Abstract
This paper explores the idea that a semantics for ‘ought’ should be neutral between different ways of deciding what an agent ought to do in a situation (e.g. different decision theories). While the idea is, I argue, well-motivated, taking it seriously leads to surprising, even paradoxical, problems for theorizing about the meaning of ‘ought’. This paper describes and defends one strategy—a form of Expressivism for the modal ‘ought’—for navigating these problems.
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Special thanks to David Plunkett. Thanks as well to Derek Baker, Fabrizio Cariani, Jennifer Carr, David Copp, Jamie Dreier, Stephen Finlay, Arno Goebel, Rory Harder, Dan Harris, Nathan Howard, Phil Kremer, Dan Lassiter, Sven Lauer, Robert May, Paul Portner, Jim Pryor, Adam Sennet, Eric Swanson, Will Starr, and audiences at the University of Konstanz, UC Davis, Dartmouth, Lingnan University, and New York University. The support of SSHRC (Insight Grant #435-2015-0423) is gratefully acknowledged.
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Charlow, N. Decision-theoretic relativity in deontic modality. Linguist and Philos 41, 251–287 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-017-9211-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-017-9211-1