[...]... sentential truth- predicate: sentences are true relative to contexts of utterance For reasons explained by Kaplan (1977: 507–10), these two relativizations of the sentential truth- predicate—to a possible world and to a context of use—must be treated as separate We need ‘‘double-indexing’’ The reason, briefly, is that we want to distinguish between necessity (truth at all possible worlds) and logical truth (truth. .. person’s pants are on fire.³ Traditionally, then, the truth- value of a proposition has been thought to be relative to a possible world only, and there has been dissent from some quarters who think truth should be further relativized to times and agents In this volume a number of new proposals of relativizations are under discussion Thus, some argue that the truth of utterances of sentences like ‘‘Matisse... This proposition in turn determines a truth- value for each way the world may happen to be (each possible world), and in particular it determines a truth- value given the way the world actually is An older challenge to the traditional picture concerns whether the truth- values of propositions depend on a time or an agent The focus of this book is whether there are novel truth- determining factors, such as... non-standard propositions that exhibit a relativity of truth analogous to that postulated, for example, by temporalists: the sentences in question express non-standard propositions whose truth- values are relative to an extra factor I shall call views of the second kind ‘‘relativist’’ Relativism is therefore the view that some propositions vary in their truth- value with some parameter(s) over and above the... wants to reserve the label ‘‘relativist’’ for those who claim that the truth of utterances is relative (2005, 325) Saying that propositions vary in truth- value with a non-standard parameter is not sufficient for relativism in MacFarlane’s sense, for even with non-standardly relativized propositions one can still define utterance truth in such a way as to be absolute (this corresponds to the first of the... detail I shall begin by looking at the form of semantic theories, and the role of truthpredicates in them It will turn out that semantic theories for natural languages define a three-place truth- predicate applicable to sentences, and that some extrasemantic principles are needed in order to relate this semantic truth- predicate to truth in any pre-theoretic sense We can provide a semantics for a formal language... assert is the paradigm of smooth communication Propositions are not only the objects of thought and speech, they are also truthbearers, and it is often thought that propositions are absolute truth- bearers in the sense that a proposition by itself determines a truth- value, or at least a truth- value given the way the world is Frege seems to be the main source for this view In ‘‘The Thought’’, for example,... whether truth as it occurs in semantics ought to be relativized to a novel parameter, and if so, how exactly this relativization should be implemented For these purposes, it will be sufficient to concentrate on assertoric utterances only, and on the normative role of truth in theories of assertion Any theory of assertion is committed to the view that truth is in some sense a norm for assertion It is relatively... ‘‘Matisse is better than Picasso.’’ depends on a standard of taste Others argue that the truth of utterances of sentences like ‘‘Anna knows she has hands.’’ depends on practical interests; and that the truth of utterances of ‘‘Greece might win the World Cup.’’ depends on a state of knowledge Suppose we want to say that the truth- value of utterances of the sentence ‘‘Matisse is better than Picasso.’’ varies... is used However, the truth- value of that proposition varies with time: on most days it is true before lunch and (fortunately) not true after lunch Similarly, on the second proposal, the sentence ‘‘Matisse is better than Picasso.’’ expresses the same proposition whenever used, but that proposition varies in truth- value with a standard of taste, so that the proposition can be true relative to one standard .