Abstract
Critical engagements with expressivism exhibit a familiar pattern. A critic presses an objection against the view, while those sympathetic with expressivism respond that the critic has fundamentally misunderstood the view. Some philosophers, myself included, have contended that epistemic expressivism is vulnerable to some important objections with which expressivists must grapple. Predictably, those sympathetic with expressivism have responded that these objections miss the mark because they work with a mistaken understanding of the expressivist project. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the contention that a methodological strategy—what J. Adam Carter and Matthew Chrisman call the core expressivist manoeuvre—enables expressivism to sidestep a host of objections levelled against the view. I contend that extant versions of expressivism are poorly situated to execute this manoeuvre and, so, expressivists are presently not well-situated to appeal to the core manoeuvre in order to avoid certain types of theoretical burdens and deflect various types of criticisms of their view.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Here is a representative passage: “As we see things, the core expressivist maneuver involves changing the question from one about the nature of epistemic facts or values to one about the nature of epistemic evaluations. Once an expressivist has given his answer to the new question by insisting on a disanalogy between epistemic thought and discourse and descriptive thought and discourse, and once he has argued that this answer undermines the first question…[which is] a question about the nature of some feature of the world whose existence is disputed: epistemic facts or values … he can just stop talking (at least in the capacity of stating his theory)” (Carter and Chrisman 2012, 334).
- 2.
- 3.
According to Carter and Chrisman, the objectors to whom they are responding “each misunderstand what is crucial to epistemic expressivism” (2012, 334).
- 4.
I am working, then, with a fairly broad characterisation of the normative. But it does mirror that offered by expressivists such as Ridge (2014, chap. 1). If one wishes, one can think of the normative more narrowly as some subset of the normative, such as what is decisively reason-giving. In what follows, I remain neutral regarding the relations these different dimensions of the normative bear to one another.
- 5.
In principle, one could understand this project broadly (so that it concerns any attempt to answer the questions above) or narrowly (so that it concerns only certain kinds of attempts to answer these questions, such as those that concern properties and facts that are “substantive”). I understand the project broadly. My reason for doing so is that, even under a narrow understanding of the project, expressivists will face questions that appear to belong to the metaphysical project, and which they seem interested in side-stepping.
- 6.
- 7.
As for the “proper aims” of metanormative inquiry, I’ll remain neutral regarding exactly what they are and how to substantiate them.
- 8.
- 9.
Parfit (2011, 408–10, 2017, 191) retracts this charge.
- 10.
- 11.
- 12.
Carter and Chrisman (2012, 334 n8) offer a reading of what expressivists have in mind when they talk about “deflated” normative facts.
- 13.
I borrow the terminology from Alston (1999, chap. 4). To commit oneself to being in a mental state does not imply that one is in such a state. There can be commitments that are insincere or mistaken.
- 14.
In Cuneo (2014), I develop an argument for the conclusion that normative facts are among those that explain how it is that we could speak. An implication of that argument is that, even if expressivism were to offer a correct description of how normative thought and discourse typically functions, normative facts play crucial explanatory roles ; see Cuneo (2014, chap. 6).
- 15.
- 16.
I assume this is what Gibbard means by “imperatives.” Chrisman (2016, 131) includes an illuminating discussion regarding such contents.
- 17.
Ridge (2014) is the most developed version of the view. I find no indications in Ridge’s discussion that he endorses the core maneuver.
- 18.
In his development of standards expressivism, Ridge (2014, 27–28) offers an even more nuanced account of directives, maintaining (inter alia) that the normative modal “must” adverts to context-specific standards that require, while the normative modal “ought” adverts to context-specific standards that recommend. So, under Ridge’s view, it is no surprise that we can move fluidly between sentences such as “You are required to ϕ” and “You must ϕ!”.
- 19.
This denial concerns the deep structure of normative thought and discourse. See Blackburn (1993, 184–85). Expressivism’s advocates sometimes point out that it would not be inaccurate to say that such thought and discourse have predicative normative representational content, provided that we are speaking only of the surface structure of such thought and discourse or, alternatively, that we have some sufficiently deflated sense of predication or representation in mind. For the point about surface structure, see Blackburn (1993, 157, 185); for the point about deflationism, see Blackburn (1999, chap. 3).
- 20.
Some content Φ’s being about x does not entail that x exists, is actual, or is instantiated. For example, thoughts about unicorns represent unicorns, though there are no such creatures.
- 21.
So, when Gibbard writes that, given his norm expressivism, the “main thing to be explained is not what a norm is, but what ‘accepting a norm is’,” (1990, 46) it is natural to be puzzled. Given his views about imperatival contents, it makes perfect sense to ask questions about the ontological status of these norms and what they represent, if they have some source, what it would be for one set to be correct, and how they could be “natural,” as Gibbard claims. These are the very sorts of questions at issue in the metaphysical project. Their answers are open to a variety of concerns and objections.
- 22.
See the references supplied by Chrisman (2016, sec. 5.3). A crucial component of the expressivist semantics that Schroeder develops are mistake conditions (2008a, chap. 10). When assessing this proposal, Schroeder writes that any expressivist view will have to explain what mistakes are in the relevant sense (2008a, 168).
- 23.
Interestingly, when Chrisman offers an example of such an account, he does so by appealing to mere imperatives devoid of deontic modals.
- 24.
Copp (1995, 2007) are exceptions. In his (2007), Copp writes that standards are the “semantic contents expressed by imperatives, and so they are not believed, nor do they represent the world as being one way or another.” (14) I am not sure why Copp maintains that imperatives fail to represent the world as being one way or another.
- 25.
- 26.
- 27.
To be clear, Gibbard takes the planning-state approach and standards expressivism to be complementary. But, as best I can tell, he does not explain how to mesh the two approaches. The worry is that any attempt to combine them would lack the requisite theoretical unity.
- 28.
Recall it is this: an act “might be N-permitted without being rational, for the system N might have little recommend it.” (1990, 87) But the same is true of endorsements. Many have little to recommend them. So, if this is Gibbard’s rationale for rejecting the factualist account of normativity, it is also a rationale for rejecting the account he offers.
- 29.
Chrisman (2016) offers an inferentialist proposal regarding “ought.” As best I can tell, there is no discussion of whether the approach could be generalised to all normative modals.
- 30.
Thanks to Adam Carter, Matthew Chrisman, Tyler Doggett, and the UVM Ethics Reading Group for their comments on a draft of this essay.
References
Alston, William. 1999. Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Blackburn, Simon. 1980. Spreading the Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1993. Moral Realism. In Essays in Quasi-Realism, ed. Simon Blackburn, 111–129. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1999. Ruling Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carter, J. Adam, and Matthew Chrisman. 2012. Is Epistemic Expressivism Incompatible with Inquiry? Philosophical Studies 159 (3): 323–339.
Chrisman, Matthew. 2011. Ethical Expressivism. In The Continuum Companion to Ethics, ed. Christian Miller, 29–54. New York: Continuum.
———. 2016. The Meaning of “Ought”: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Copp, David. 1995. Morality, Normativity, and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2007. Morality in a Natural World: Selected Essays in Metaethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cuneo, Terence. 2007. The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2014. Speech and Morality: On the Metaethical Implications of Speaking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cuneo, Terence, and Russ Shafer-Landau. 2014. The Moral Fixed Points: New Directions for Moral Nonnaturalism. Philosophical Studies 171 (3): 399–443.
Dreier, James. 2004. Metaethics and the Problem of Creeping Minimalism. Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1): 23–44.
———. 2015. Explaining the Quasi-Real. In Oxford Studies in Metaethics, ed. Russ Shafer-Landau, vol. 10, 273–298. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gibbard, Allan. 1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 2003. Thinking How to Live. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Parfit, Derek. 2017. On What Matters Vol. 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ridge, Michael. 2014. Impassioned Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2015. I Might Be Fundamentally Mistaken. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 9 (3): 1–21.
Schroeder, Mark. 2008a. Being For. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2008b. Noncognitivism in Ethics. Abingdon: Routledge.
Sturgeon, Nicholas. 1985. Moral Explanations. In Morality, Reason and Truth, ed. David Copp and David Zimmerman, 49–78. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld.
———. 1992. Nonmoral Explanations. In Philosophical Perspectives 6: Ethics, ed. James Tomberlin, 97–117. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Press.
Wedgwood, Ralph. 2007. The Nature of Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cuneo, T. (2018). The Core Expressivist Manoeuvre. In: Kyriacou, C., McKenna, R. (eds) Metaepistemology. Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93369-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93369-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93368-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93369-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)