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  1. Why the Negation Problem Is Not a Problem for Expressivism.Jeremy Schwartz & Christopher Hom - 2014 - Noûs 48 (2):824-845.
    The Negation Problem states that expressivism has insufficient structure to account for the various ways in which a moral sentence can be negated. We argue that the Negation Problem does not arise for expressivist accounts of all normative language but arises only for the specific examples on which expressivists usually focus. In support of this claim, we argue for the following three theses: 1) a problem that is structurally identical to the Negation Problem arises in non-normative cases, and this problem (...)
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  • Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism.Mark van Roojen - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2013 (1):1-88.
    Non-cognitivism is a variety of irrealism about ethics with a number of influential variants. Non-cognitivists agree with error theorists that there are no moral properties or moral facts. But rather than thinking that this makes moral statements false, noncognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, noncognitivists think that moral statements have no truth conditions. Furthermore, according to non-cognitivists, when people (...)
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  • Logic and Semantics for Imperatives.Nate Charlow - 2014 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 43 (4):617-664.
    In this paper I will develop a view about the semantics of imperatives, which I term Modal Noncognitivism, on which imperatives might be said to have truth conditions (dispositionally, anyway), but on which it does not make sense to see them as expressing propositions (hence does not make sense to ascribe to them truth or falsity). This view stands against “Cognitivist” accounts of the semantics of imperatives, on which imperatives are claimed to express propositions, which are then enlisted in explanations (...)
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  • The problem with the Frege–Geach problem.Nate Charlow - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 167 (3):635-665.
    I resolve the major challenge to an Expressivist theory of the meaning of normative discourse: the Frege–Geach Problem. Drawing on considerations from the semantics of directive language (e.g., imperatives), I argue that, although certain forms of Expressivism (like Gibbard’s) do run into at least one version of the Problem, it is reasonably clear that there is a version of Expressivism that does not.
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  • The Philosophy of Generative Linguistics.Peter Ludlow - 2011 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Peter Ludlow presents the first book on the philosophy of generative linguistics, including both Chomsky's government and binding theory and his minimalist ...
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  • Free Thinking for Expressivists.Neil Sinclair - 2008 - Philosophical Papers 37 (2):263-287.
    This paper elaborates and defends an expressivist account of the claims of mind-independence embedded in ordinary moral thought. In response to objections from Zangwill and Jenkins it is argued that the expressivist 'internal reading' of such claims is compatible with their conceptual status and that the only 'external reading' available doesn't commit expressivisists to any sort of subjectivism. In the process a 'commitment-theoretic' account of the semantics of conditionals and negations is defended.
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  • Thick concepts, non-cognitivism, and Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations.Adam M. Croom - 2010 - South African Journal of Philosophy 29 (3):286-309.
    Non-cognitivists claim that thick concepts can be disentangled into distinct descriptive and evaluative components and that since thick concepts have descriptive shape they can be mastered independently of evaluation. In Non-Cognitivism and Rule-Following, John McDowell uses Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations to show that such a non-cognitivist view is untenable. In this paper I do several things. I describe the non-cognitivist position in its various forms and explain its driving motivations. I then explain McDowell’s argument against non-cognitivism and the Wittgensteinian considerations upon (...)
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  • Philosophy of language for metaethics.Mark Schroeder - 2011 - In Gillian Russell & Delia Graff Fara (eds.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language. New York, USA: Routledge.
    Metaethics is the study of metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language, insofar as they relate to the subject matter of moral or, more broadly, normative discourse – the subject matter of what is good, bad, right or wrong, just, reasonable, rational, what we must or ought to do, or otherwise. But out of these four ‘core’ areas of philosophy, it is plausibly the philosophy of language that is most central to metaethics – and not simply (...)
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  • How to Be a Normative Expressivist.Michael Pendlebury - 2009 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1):182-207.
    Expressivism can make space for normative objectivity by treating normative stances as pro or con attitudes that can be correct or incorrect. And it can answer the logical challenges that bedevil it by treating a simple normative assertion not merely as an expression of a normative stance, but as an expression of the endorsement of a proposition that is true if and only if that normative stance is correct. Although this position has superficial similarities to normative realism, it does full (...)
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  • Normative uncertainty for non-cognitivists.Andrew Sepielli - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (2):191-207.
    Normative judgments involve two gradable features. First, the judgments themselves can come in degrees; second, the strength of reasons represented in the judgments can come in degrees. Michael Smith has argued that non-cognitivism cannot accommodate both of these gradable dimensions. The degrees of a non-cognitive state can stand in for degrees of judgment, or degrees of reason strength represented in judgment, but not both. I argue that (a) there are brands of noncognitivism that can surmount Smith’s challenge, and (b) any (...)
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  • Darwin and moral realism: Survival of the iffiest.Knut Olav Skarsaune - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 152 (2):229-243.
    This paper defends moral realism against Sharon Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value” (this journal, 2006). I argue by separation of cases: From the assumption that a certain normative claim is true, I argue that the first horn of the dilemma is tenable for realists. Then, from the assumption that the same normative claim is false, I argue that the second horn is tenable. Either way, then, the Darwinian dilemma does not add anything to realists’ epistemic worries.
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  • Moral expressivism and sentential negation.Neil Sinclair - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 152 (3):385-411.
    This paper advances three necessary conditions on a successful account of sentential negation. First, the ability to explain the constancy of sentential meaning across negated and unnegated contexts (the Fregean Condition). Second, the ability to explain why sentences and their negations are inconsistent, and inconsistent in virtue of the meaning of negation (the Semantic Condition). Third, the ability of the account to generalize regardless of the topic of the negated sentence (the Generality Condition). The paper discusses three accounts of negation (...)
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  • (1 other version)Expressivism and contrary-forming negation.Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons - 2009 - Philosophical Issues 19 (1):92-112.
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  • Semantics, moral.Mark Schroeder - 2021 - In Hugh LaFollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
    Semantics is the investigation of meaning, and semantic theories, including semantic theories about moral language, come in two very different kinds. Descriptive semantic theories are theories about what words mean. So descriptive moral semantic theories are theories about what moral words mean: words like ‘good’, ‘better’, ‘right’, ‘must’, ‘ought’, ‘reason’, and ‘rational’. In contrast, foundational semantic theories are theories about why words mean what they do, or more specifically, about what makes it the case that words mean what they do. (...)
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  • Recent work in expressivism.Neil Sinclair - 2009 - Analysis 69 (1):136-147.
    This paper is a concise survey of recent expressivist theories of discourse, focusing on the ethical case. For each topic discussed recent trends are summarised and suggestions for further reading provided. Issues covered include: the nature of the moral attitude; ‘hybrid’ views according to which moral judgements express both beliefs and attitudes; the quasi-realist programmes of Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard; the problem of creeping minimalism; the nature of the ‘expression’ relation; the Frege-Geach problem; the problem of wishful thinking; the (...)
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  • Intuitions are inclinations to believe.Joshua Earlenbaugh & Bernard Molyneux - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 145 (1):89 - 109.
    Advocates of the use of intuitions in philosophy argue that they are treated as evidence because they are evidential. Their opponents agree that they are treated as evidence, but argue that they should not be so used, since they are the wrong kinds of things. In contrast to both, we argue that, despite appearances, intuitions are not treated as evidence in philosophy whether or not they should be. Our positive account is that intuitions are a subclass of inclinations to believe. (...)
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  • Divine hoorays: Some parallels between expressivism and religious ethics.Nicholas Unwin - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (3):659-684.
    Divine law theories of metaethics claim that moral rightness is grounded in God’s commands, wishes and so forth. Expressivist theories, by contrast, claim that to call something morally right is to express our own attitudes, not to report on God’s. Ostensibly, such views are incompatible. However, we shall argue that a rapprochement is possible and beneficial to both sides. Expressivists need to explain the difference between reporting and expressing an attitude, and to address the Frege-Geach problem. Divine law theorists need (...)
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  • What is the Frege-Geach problem?Mark Schroeder - 2008 - Philosophy Compass 3 (4):703-720.
    In the 1960s, Peter Geach and John Searle independently posed an important objection to the wide class of 'noncognitivist' metaethical views that had at that time been dominant and widely defended for a quarter of a century. The problems raised by that objection have come to be known in the literature as the Frege-Geach Problem, because of Geach's attribution of the objection to Frege's distinction between content and assertoric force, and the problem has since occupied a great deal of the (...)
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  • Hybrid Expressivism: Virtues and Vices.Mark Schroeder - 2009 - Ethics 119 (2):257-309.
    This paper is a survey of recent ‘hybrid’ approaches to metaethics, according to which moral sentences, in some sense or other, express both beliefs and desires. I try to show what kinds of theoretical issues come up at the different choice points we encounter in developing such a view, to raise some problems and explain where they come from, and to begin to get a sense for what the payoff of such views can be, and what they will need to (...)
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  • Expression for expressivists.Mark Schroeder - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (1):86–116.
    Expressivism’s central idea is that normative sentences bear the same relation to non-cognitive attitudes that ordinary descriptive sentences bear to beliefs: the expression relation. Allan Gibbard teIls us that “that words express judgments will be accepted by almost everyone” - the distinctive contribution of expressivism, his claim goes, is only a view about what kind of judgments words express. But not every account of the expression relation is equally suitable for the expressivist’s purposes. In fact, what I argue in this (...)
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  • Quasi-realism and fundamental moral error.Andy Egan - 2007 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2):205 – 219.
    A common first reaction to expressivist and quasi-realist theories is the thought that, if these theories are right, there's some objectionable sense in which we can't be wrong about morality. This worry turns out to be surprisingly difficult to make stick - an account of moral error as instability under improving changes provides the quasi-realist with the resources to explain many of our concerns about moral error. The story breaks down, though, in the case of fundamental moral error. This is (...)
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  • Why bother with so what?N. D. Cannon - forthcoming - Philosophical Studies:1-19.
    I address a family of objections I label the _So What?_ objection to robust non-naturalist realism (or, just non-naturalism). This objection concludes that non-naturalism fails to identify the _moral properties_ in virtue of failing to explain why non-natural properties would have all the features we expect _moral properties_ to have and can be extended to provide the conclusion that the non-naturalist is therefore immoral. I argue that _So What?_ is question-begging because it disallows non-naturalists their central theoretical claim: there are (...)
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  • A Hybrid Theory of Ethical Thought and Discourse.Drew Johnson - 2022 - Dissertation, University of Connecticut
    What is it that we are doing when we make ethical claims and judgments, such as the claim that we morally ought to assist refugees? This dissertation introduces and defends a novel theory of ethical thought and discourse. I begin by identifying the surface features of ethical thought and discourse to be explained, including the realist and cognitivist (i.e. belief-like) appearance of ethical judgments, and the apparent close connection between making a sincere ethical judgment and being motivated to act on (...)
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  • Should expressivists go global?Matthew Simpson - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (8):2275-2289.
    Moral expressivists think that moral thoughts and sentences don’t represent or describe the world, at least not in any interesting sense. Global expressivists think that _no_ thoughts or sentences represent the world; local expressivists think that some do and others don’t. Huw Price has influentially argued that local expressivism collapses into global expressivism, due both to the effects of minimalist theories of representation and similar concepts, and to an unappreciated consequence of the success of specific expressivist theories like moral expressivism. (...)
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  • Metaethics as Conceptual Engineering.Knut Olav Skarsaune - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    On the traditional approach to metaethics, theories are expected to be faithful to ordinary normative discourse – or at worst (if we think the ordinary discourse is metaphysically unsound) to deviate from it as little as possible. -/- This paper develops an alternative, “conceptual engineering” approach to metaethical enquiry, which is not in this way restricted by our present discourse. On this approach, we will seek to understand the psychology, semantics, metaphysics and epistemology, not just of our present concepts, but (...)
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  • Sidestepping the Frege-Geach Problem.Graham Bex-Priestley & Will Gamester - forthcoming - Philosophical Quarterly.
    Hybrid expressivists claim to solve the Frege-Geach problem by offloading the explanation of the logico-semantic properties of moral sentences onto beliefs that are components of hybrid states they express. We argue that this strategy is undermined by one of hybrid expressivism’s own commitments: that the truth of the belief-component is neither necessary nor sufficient for the truth of the hybrid state it composes. We articulate a new approach. Instead of explaining head-on what it is for, say, a pair of moral (...)
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  • Noncognitivism without expressivism.Bob Beddor - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (3):762-788.
    According to expressivists, normative language expresses desire‐like states of mind. According to noncognitivists, normative beliefs have a desire‐like functional role. What is the relation between these two doctrines? It is widely assumed that expressivism commits you to noncognitivism, and vice versa. This paper opposes that assumption. I advance a view that combines a noncognitivist psychology with a descriptivist semantics for normative language. While this might seem like an ungainly hybrid, I argue that it has important advantages over more familiar metaethical (...)
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  • The Frege-Geach Problem for Normative Propositions.Richard Anderson - 2019 - Dissertation, University of Connecticut
    The aim of this dissertation is to provide support for the following claim: if Hanks’ theory of propositions as act-types is correct, then there exists a plausible extension of this theory that solves the Frege-Geach problem for normative propositions. I assume that Hanks’ theory is correct, and in this framework develop an account of semantic expressivism that addresses three versions of the Frege-Geach problem: the embedding, inference and negation problems. First, I examine in detail one existing attempt to support the (...)
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  • Noncognitivism and the Frege‐Geach Problem in Formal Epistemology.Benjamin Lennertz - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1):184-208.
    This paper makes explicit the way in which many theorists of the epistemology of uncertainty, or formal epistemologists, are committed to a version of noncognitivism—one about thoughts that something is likely. It does so by drawing an analogy with metaethical noncognitivism. I explore the degree to which the motivations for both views are similar and how both views have to grapple with the Frege‐Geach Problem about complex thoughts. The major upshot of recognizing this noncognitivism is that it presents challenges and (...)
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  • Inferential Expressivism and the Negation Problem.Luca Incurvati & Julian J. Schlöder - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 16.
    We develop a novel solution to the negation version of the Frege-Geach problem by taking up recent insights from the bilateral programme in logic. Bilateralists derive the meaning of negation from a primitive *B-type* inconsistency involving the attitudes of assent and dissent. Some may demand an explanation of this inconsistency in simpler terms, but we argue that bilateralism’s assumptions are no less explanatory than those of *A-type* semantics that only require a single primitive attitude, but must stipulate inconsistency elsewhere. Based (...)
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  • Weak Assertion.Luca Incurvati & Julian J. Schlöder - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (277):741-770.
    We present an inferentialist account of the epistemic modal operator might. Our starting point is the bilateralist programme. A bilateralist explains the operator not in terms of the speech act of rejection ; we explain the operator might in terms of weak assertion, a speech act whose existence we argue for on the basis of linguistic evidence. We show that our account of might provides a solution to certain well-known puzzles about the semantics of modal vocabulary whilst retaining classical logic. (...)
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  • Are All Normative Judgments Desire-Like?Alex Gregory - 2017 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 12 (1):29-55.
    In this paper I first argue against one attractive formulation of the motivation argument, and against one attractive formulation of noncognitivism. I do so by example: I suggest that other-regarding normative judgments do not seem to have motivational powers and do not seem to be desires. After defending these two claims, I argue that other views can accommodate the motivational role of normative judgment without facing this objection. For example, desire-as-belief theories do so, since such theories only say that some (...)
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  • Expression and Guidance in Schroeder’s Expressivist Semantics.Derek Baker - 2017 - Erkenntnis 83 (4):829-852.
    Mark Schroeder’s expressivist program has made substantial progress in providing a compositional semantics for normative terms. This paper argues that it risks achieving this semantic progress at the cost of abandoning a key theoretical motivation for embracing expressivism in the first place. The problem can be summarized as a dilemma. Either Schroeder must allow that there are cases in which agents are in disagreement with one another, or can make valid inferences, but that these disagreements or inferences are not expressible (...)
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  • Two nondescriptivist views of normative and evaluative statements.Matthew Chrisman - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4):405-424.
    The dominant route to nondescriptivist views of normative and evaluative language is through the expressivist idea that normative terms have distinctive expressive roles in conveying our attitudes. This paper explores an alternative route based on two ideas. First, a core normative term ‘ought’ is a modal operator; and second, modal operators play a distinctive nonrepresentational role in generating meanings for the statements in which they figure. I argue that this provides for an attractive alternative to expressivist forms of nondescriptivism about (...)
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  • (1 other version)Disciplined Syntacticism and Moral Expressivism.James Lenman - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1):32-57.
    Moral Expressivists typically concede that, in someminimalsense, moral sentences are truth‐apt but claim that in some morerobustsense they are not. TheImmodest Disciplined Syntacticist, a species of minimalist about truth, raises a doubt as to whether this contrast can be made out. I here address this challenge by motivating and describing a distinction betweenreduciblyandirreduciblytruth‐apt sentences. In the light of this distinction the Disciplined Syntacticist must either adopt a moremodestversion of his theory, friendlier to Expressivism, or substantially modify it, abandoning one of (...)
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  • (1 other version)Advice for Noncognitivists.Malte Willer - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (S1):174–207.
    Metaethical noncognitivists have trouble arriving at a respectable semantic theory for moral language. The goal of this article is to make substantial progress toward demonstrating that these problems may be overcome. Replacing the predominant expressivist semantic agenda in metaethics with a dynamic perspective on meaning and communication allows noncognitivists to provide a satisfying analysis of negation and other constructions that have been argued to be problematic for metaethical noncognitivism, including disjunctions. The resulting proposal preserves some of the key insights from (...)
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  • The Frege-Geach Problem.Jack Woods - 2016 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 226-242.
    This is an opinionated overview of the Frege-Geach problem, in both its historical and contemporary guises. Covers Higher-order Attitude approaches, Tree-tying, Gibbard-style solutions, and Schroeder's recent A-type expressivist solution.
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  • A Primitive Solution to the Negation Problem.Derek Shiller - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (3):725-740.
    It has recently been alleged that expressivism cannot account for the obvious fact that normative sentences and their negations express inconsistent kinds of attitudes. I explain how the expressivist can respond to this objection. I offer an account of attitudinal inconsistency that takes it to be a combination of descriptive and normative relations. The account I offer to explain these relations relies on a combination of functionalism about normative judgments and expressivism about the norms governing them. It holds that the (...)
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  • Prospects for an Expressivist Theory of Meaning.Nate Charlow - 2015 - Philosophers' Imprint 15:1-43.
    Advocates of Expressivism about basically any kind of language are best-served by abandoning a traditional content-centric approach to semantic theorizing, in favor of an update-centric or dynamic approach (or so this paper argues). The type of dynamic approach developed here — in contrast to the content-centric approach — is argued to yield canonical, if not strictly classical, "explanations" of the core semantic properties of the connectives. (The cases on which I focus most here are negation and disjunction.) I end the (...)
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  • Moral inferentialism and the Frege-Geach problem.Mark Douglas Warren - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (11):2859-2885.
    Despite its many advantages as a metaethical theory, moral expressivism faces difficulties as a semantic theory of the meaning of moral claims, an issue underscored by the notorious Frege-Geach problem. I consider a distinct metaethical view, inferentialism, which like expressivism rejects a representational account of meaning, but unlike expressivism explains meaning in terms of inferential role instead of expressive function. Drawing on Michael Williams’ recent work on inferential theories of meaning, I argue that an appropriate understanding of the pragmatic role (...)
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  • Can the Embedding Problem Be Generalized?Caj Strandberg - 2015 - Acta Analytica 30 (1):1-15.
    One of the most discussed challenges to metaethical expressivism is the embedding problem. It is widely presumed that the reason why expressivism faces this difficulty is that it claims that moral sentences express non-cognitive states, or attitudes, which constitute their meaning. In this paper, it is argued that the reason why the embedding problem constitutes a challenge to expressivism is another than what it usually is thought to be. Further, when we have seen the real reason why expressivism is vulnerable (...)
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  • The Problem of Ethical Vagueness for Expressivism.Nicholas Baima - 2014 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 17 (4):593-605.
    Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism. Because the relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism. Ultimately, I shall (...)
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  • Constructivism, Expressivism and Ethical Knowledge.Matthew Chrisman - 2010 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18 (3):331-353.
    In the contemporary metaethical debate, expressivist (Blackburn, Gibbard) and constructivist (Korsgaard, Street) views can be viewed as inspired by irrealist ideas from Hume and Kant respectively. One realist response to these contemporary irrealist views is to argue that they are inconsistent with obvious surface-level appearances of ordinary ethical thought and discourse, especially the fact that we talk and act as if there is ethical knowledge . In this paper, I explore some constructivist and expressivist options for responding to this objection. (...)
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  • Getting noncognitivism out of the Woods. [REVIEW]Mark Schroeder - 2010 - Analysis 70 (1):129-139.
    (No abstract is available for this citation).
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  • How Expressivists Can and Should Solve Their Problem with Negation.Mark Schroeder - 2008 - Noûs 42 (4):573-599.
    Expressivists have a problem with negation. The problem is that they have not, to date, been able to explain why ‘murdering is wrong’ and ‘murdering is not wrong’ are inconsistent sentences. In this paper, I explain the nature of the problem, and why the best efforts of Gibbard, Dreier, and Horgan and Timmons don’t solve it. Then I show how to diagnose where the problem comes from, and consequently how it is possible for expressivists to solve it. Expressivists should accept (...)
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  • Hybrid Theories: Cognitive Expressivism.Alex Silk - forthcoming - In David Copp & Connie Rosati (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaethics. Oxford University Press.
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  • Expressivism, Moral Psychology and Direction of Fit.Carlos Nunez - forthcoming - In David Copp & Connie Rosati (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaethics. Oxford University Press.
    Expressivists claim that normative judgments (NJ) are non-cognitive states. But what kind of states are they, exactly? Expressivists need to provide us with an adequate account of their nature. Here, I argue that there are structural features that render this task rather daunting. The worry takes the form of a looming dilemma: NJ are either conative states (i.e. states with a world-to-mind direction of fit) or they are not. If they are, then they are either attitudes de se (i.e. attitudes (...)
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  • Expressing Moral Belief.Sebastian Hengst - 2022 - Dissertation, Ludwig Maximilians Universität, München
    It is astonishing that we humans are able to have, act on and express moral beliefs. This dissertation aims to provide a better philosophical understanding of why and how this is possible especially when we assume metaethical expressivism. Metaethical expressivism is the combination of expressivism and noncognitivism. Expressivism is the view that the meaning of a sentence is explained by the mental state it is conventionally used to express. Noncognitivism is the view that the mental state expressed by a moral (...)
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  • Handling rejection.Derek Baker & Jack Woods - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 180 (1):159-190.
    This paper has two related goals. First, we develop an expressivist account of negation which, in the spirit of Alan Gibbard, treats disagreement as semantically primitive. Our second goal is to make progress toward a unified expressivist treatment of modality. Metaethical expressivists must be expressivists about deontic modal claims. But then metaethical expressivists must either extend their expressivism to include epistemic and alethic modals, or else accept a semantics for modal expressions that is radically disjunctive. We propose that expressivists look (...)
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  • Assertion, expression, experience.Christopher Kennedy & Malte Willer - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (7):821-857.
    ABSTRACT It has been frequently observed in the literature that assertions of plain sentences containing predicates like fun and frightening give rise to an acquaintance inference: they imply that the speaker has first-hand knowledge of the item under consideration. The goal of this paper is to develop and defend a broadly expressivist explanation of this phenomenon: acquaintance inferences arise because plain sentences containing subjective predicates are designed to express distinguished kinds of attitudes that differ from beliefs in that they can (...)
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