On a Case for Truth-Relativism Jason Stanley Philosophy and Phenomenological Research John MacFarlene’s Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its Applications is a defense of the thesis that the contents of judgment are truth relative. The first half of the book clarifies and defends the theoretical commitments in the position; the second argues for its explanatory importance. Assessment Sensitivity is a dauntingly powerful book; the level of detailed development of positions is at times staggering, as is the theoretical vision. One way to address the formidable task of writing a short piece would be to challenge one of the applications of assessment sensitivity to a domain (e.g. Dowell (2013). I will instead attempt to address the overall view. In the first two sections, I argue that one can accept that the considerations MacFarlane discusses do show that a certain abstract semantic structure requires a parameter, while resisting the claim that this has consequences about truth. In the third section, I raise questions about the methodology he employs. 1. By an “assessment-relative account”, I will in what follows refer to the conjunction of a semantic theory that employs semantic values that are relative to a context of assessment, together with an account of accuracy and retraction that exploit that relativity in a non- trivial way. MacFarlane uses the assessment-sensitivity of truth to explain a multiplicity of phenomena. The data is (a) the traditional core data of semantics (b) quite subtle judgments about the speech act of retraction, and (c) judgments about disagreement. The second half of the book argues that in a range of very different cases, an assessment relative account is better than the alternatives. In the next two sections, I sketch a strategy for addressing the considerations MacFarlane’s subtle discussions illuminate, without accepting that it bears on basic propositional thought, even indirectly, via its modal profile. Semantic values are tools in a machine. It’s not cause for alarm when a semantic theory employs non-traditional semantic values, even assessment-relative ones, anymore than when it employs assignment functions. Nor is it a worry when non-traditional semantic values are employed in the characterization of speech acts. Perhaps certain speech acts do not bear on the individuation of propositions. We are all, after all, familiar with the concern that there is a large gap between belief ascription and belief. No doubt there is a similar gap between our intuitions about reports of disagreement (for example) and disagreement. But it is a different matter entirely to be told that that basic propositional thought is relative to an assessor. The latter conclusion only follows if the work done by the semantics and the post-semantics has a bearing on basic propositional thought.