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Minimalist semantics in meta-ethical expressivism

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Abstract

James Dreier (Philos Perspect 18:23–44, 2004) states what he calls the “Problem of Creeping Minimalism”: that metaethical Expressivists can accept a series of claims about meaning, under which all of the sentences that Realists can accept are consistent with Expressivism. This would allow Expressivists to accept all of the Realist’s sentences, and as Dreier points out, make it difficult to say what the difference between the two views is. That Expressivists can accept these claims about meaning has been suggested by Simon Blackburn on behalf of his “quasi-realist”. I argue against the assumption that there is a way to interpret the Realist’s sentences in a way that renders them consistent with Expressivism.

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Notes

  1. Dreier (2004, p. 31), his italics.

  2. Dreier thinks that we can, ultimately, tell the difference between the two camps by thinking about differences in the explanatory role entities play in the two theories. See Dreier (2004, pp. 39–42). The point behind (CM) is that none of the traditional ways for saying what the difference is are available.

  3. Blackburn (1980, p. 353).

  4. Blackburn (1984, p. 171).

  5. See, for instance, Blackburn (1984, p. 171); also Blackburn (2007, pp. 160–161).

  6. This seems to be the idea behind Blackburn (1980); see also Blackburn’s “Modals and Morals” (1993, p. 58, fn. 5), where he glosses the (1980) paper as exploring the possibility of a “generalized quasi-realist move” which “allows even the use of a concept in explanatory roles, but still defends an anti-realist construction of it”. Other authors, such as Wedgwood (2007, p. 39) seem to think of Blackburn's project as the more ambitious one.

  7. See Blackburn (1980).

  8. Rosen (1998, pp. 400–401).

  9. See also Chrisman (2008).

  10. Note that the indexical ‘actually’ is necessary for the interpretation of the equivalence sentence to be correct—if John possibly believes that murder is wrong, it is because there is a possible world w in which John is in the mental state that ‘murder is wrong’ expresses here, in the actual world. It does not matter what the words ‘murder is wrong’ mean in w. But ‘actually’ is also problematic: if John possibly believes that Sally believes that murder is wrong, then at some possible world w*, John believes that Sally is in the mental state actually expressed by ‘murder is wrong.’ But then John must have a belief, at w*, about our world (the world which actually obtains, which might be distinct from w*) in order to have, in w*, a belief about Sally’s mental state. Surely this is not right, but we will let that pass here. For more on ‘actually’-rigidification, see Soames (2002 pp, 39–50); for an Expressivist solution to this problem, see Schroeder (2008, Chap. 11). Thanks also to Scott Soames for discussion here.

  11. For a challenge to the assumption that this is the only way to explain the necessity of (2), see Sect. 5.

  12. There are some semantic theories for which this point does not hold. For consider a theory on which the semantic content of a sentence S is the set of possible worlds in which S is true. On such a theory, it would be true that the formulas ‘x is human’ and ‘y is human’ are synonymous. Substituting the names ‘Bob’ and ‘Bill’ for the free variables in the formulas results in ‘Bob is human’ and ‘Bill is human,’ which (on the assumption that Bob and Bill both exist) express necessary truths. Hence the semantic content of each is the set of all possible worlds, and so the sentences are synonymous. But it does not follow that ‘Bob’ and ‘Bill’ are synonymous. This result is a consequence of an objectionable view about semantic content: that all necessarily true sentences are synonymous. That this semantic theory delivers a different verdict on the present issue should be neither surprising nor unsettling. Thanks to Scott Soames for helpful discussion on this point.

  13. It should also be noted here that, strictly speaking, some Realist could, for independent reasons, reject (3). This would not threaten the conclusion that, since Expressivists must reject (3), their view is inconsistent with Realism, even if we consider only the deviant version of Realism which also rejects (3). This is because the deviant Realist could still, without changing her view on fundamental meta-ethical issues, accept (3). She has chosen to reject (3), but this result is not entailed by her meta-ethical theory; the result must be a consequence of a theory she accepts about some other domain. Expressivists cannot say the same thing. This is sufficient for a difference between the views. An analogue of this point applies to the conclusion of the next section. See also Sect. 6.

  14. It has been suggested to me by an anonymous referee that the Expressivist might be committed to accepting that (3*) and (3) are synonymous, yet not be committed to denying (3), for the following reason: she might hold that the expression ‘the mental state actually expressed by ‘S” in (3*) refers to a mental state type, in which case it is plausible to suppose that its referent is both non-linguistic and mind-independent. Thus the Expressivist is committed to the synonymy between (3) and (3*), but is not committed to denying either.

    I think that the Expressivist could make this move and avoid being committed to denying (3). But there will be other Realist sentences she must reject in virtue of the fact that she accepts (C), construed in this way. For instance, take (RB), and substitute for ‘the proposition that S’ the expression ‘the mental state actually expressed by ‘S”. According to (C), (RB) is synonymous with this new expression, so the sentence ’Ted stands in the belief-relation to the mental state actually expressed by ‘S” is a sentence the Expressivist is committed to accepting, since it is synonymous with (RB). But this is a sentence the Realist likely will deny: she might hold that the only things agents stand in the belief-relation to are not mental states, or mental state types.

  15. See Dreier (1996, pp. 47–48) for a related discussion.

  16. Both the general idea and illustrative example were suggested to me by an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies.

  17. See Schroeder (2008, Chap. 7), especially pp. 89–100. For example, the proposition that lying is wrong is the pair of the property of blaming for lying, twice over (other propositions are non-redundant property-pairs in the theory, but are otherwise similar). All there is to standing in the belief-relation to this proposition is bearing the FOR-attitude toward each property in the pair.

  18. For example, a standard Russellian theory on which propositions are structured complexes with objects, properties and logical operations for constituents will not be Expressivist-friendly. Why this is so is an interesting question, since, by following the basic minimalist strategy, Expressivists might be able to accept some sentences about moral properties, such as the sentence ‘x has the property goodness’, on the grounds that they can accept that ‘x is good’ plus a minimalist semantics for the former sentence in terms of the latter. But this does not entail that they can have an account of what propositions which have goodness as a constituent are. This because the minimalist claim about moral properties allows them to accept sentences with the expression ‘the property goodness’ that are equivalent to sentences which predicate goodness of something, such as the sentence ‘x is good’. Minimalism about the property goodness is really minimalism about having the property goodness. But a sentence about a proposition with the property goodness as a constituent is not equivalent to any sentence that predicates goodness of anything. The minimalist reading of sentences about moral properties actually does not capture all the uses of moral property-terms.

  19. The details of the argument for why this is so is the same as before. We first need to note that the second-order sentence ‘∃R: Ted R’s the proposition that S’ (which reads ‘Ted is somehow related to the proposition that S’) is also a necessary consequence of (RB). Expressivists can capture this necessary consequence of (RB) by holding that the second-order sentence means the same as ‘∃R: Ted R’s the mental state actually expressed by ‘S” (which reads ‘Ted is somehow related to the mental state actually expressed by ‘S”). Then, there are claims exactly parallel to P1 and P2, differing only in that they involve the predicate ‘stands in the belief-relation to’ instead of the term ‘the proposition that S’. The argument that the predicate means what ‘is in’ means is structurally identical to the argument we gave that ‘the proposition that S’ means what 'the mental state actually expressed by ‘S” means.

  20. Something stronger can be said: by making minimalist claims about meaning, Expressivists are committed to the parts of the target sentence having whatever features the corresponding parts of the equivalence sentence have. Realists, of course, will not be committed to the parts of the target sentence having all of the same features.

  21. The metaphor is found in Schroeder (2005).

  22. Special thanks go to Mark Schroeder for invaluable comments and discussion about this paper. Thanks also to Scott Soames, Steve Finley, David Manley, Daniel Fogal and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies for comments on earlier drafts, and audiences at the 2008 British Society for Ethical Theory conference at the University of Edinburgh, the 2007 11th Annual Southern California Philosophy Conference, and the 2008 Western Canadian Philosophical Association conference for further helpful comments and discussion.

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Dunaway, B. Minimalist semantics in meta-ethical expressivism. Philos Stud 151, 351–371 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9438-y

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