This paper presents and advocates an approach to the semantics of opinion
statements, including matters of personal taste and moral claims. In this framework,
‘outlook-based semantics’, the circumstances of evaluation are not composed of a
possible world and a judge (as in ‘world-judge relativism’); rather, outlooks replace
possible worlds in the role of circumstance of evaluation. Outlooks are refinements
of worlds that settle not only matters of fact but also matters of opinion. Several
virtues of the framework and advantages over existing implementations of worldjudge
relativism are demonstrated in this paper. First, world-judge relativism does not
actually explain the ‘disagreement’ of ‘faultless disagreement’, while a straightforward
explanation suggests itself in outlook-based semantics. Second, outlook-based
semantics provides an account of subjective attitude verbs that can capture lack
of opinionatedness. Third, outlook-based semantics unproblematically explains the
connection-building role of aesthetic discourse and the group-relevance of discretionary
assertions, while capturing the same effects in world-judge relativism obviates
the purpose of the judge parameter. Finally, because the proposed circumstances of
evaluation (outlooks) are entirely analogous to possible worlds, the framework is easy
to use and extend.

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• Outlook-based semantics