No Praise for Unknown Cakes: What Is the Source of the Acquaintance Inference?

Abstract Based on utterances of sentences that contain predicates of taste hearers typically infer that the speaker has first-hand experience with the object being evaluated. That is, utterances of such sentences invoke an acquaintance inference . Various authors have argued that the acquaintance inference is due to peculiarities of predicates of taste. In the paper we critically discuss these proposals and reject them in favour of a version of an epistemic account, according to which the acquaintance inference results from peculiarities of knowledge about taste.