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Moral expressivism and sentential negation

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Abstract

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 available to moral expressivists. The first—the dominant commitment account—fails to meet the Fregean Condition. The two remaining accounts—commitment semantics and the expression account—satisfy all three conditions. A recent argument that the dominant commitment account is the only option available to expressivists is considered and rejected.

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Notes

  1. This paper and those it is a response to are concerned with literal or truth-functional negation, as opposed to the types of metalinguistic negation discussed in Horn (1985).

  2. The two alternatives are distinct from those offered by Gibbard (2003) and Horgan and Timmons (2006). For problems with the former see Dreier (2006) and with the latter see Schroeder (2008a, pp. 582–584).

  3. See for example Gibbard (1990, 2003) and Stevenson (1937). This simple taxonomy is complicated by ‘ecumenical’ expressivist views according to which simple moral sentences also express beliefs, but not beliefs whose contents provide the truth-conditions of the sentences; see Ridge (2006). The contrast is then with views according to which simple moral sentences express beliefs whose contents do provide the sentential truth-conditions. Ecumenical expressivism may provide a further solution to the negation problem, but is not without its own difficulties. For some of these, see Schroeder (2009).

  4. Note that ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ as defined here are not exhaustive. Some sentences, such as questions and commands, are neither. A similar embedding problem arises for such sentences. For a discussion and partial solution, see Hare (1970, pp. 7–12).

  5. These conditions generalise to other instances of the embedding problem.

  6. See for example Unwin (1999, p. 343) and Schroeder (2008a, p. 575).

  7. Thus Geach (1965, p. 461): “… by negating a predicate we can get the negation of the proposition in which it was originally predicated”. The equivalence doesn’t hold where ‘x’ is a non-referring term or where ‘M’ is a vague predicate, but I will assume that the present discussion excludes such cases. A similar assumption is made in Schroeder (2008a, b).

  8. As Unwin (1999, p. 352) recognises.

  9. This suggestion is made by Unwin (1999, pp. 349–352) and pursued at length by Schroeder (2008a, b).

  10. See for example Blackburn (1998, pp. 8–14) and Gibbard (1990, Chap. 3).

  11. Initially, Schroeder (2008a, p. 577) seems to suggest that two contents are inconsistent just when they cannot both be true. The account offered here extends this idea to cover cases where contents do not have truth conditions, such as ‘blaming for murder’.

  12. A similar point is made by Schueler (1988).

  13. See Schroeder (2008b, p. 14). I should add that I don’t consider ‘geeky’ to be derogatory. It seems to me to be synonymous with ‘rigorous’ and ‘scholarly’.

  14. See Searle (1962, p. 424), Geach (1965, pp. 461–465) and Hare (1970, pp. 5–6, 23). These earlier discussions express the point in terms of speech acts or linguistic ‘performances’. The common point is that the particular speech act (for example expressing, commending, condemning, agreeing) that supposedly provides at least part of the sentence meaning in the unembedded context is not repeated in indirect context.

  15. This account can be generalised to speak of commitments rather than attitudes, but such generality is not relevant for the present argument.

  16. Ad hominem: Schroeder understands his suggestion as a version of compositional attitude semantics. Setting up the problem to which his proposal is a response, he writes: “The challenge is this: give a compositional account of the attitudes expressed by complex normative sentences as a function of the attitudes expressed by their parts” (Schroeder 2008a, p. 575).

  17. Diagnosis: Compositional attitude semantics introduces is an isomorphism between the logical form of sentences and the psycho-functional form of the commitment they express. The dominant commitment account introduces an isomorphism between between the logical form of the sentences and the contents of the dominant commitment. The slide between the two is a subtle but important one in Schroeder. For the former Schroeder (2008a, p. 574); for the latter see Schroeder (2008a, pp. 592–593).

  18. Ad hominem: Schroeder accepts this further condition. The quote given in footnote 16 continues: “And then expressivists must explain why this [compositional] account predicts that sentences with that structure have the right kinds of properties: for example, that negations are inconsistent with the sentences they negate, that conditionals can be used in modus ponens, that disjunctions validate disjunctive syllogism, and so on” (Schroeder 2008a, p. 575).

  19. Note that at this point a similar objection might apply to the case of non-moral sentences. Where F is a non-moral predicate ‘x is F’ expresses a belief that x is F, ‘¬(x is F)’ expresses a belief that ¬(x is F), yet the latter is not a function of the former. This would seem to demonstrate that all expressivists face a Frege–Geach problem for their account of sentences expressive of belief, and even more worryingly, a problem which the compositional attitude semantics doesn’t help with. However, the problem can be avoided so long as the belief that ¬(x is F) can be understood as some function of the belief that x is F. Commitment semantics, discussed below, secures this result.

  20. It doesn’t follow that the functional structure can always be identified independently of the logical articulation: see Blackburn (2002, pp. 166–167). For developments of commitment semantics, see Björnsson (2001), Elstein (2007) and Sinclair (2008).

  21. Note that in his article Hare suggests an account of negation according to which in sincerely uttering a negation one is “(explicitly) refraining from performing the speech act in question” (Hare 1970, p. 13; see also Hale 2002, p. 148). This account runs straight into the Hale/Unwin problem, for it fails to distinguish the agent who accepts the negation from the Agnostic. The alternative account of negation offered in this section follows the spirit, if not the letter, of Hare’s programme.

  22. See Blackburn (1988a, p. 511, 2002, p. 167). Björnsson (2001, pp. 88, 94) talks of ‘negative opinions’.

  23. Formally, an attitude α!x can be represented as a policy function from stimulus S to reactions R, thus: Pol[R, S]. The rejection, or ¬α!x, can be represented as Pol[¬R, S], where ‘¬R’ signifies some response other than R, thus driving the negation inwards (Blackburn 1988a, p. 511). The particular formalism chosen is less important than the philosophical understanding of the semantic relations that it formalises. Note that in describing policies the square brackets shouldn’t be thought to signal ascent. This formalism doesn’t signify a distinct higher-order policy directed at a reaction/stimulus pair. Rather the policy is characterizable by this pair.

  24. The exceptions are non-moral sentences that express attitudes. Perhaps aesthetic sentences are like this. The account of rejection in their case is identical to the account of rejection in the case of moral attitudes, since nothing in that account relied on a particular feature of the moral reaction.

  25. This answers the potential problem raised in footnote 19.

  26. The inconsistency is more complex in the case of so-called evaluative moral concepts, such as ‘good’, whose connection to specific practical guidance is less direct. But so long as the function of a moral concept is to provide practical guidance of some kind, inconsistent application of that concept will consist in recommending inconsistent courses of action.

  27. Why might one form states that function this way? To keep track of the implications and consistency relations between more basic commitments. See Blackburn (1998, p. 71).

  28. A weaker type of inconsistency is involved where the functions of the commitments are only contingently frustrated, such as when an agent desires outcomes that only happen to be mutually unrealizable. It is a goal of inquiry to uncover such inconsistencies. .

  29. Note how this account therefore meshes with Blackburn’s account of illogicality as unintelligibility. See Blackburn (1998, p. 72, 2002, p. 167).

  30. As Elstein (2007, p. 112) realises.

  31. See Blackburn (2001, 2006) and Barker (2006, pp. 304–305). Note that Barker himself cannot accept the account of negation on offer here, since he holds, contra the suggestion that follows in (3′′′), that all expressive assertion advertises the intention to defend some commitment or other.

  32. Note that commitment semantics can accept the analysis of expression suggested by the expression account, but must reject the claim that negation involves a distinct kind of relation between utterances and commitments.

  33. See Blackburn (1988a) for one such attempt. Both accounts of negation offered here are consistent with, but do not require, the formal model of consistency Blackburn offers in this paper.

  34. See for example Wright (1992).

  35. I would like to thank an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies, Jonathan Tallant, Carrie Jenkins, Chris Woodard and an audience of the Philosophy Research Group at the University of Cardiff for many helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Neil Sinclair

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Sinclair, N. Moral expressivism and sentential negation. Philos Stud 152, 385–411 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9484-5

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