Abstract
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 of moral discourse—the facilitation of coordinated social behavior—suggests the kind of inferences we should expect terms with this function to license. I offer a sketch of the inferential roles the moral ‘ought’ plays, and argue that if we accept that the relevant inferential roles are meaning-constitutive, we will be in a position to solve the Frege-Geach problem. Such an inferentialist solution has advantages over those forwarded by expressivists such as Blackburn and Gibbard. First, it offers a more straightforward explanation of the meaning of moral terms. It also gives simple answers to at least two semantic worries that have vexed contemporary expressivists—the “problem of permissions” and the commitment to “mentalism”, both of which I argue are problems that don’t get traction with an inferentialist approach. I conclude by considering ways in which this approach can be expanded into a more robust semantic account.
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Notes
See Price and Macarthur (2007, especially pp. 94–97) for more on the distinction between representational and non-representational approaches. For examples of representational approaches to metaethics, see Boyd (1988); Brink (1989); Brandt (1979); Smith (1994); Sturgeon (1988). See Timmons (1999, Ch. 1) for the role that the representational assumption has played in modern metaethics:
[An] operative assumption regarding matters ontological was that they were to be handled linguistically—that questions about whether there are moral properties or facts and, if so, whether they are identical to non-moral properties and facts were to be answered by settling questions about the meanings of moral terms and expressions. (Ibid., p. 26)
Timmons’ argues that metaethicists who reached radically different ontological conclusions also undertook this same fundamentally representational approach. For example, Mackie (1977) accepts “a certain [representational] account of the meaning of moral terms and expressions, according to which ordinary moral statements purport to be about objective moral properties or facts, but then [denies] that there are any such properties or facts.” (Timmons 2006, p. 27) The same interpretation is available for relativistic accounts like those found in Wong (1984) and Prinz (2007).
As a semantic theory, inferentialism faces well-known objections. See for example Williamson (2003, 2007). Williamson acknowledges that these objections apply only to naturalist versions of inferentialism (e.g., Block 1986; Field 1977; Harman 1999; Horwich 1998; Loar 1981; Peacocke 1992), according to which it is either speakers’ actual use of concepts, or their dispositions to employ concepts in certain ways that establish the meaning-constitutive rules that govern our concepts. Williamson admits (2003, p. 291), though, that these objections don’t apply to normativist versions of inferentialism (such as those developed in Brandom 1994, Gibbard 1994), according to which the meaning or our concepts is given by the inferences we ought to make with them. See Thomasson (2014) for a normativist reply to Williamson. Obviously the prospects for metaethical inferentialism will depend on the viability of some form of inferentialism as a general semantic theory, but a defense of this semantic theory, and investigation into its best form, lie beyond the scope of this paper. To those who are skeptical about inferentialism, the results here may be seen as conditional: if inferentialism is a defensible semantic theory, then it makes available a plausible and interesting account of moral discourse.
In any case, the expressivist shouldn’t take too much comfort from the attacks on inferentialism: like inferentialists, expressivists attempt a non-representational account of moral thought and discourse by considering a linguistic explanans (in the case of the expressivist: mental states. In the case of the inferentialist: the terms themselves) and the inferential profile these have. It seems plausible that any objection that fells inferentialism as a general semantic theory will spell trouble for the expressivist also. So for example, it’s possible to read some contemporary criticisms of expressivism (e.g., van Roojen 1996; Merli 2008) as extensions of Williamson’s basic attack on inferentialism: Williamson’s principle complaint against inferentialism is that one can competently employ a concept without standing ready to engage in the sorts of inferences that concept would license. This is quite similar to the criticisms delivered against expressivism: it seems one can make certain moral judgments without being in the mental state those judgments are supposed to express.
Expressivists differ on which sort of mental state is expressed by moral claims—approval, intentions, commitments, or plans, etc. For the sake of simplicity I’ll simply speak of approval and disapproval.
Williams himself doesn’t distinguish between the pragmatic role of the discourse and the functional role a term in that discourse plays; both are treated in what he calls the “functional component” of an explanation of meaning in terms of use. For the purposes of this paper, it will be helpful to be explicit about the distinction.
For an account of how the inferential rule (MT) explains our use of the truth predicates in contexts like these, see (Horwich 1998, pp. 3–6).
This hands-off approach also makes sense, given the distinction I’m drawing between inferentialism and expressivism about morality. The expressivist is committed to explaining the meaning of moral claims in terms of the (typically motivating) attitudes they express; inferentialism doesn’t carry this commitment, and so can remain silent on whether the characteristic action-guiding feature of moral claims is accomplished in the way that moral internalists argue or by some other means.
This is a rough sketch of features that I believe are essential to understanding what is distinctive about moral discourse, but it is not meant to be exhaustive. There may be other facets that are essential: moral discourse doesn’t only goad us into behavior in a particular way; it also seems to goad us towards particular kinds of behavior. There may be certain “a priori compulsory propositions that anyone who knows how to use [moral] terms is in a position to recognize as true” (Jackson and Pettit 1995, p. 26). Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014) count among these the following:
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It is pro tanto wrong to engage in the recreational slaughter of a fellow person.
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It is pro tanto wrong to break a promise on which another is relying simply for convenience’s sake.
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It is pro tanto wrong to humiliate others simply for pleasure. (Ibid., p.7)
I will not consider all of these in depth here, or try to decide which if any are necessary characteristics of moral discourse. For the purposes at hand, it will suffice to echo Allan Gibbard, and point out that these make a particular kind of sense, in light of the broad coordinating function of moral discourse I’m arguing for. Feelings of benevolence prime us to act on behalf of others’ interests, and this can lead to coordinated behavior that is to our obvious evolutionary advantage—when it benefits close kin or those in a position to reciprocate, but also because it is to our long term advantage to be a member of a species with altruistic impulses (Gibbard 1990, p. 258). Our concern with fairness lays the grounds for cooperation. “Judgments of fairness stabilize bargaining” (Ibid., p. 262) by giving us a common framework for assessing when gratitude (or retaliation) are appropriate. We might imagine why other issues are routinely within the purview of moral discourse—questions of respect, of disgust and communal purity, of guilt and shame; these are all concerns about our behavior that weigh heavily on our ability to cooperate. And as I argue in Fn. 13 below, if (some or all of) these sorts of considerations are characteristic of the function of moral discourse, we should expect to see these aspects of that function reflected in particular inferential rules.
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Again, the question of how this licensing comes about is outside the scope of this paper. It may come about as part of a socially directed practice of holding U responsible to certain kinds of commitments and entitlements, as per a normativist interpretation of inferentialism. Or, as per a naturalist interpretation of inferentialism (see Fn.2), it may be because sincere moral judgments necessarily involve some (possibly defeasible) motivational disposition. (In my formulation of the inferential rules for ‘ought’ here, I remain neutral on which interpretation is correct.).
Cf. Wedgwood on the inferential import of the broadly deliberative ‘ought’, which he argues is always implicitly or explicitly indexed to some agent and time: “Acceptance of the first-person statement ‘O <me,t>(p)’—where ‘t’ refers to some time in the present or near future—commits one to making p part of one’s plan about what to do at t.” (2006, p. 137) Ignoring questions of indexing time and agent, we can see the similarity of his account to my own—if we keep in mind that mine is narrowly concerned with moral ‘ought’s, and don’t flesh out the notion of a commitments and plans in psychological terms (i.e. of commitments and plans as kinds of mental states) but instead in terms of the kind of pragmatic influences (i.e. towards inferential commitments to arrive at deliberative conclusions about how to act) enumerated in Sect. 5 above. See also Charlow (2013, fn. 20).
In Fn. 10 I considered the possibility that there are more substantive requirements on moral discourse; distinctive considerations about fairness, benefit, and so on may inform ethical claims, perhaps even to the point of rendering the acceptance of certain normative propositions as a precondition for the use of moral discourse. If there are further characteristic features of moral language—including normative propositions that have a status as conceptual truths—we should expect this to be reflected in the meaning-constituting inferential roles for the moral ‘ought’:
R5: If U recognizes that an act ψ is an instance of recreational slaughter/breaking a promise for convenience’s sake/humiliating others simply for pleasure/etcetera, then all things being equal, U is defeasibly licensed to claim that one ought to not ψ.
These language entry rules will also have joint implications for language exit rules:
R6: U’s assertion that one ought to ψ implies that ψ-ing is not an instance of recreational slaughter/promise-breaking for convenience’s sake/humiliation others for pleasure/etcetera.
Compare again Wedgwood’s treatment: “Acceptance of the first-person statement ‘P <me,t>( p)—where ‘t’ refers to some time in the present or near future—permits one to treat p part of one’s plan about what to do at t.” (2006, p. 137).
In Being For, Schroeder attempts this Herculean task on behalf of the expressivist; his account involves so many complications and problematic assumptions that he concludes it might just amount to a reductio of the expressivist project. (Schroeder 2008a, pp. 92, 177) See Marbito (2009), Alwood (2010), and Wedgwood (2010) for critical responses.
For those who insist that an adequate account of validity must involve truth-preservation, the inferentialist can be confrontational or conciliatory. Confrontationally: There is good reason to think that the relationships of consistency and inconsistency that are fundamental to an explanation of validity needn’t be underwritten by a truth-theoretic account; following Portner (2010) and using a meaning-from-use approach not dissimilar to my own, Charlow (2013) argues persuasively that we can (and should) extend a non-representational account of (in)consistency between imperative sentences to declarative normative claims. Conciliatorily: This shouldn’t be taken as an outright denial that validity (in moral arguments like the above, at least) entails truth-preservation, though: inasmuch as the inferentialist makes use of a minimal approach to truth, she can grant that valid arguments with true premises are guaranteed to have true conclusions.
For more on cashing out negation in terms of pragmatic conflict, see Dreier (2009, especially pp. 103–106). In Warren (2013, pp. 128–168), I argue that an inferentialist account of this kind of conflict enjoys advantages over an expressivist account, according to which such conflict must be always be mediated by the relevant conative attitudes.
For Wedgwood’s suggestions on giving a more general treatment of ‘ought’, see (2006, pp. 151–157). As I’ve explained in Section 6, my account of ‘ought’ differs from his in important ways; nevertheless, I see no reason that his account of the various implications of ‘ought’ couldn’t be favorably extended to a non-representational approach such as my own.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Jamie Dreier, Matthew Chrisman, Amie Thomasson, Simon Evnine, and Bradford Cokelet for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks to audiences at the University of Miami for offering feedback on several presentations of these ideas. Thanks also to an anonymous reviewer at this journal for very helpful suggestions.
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Warren, M.D. Moral inferentialism and the Frege-Geach problem. Philos Stud 172, 2859–2885 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0447-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0447-8