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<p>Some philosophers hold that sentences with the word <i>good</i> have a uniform form. On this view, many of the apparent syntactic and semantic differences between (say) <i>That is a good knife</i>, <i>Xavier is good with children</i> and <i>It is good to have pets</i> are illusory. A difficulty in evaluating uniformity theses is that they are often not formulated in a linguistically precise way. I provide an interpretation where uniformity theses treat <i>good</i> as taking the same arguments at some syntactic or semantic level. I then defend the view that the motivation for uniformity theses is weak, and I develop a strategy for opposing them. One version of this strategy is deployed, drawing on under-appreciated data about <i>tough</i>-adjectives. I argue that there is better motivation for alternative analyses of <i>good</i>, namely ‘non-uniformity contextualism’ and ‘relativism’. The resulting picture is one where the apparent syntactic and semantic differences between <i>good</i>-constructions are genuine.</p>

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The form of good

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年1月9日

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  • Poppy Mankowitz

摘要

Some philosophers hold that sentences with the word good have a uniform form. On this view, many of the apparent syntactic and semantic differences between (say) That is a good knife, Xavier is good with children and It is good to have pets are illusory. A difficulty in evaluating uniformity theses is that they are often not formulated in a linguistically precise way. I provide an interpretation where uniformity theses treat good as taking the same arguments at some syntactic or semantic level. I then defend the view that the motivation for uniformity theses is weak, and I develop a strategy for opposing them. One version of this strategy is deployed, drawing on under-appreciated data about tough-adjectives. I argue that there is better motivation for alternative analyses of good, namely ‘non-uniformity contextualism’ and ‘relativism’. The resulting picture is one where the apparent syntactic and semantic differences between good-constructions are genuine.