Troubles with Horgan and Timmons' nondescriptivist cognitivism
Grazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1):235-255 (2002)
| Abstract | Emotivist, or non-descriptivist metaethical theories hold that value-statements do not function by describing special value-facts, but are the mere expressions of naturalistically describable motivational states of (valuing) agents. Non-descriptivism has typically been combined with the claim that value-statements are non-cognitive: they are not the manifestations of genuine belief states. However, all the linguistic, logical and phenomenological evidence indicates that value-statements are cognitive. Non-descriptivism then has a problem. Horgan and Timmons propose to solve it by boldly combining a non-descriptivist thesis about value with the claim that value-judgements are after all cognitive. Although possessing many attractive features, I argue that their framework fails to deliver the promised results; it suffers from a certain internal incoherence about the concept of content and mis-characterizes the descriptive/non-descriptive content distinction required by nondescriptivism | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesMark Timmons (1999). Morality Without Foundations: A Defense of Ethical Contextualism. Oxford University Press.
Terence Horgan & Mark Timmons (1992). Troubles for New Wave Moral Semantics: The 'Open Question Argument' Revived. Philosophical Papers 21 (3):153-175.
Heimir Geirsson (2005). Moral Twin-Earth and Semantic Moral Realism. Erkenntnis 62 (3):353 - 378.
Neil Levy (2011). Moore on Twin Earth. Erkenntnis 75 (1):137-146.
Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (1996). Troubles for Michael Smith's Metaethical Rationalism. Philosophical Papers 25 (3):203-231.
Brad Majors (2008). Cognitivist Expressivism and the Nature of Belief. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (3):279 - 293.
Jeff Wisdom (2009). A Defense of Descriptive Moral Content. Southern Journal of Philosophy 47 (3):285-300.
Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons (2000). Nondescriptivist Cognitivism: Framework for a New Metaethic. Philosophical Papers 29 (2):121-153.
Josep E. Corbí (2002). The Relevance of Moral Disagreement. Some Worries About Nondescriptivist Cognitivism. Grazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1):217-233.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads48 ( #22,348 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)5 ( #15,093 of 548,984 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
