expressivist alternative will incorporate insights from each view. From the epistemic view, we take the idea that the acquaintance requirement is generated in part by a normative requirement on assertion, and from the presupposition view, we take the idea that certain operators obviate the acquaintance requirement by manipulating a parameter in the points of evaluation. But the expressivist theory improves on these approaches: unlike the epistemic view, its account of the basic acquaintance inference extends smoothly to disjunction and quantifiers; unlike the presupposition view, it does not make the acquaintance requirement a requirement on the truth of taste sentences.

Recall the key expressivist idea: in saying that the crème caramel is delicious, I am expressing ‘my liking’ of the taste of the crème caramel. Since I can’t like the taste of something without having tasted it, that explains why the acquaintance inference arises. But what do we mean when we say that a speech act expresses a given mental state? While there are no doubt different plausible answers we could give to this question, I shall take my cue from Willer and Kennedy, op. cit., 831 who suggest that speech acts “express states of mind insofar as they require the speaker to be in a certain state of mind for the utterance to be in accordance with the norms for performing the speech act.” Suppose, for example, that there is a norm that entails that one may assert $\varphi$ only if one believes $\varphi$. Then if I assert $\varphi$, my assertion will ordinarily implicate that I believe $\varphi$. For if I assert $\varphi$, my audience will normally assume that I am attempting to comply with that norm, and if I am complying with it, I will believe $\varphi$. That is one sense in which assertions may be said to express beliefs.

If we want to say that my assertion of The crème caramel is delicious expresses my liking of the crème caramel in this sense, we need a theory according to which there is a norm that entails that one may assert The crème caramel is delicious only if one likes it. For if there is such a norm, then if I assert The crème caramel is delicious, my assertion will typically implicate that I like the crème caramel. For if I assert that sentence, my audience will normally assume that I am attempting to comply with that norm, and if I am complying with it, I will like the crème caramel. But in light of the examples discussed above, the theory will also need to cover more complex cases. For example, when I taste all of the items on the dessert table and like exactly two of them, I am in a certain complex psychological state, the state of liking two items on the dessert table and disliking all of the others. So the norm in question will need to entail that I may assert Exactly two things are on the dessert table are delicious only if I am in this complex state.

What kind of inference is the acquaintance inference according to this view? On the present approach, the relationship between an assertion of The crème caramel is delicious and the proposition that the speaker likes the taste of crème caramel is similar to the the relationship between an assertion of It’s raining and the proposition that the speaker believes that it’s raining. We may call such inferences expressive inferences, for they are inferences from an utterance to a proposition concerning the state of mind the speaker expresses in making that utterance. Thus, according to the expressivist theory of taste predicates offered here, the acquaintance inference is an expressive inference.