Abstract
Quasi-realist expressivists (or simply “expressivists”) set themselves the task of developing a metaethical theory that at once captures what they call the “realist-sounding” elements of ordinary moral thought and discourse but is also distinctively antirealist. Its critics have long suspected that the position cannot have what it wants. In this essay, I develop this suspicion. I do so by distinguishing two paradigmatic versions of the view—what I call Thin and Thick expressivism respectively. I contend that there is a metaethical datum regarding our epistemic achievements in the moral domain that presents challenges for each variety of expressivism. Thin expressivism opts not to accommodate and explain this datum but I contend that its rationale for not doing so rests on a suspect methodology. Thick expressivism looks as if it must accommodate and explain this datum but I argue that it is poorly situated to do so. I conclude that we have reason to believe that paradigmatic expressivism cannot have all that it wants.
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Notes
I take the phrase in quotes from Blackburn (1994, 315). cf. Blackburn (1993, 77, 151) and (1984, 180). For reasons I offer in Cuneo (2017), I doubt that there is any such thing as “realist-sounding” or “realist-seeming” elements of moral thought and discourse, so, I’ll continue to put these phrases in scare-quotes.
The first phrase in quotes is from Blackburn (1993, 4).
Blackburn (1998, 79).
I use the term “metasemantic” broadly to cover what are really metalinguistic (what it is to say something), metacognitive (what it is to think something), and metasemantic (what is to mean something) claims.
Gibbard (2003, 182).
As I indicate in Sect. 3, it is very difficult to say what such a characterization comes to. But I can say at least this: It does not merely consist in a metasemantic claim that licenses the use of moral predicates. See Sinclair (2012, Sects. 3 and 8).
Here I intend to take very seriously Blackburn’s (1993, 7) claim according to which quasi-realism isn’t one more ‘ism’ among others but is a research program of a certain kind.
Roughly, accommodation concerns what makes a claim probable, while explanation concerns that in virtue of which a claim holds. Bengson et al. (Forthcoming a) offers a fuller discussion. There is overlap between this section and Cuneo (2017) and Bengson et al. (Forthcoming b).
The data stated above, then, do not represent the full range of core data. Bengson et al. (Forthcoming b) offers a more expansive list (and characterization) of the core data.
Metaethical theories can supplement themselves in order to accommodate and explain core data that their fundamental commitments do not themselves accommodate and explain. I’ll understand No Explanation expansively so that it implies that there is no supplementation that paradigmatic expressivism might endorse such that it implies that moral facts explain the core data stated above. Sinclair (2012), which represents the most thorough (and sympathetic) treatment of an expressivist approach to normative explanation of which I am aware, also understands No Explanation broadly. In Sects. 3, 6.3, and 8 of his essay, Sinclair maintains that, while expressivists can appeal to moral predicates when explaining, they do not appeal to moral properties or facts in doing so; see, especially, pp. 155, 157, 174.
Although, there are others in which expressivists seem to say the opposite; see Blackburn (1993, ch. 9).
See, also, note 54 for another reason for attributing a broad understanding of No Explanation to paradigmatic developments of the expressivist research program.
In Dreier’s (2015, 291) words: “To put it glibly, moral facts and properties are explanatorily lightweight”.
Those familiar with Dreier’s (2004) “‘explanation’ explanation” will recognize parallels between it and the proposal above. They differ in at least this respect, however. Dreier’s proposal focuses on “that in virtue of which it is true to say” that you have some moral belief (2004, 38). In contrast, the proposal above identifies a range of core metaethical data that a theory must accommodate and explain (or justify why they do not require accommodation and explanation). Chrisman (2008), Cuneo (2013, 244–247), and Asay (2013, 217) voice concerns regarding the “‘explanation’ explanation”.
Both Timmons (1999) and Ridge (2014) eschew certain commitments commonly associated with paradigm expressivism. Ridge, for example, does not embrace deflationary accounts of truth and facthood, which play a fairly significant role in the versions of paradigm expressivism with which I’ll be engaging. See, also, the discussion of Gibbard (2003) below.
How much distance will probably differ from datum to datum. Ascertaining what it is to think or say something might help us to identify the correctness or aptness conditions for thinking or saying that thing. Still, doing so would not explain what it is that these conditions consist in or whether they are satisfied, and, so, would not explain the datum.
Blackburn (1998, 50). I'll return to the issues raised in this passage in Sect. 3.
In what I take to be a vivid statement of Thin expressivism, Sinclair (2017, 647) writes that deflationary expressivism “is not the view that moral facts are lightweight things, rather it is the view that talk of moral facts is no more than talk of right and wrong (expressively construed), and thus as ontologically non-committal as the latter”.
An anonymous referee suggested to me that, in the passages quoted earlier, expressivists mean only to claim that (A) is compatible with (B). I doubt this could be correct. For, by all appearances, the point of these passages is to help explain how expressivism could mimic what realism says. But every metaethical view should agree that not only is (A) compatible with (B), it is also compatible with:
(C) It is not a fact that torture is wrong.
But affirming that (A), (B), and (C) are compatible, I take it, would contribute nothing to explaining how expressivism could mimic realism. Given the assumption that this is the aim of these passages, we should probably reject this “compatibilist” reading.
I am working with what Bengson et al. (Forthcoming b) calls the epistemic conception of data, according to which φ is a datum if and only if, and because, φ is a claim (or what is expressed by a claim) that theorists (considered collectively) have epistemic reason to beleive at the outset of inquiry. This position rejects the psychological conception according to which the data concern only how things appear or seem (e.g., It appears as if some moral judgments are trustworthy). Bengson et al. (Forthcoming b, Sect. 3) provides an argument against the psychological conception.
Although, see Blackburn (1998, 297), which seems to claim that realists could not be saying what they think they are saying.
Expressivists sometimes suggest that apparent metaethical claims are really just first-order expressions of attitude. See Blackburn (2010). Under this interpretation of Thin expressivism, data such as Epistemic Achievements are expressions of attitudinal states (perhaps of a complex sort). I am not going to directly engage with this approach for two reasons. First, not only is the view highly contentious (the realist theses certainly do not appear to express first-order claims), it has yet to be worked out in sufficient detail to evaluate. Second, suppose, for argument’s sake, Epistemic Achievements were an expression of an attitudinal state of a certain kind. What would it be to accommodate and explain it? It would be, at least in part, to identify that in virtue of which it is an expression of an attitudinal state of that kind. And that, in turn, would be to identify what it would be to (aptly) express an attitudinal state of that kind, which edges us toward the metasemantic question that Epistemic Achievements* addresses.
There is a related reading of the passage from Blackburn, suggested by Blackburn (1998, Appendix), which appeals to the following even stronger claim: it’s not simply that there would be an external reading of data as Independence and Epistemic Achievements were realism true. Rather, it is that there are no coherent specifications of these data. What I’ve called a rephrasal is the only genuine option. Since I am aware of no arguments for this extremely strong claim, I propose to bracket it.
See Blackburn (1993, 181). I am unaware of any passage in which expressivists tell us what it is for a property or fact to be an “abstraction” from or a “semantic shadow” of a predicate or how this account yields a view of moral facts.
Dunaway (2016, 243) offers a proposal on expressivism’s behalf.
Cp. Dreier’s (2015, 11.5) observation regarding expressivism’s efforts to “sidestep” the supervenience problem.
The objection I am about to press resembles one that Sharon Street (2011) has pressed against both realism and expressivism. There is, though, an important difference between the objection I am pressing and Street’s. Street’s objection invokes a skeptical scenario—roughly, that evolutionary processes have skewed our moral belief-forming capacities—that is supposed to cast doubt on whether there could be an adequate explanation of the truth of the “tracking” propositions stated below. The objection I offer invokes no such scenario. It rests only on the claims that, according to Thick expressivism, (1) there are moral facts to which we must bear some appropriate relation in order for our moral judgments to enjoy epistemic achievements and (2) by their very nature, these facts could not (even in part) explain how we do so.
See Gibbard (2003, Part IV).
Recall, also, Blackburn (1999, 216), cited earlier.
See Gibbard (2003, 224). Two clarifications: With Gibbard, I help myself to the ideology (in Quine’s sense) of tracking, but offer no account of what it is for a judgment to track a fact. Due to puzzles regarding how to formulate an account of tracking, Clarke-Doane (2015) suggests that we abandon the notion. I myself think that such a conclusion would be premature. However that may be, questions about how to spell out the tracking relation shouldn’t obscure from view what is at issue, namely, that for an agent to accurately represent or know some fact, she must bear some appropriate relation to it. Let me add that to track the moral facts is what poises one to form moral judgments that are epistemic achievements, such as being trustworthy. What is at issue, then, is not simply whether paradigm expressivism can explain why moral judgments tend to be true, since true judgments might be completely due to luck. These true-by-luck judgments would not poise one to form judgments that are epistemic achievements.
Two points: First, this does not imply that in order for your judgment to be trustworthy, it must be inferred from facts such as torture is wrong. Some particularists, for example, will understand this fact in such a way that it does not state a general moral fact. Second, I follow Dreier (2004, 39) in assuming here that paradigm expressivists reject reductionist versions of naturalism which maintain that facts such as failing to maximize happiness are themselves moral facts. Although, see the discussion of Gibbard below.
Gibbard (2002, 54).
Gibbard (2002, 56).
Gibbard (2003) states that these properties are constituted by natural properties. The distinction won’t matter for present purposes.
Describing his view, Gibbard writes: “Indeed, in a way, normative facts turn out to be plain old natural facts. In another way, indeed, normative facts turn out to be non-natural facts” (2003, x).
Schroeder (2008b, chs. 11–12) maintains that a satisfactory expressivist semantics must incorporate “mistake conditions.” If moral features are natural, and they figure in those mistake conditions—and it is difficult to see how they could not if moral judgments “pertain” to them—then expressivism would be forced to reject No Explanation as it pertains to Judgment. That, however, would be no small concession. For No Explanation as it pertains to Judgment is, according to paradigm expressivism's primary expositors, supposed to be what distinguishes the view from its rivals.
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Acknowledgements
My thanks to Arash Abizadeh, Janina Cuneo, Derek Baker, John Bengson, Louis deRosset, Jamie Dreier, Billy Dunaway, David Plunkett, Mike Ridge, Russ Shafer-Landau, Mark van Roojen, the UVM Ethics Group, and an audience at the American Philosophical Association for their comments on ancestors of this essay. A special thanks to an anonymous referee for this journal who, while deeply unsympathetic with this essay’s main argument, recommended its publication.
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Cuneo, T. Can expressivism have it all?. Philos Stud 177, 219–241 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1186-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1186-4