Value Disagreement and Two Aspects of Meaning

Abstract

The problem of value disagreement and contextualist, relativist and metalinguistic attempts ofsolving it are laid out. Although the metalinguistic account seems to be on the right track, it isargued that it does not sufficiently explain why and how disagreements about the meaning ofevaluative terms are based on and can be decided by appeal to existing social practices. As aremedy, it is argued that original suggestions from Putnam's "The Meaning of 'Meaning'" ought tobe taken seriously. The resulting dual aspect theory of meaning can explain value disagreement inmuch the same way as it deals with disagreement about general terms. However, the account goesbeyond Putnam's by not just defending a version of social externalism, but also defending the thesisthat the truth conditional meaning of many evaluative terms is not fixed by experts either andinstead constantly contested as part of a normal function of language.