Operadores de orden superior y predicados de gusto: Una aproximación expresivista

Abstract

This dissertation discusses the meaning of taste statements. Specifically, it offers an expressivist explanation of the meaning of this kind of statements that highlights their dynamic features. The rationale for an expressivist treatment are the following: 1. Some expressions that allow speakers to manifest their taste preferences can be treated as second-order concepts. For example, `funny' or `curious' are eligible as second-order concepts. From a syntactic standpoint, they are expressions that produce a grammatically correct sentence not only admitting as their arguments nouns, for example, `Space Balls is fun', but also transitive or intransitive verbal locutions functioning as subject or direct complement, for example, `It is fun to see Peter apologizing for his absence'. From a logical standpoint, these expressions admit as their arguments not only objects, but other concepts or whole propositions. 2. Taste statements usually play an evaluative role. They are not used for describing how the world is. A speaker who says that something is, for example, `tasty', is not ascribing certain property to an object. Rather, she is expressing her pro attitude towards the object. Specifically, it will be contended that taste statements express both pro or con attitudes and states of rule-acceptance. Our intention is to put forward a theory which focuses on certain phenomena related with disagreements about taste. Such an explanation will be independent of the issue of which is the best theory -if indexical contextualism, non-indexical contextualism or relativism- for assigning truth-conditions to taste claims.