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Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

David Copp
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Bowling Green State University

Extract

Moral realism and antirealist-expressivism are of course incompatible positions. They disagree fundamentally about the nature of moral states of mind, the existence of moral states of affairs and properties, and the nature and role of moral discourse. The central realist view is that a person who has or expresses a moral thought is thereby in, or thereby expresses, a cognitive state of mind; she has or expresses a belief that represents a moral state of affairs in a way that might be accurate or inaccurate. The view of antirealist-expressivism is that such a person is in, or expresses, a conative state of mind, one that consists in a certain kind of attitude or motivational stance toward something, such as an action or a person. Realism holds that moral thoughts have truth conditions and that in some cases these truth conditions are satisfied so that our moral thoughts are true. Antirealist-expressivism holds, to a first approximation, that the distinctive moral content of a moral thought does not have truth conditions.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 2001

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References

1 Compare Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, “The Many Moral Realisms,” in Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, ed., Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 5.Google Scholar

2 Stephen Darwall calls this doctrine “judgment internalism” to distinguish it from other internalist doctrines. See Darwall, Stephen, Impartial Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 5455.Google Scholar Philosophers sometimes propose weakened versions of internalism by specifying that, for instance, any rational person who believed she ought to do something would be relevantly motivated. For an example of this sort of account, see Smith, Michael, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 61.Google Scholar

3 Of course, it is committed to the first half. One subtlety that I need to ignore in this essay is that typical versions of antirealist-expressivism are committed to the second half of the view. Of course, no version is committed to the first (realist) half. Typical forms of antirealist-expressivism are internalist, but realist-expressivism is not (or need not be).

4 The precise location of the line between semantics and pragmatics is controversial. The basic idea, however, is that semantics is concerned with the literal meanings of terms, expressions, sentences, and the like, insofar as their meanings can be determined independently of the contexts in which they are used. Pragmatics is concerned with properties of expressions and the like that are determined by their use, or by the contexts in which they are used. For example, the fact that the sentence “I promise to meet you” can be used to make a promise is a feature of its semantics. However, the question of whether a person has made a promise in uttering the sentence in a given context is a question in pragmatics. General questions about what a context must be like in order for a person to make a promise in uttering the sentence, and questions about what is required in order to use the sentence sincerely to make a promise, are also questions in pragmatics. I am grateful to Steven Davis for help with this distinction.

5 See Blackburn, Simon, “How to Be an Ethical Antirealist,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12 (1988): 361–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar All subsequent references to this essay are to the version reprinted in Darwall, Stephen, Gibbard, Allan, and Railton, Peter, eds., Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 167–78.Google Scholar See also Blackburn, Simon, Essays in Quasi-Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar Allan Gibbard exhibits a temptation toward quasi-realism as well; see Gibbard, Allan, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).Google Scholar For more on Gibbard's views, see Horwich, Paul, “Gibbard's Theory of Norms,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 22, no. 1 (1993): 6178.Google Scholar

6 A deflationist about the term “property” might hold that to say there is a property of rightness is simply to affirm that some things are right. A deflationist about “belief” might hold that to say that a person believes that some things are right is simply to say that the person is disposed to affirm sentences to the effect that some things are right. On views of this kind, an antirealist-expressivist obviously can affirm, consistently, that there is a property of moral rightness and that there are beliefs about the rightness of actions; to affirm these claims would simply be to affirm that some things are right and that some people are disposed to affirm sentences to the effect that some actions are right.

7 As noted in the text, the problem I am addressing is how to distinguish between moral realism and antirealist-expressivism, given a deflationist account of the meaning of “true.” Hartry Field has proposed that the distinction is best drawn in terms of the idea of an “objectively correct” norm. See Field, Hartry, “Disquotational Truth and Factually Defective Discourse,” Philosophical Review 103, no. 3 (1994): 440–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am proposing that the distinction can be drawn in terms of the semantic role of ordinary nonmoral predicates and the idea of a “robust property,” which is in turn explained in terms of the metaphysical status of the referents of ordinary predicate terms. The issues raised by questions about this metaphysical status go beyond the scope of this essay. The vagueness in what I am proposing is due in part to the fact that, as Michael Devitt has stressed, a formulation of the debate between moral realism and antirealist-expressivism ought to be independent of general metaphysical issues about the nature of properties. Among other things, such a formulation ought to allow for a nominalist understanding of talk of “properties,” even though a nominalist would deny that there are any “properties” at all under some understandings of what this would mean. This is why I speak above of “the metaphysical status of the referents of ordinary predicate terms,” and it is why, in the text, I speak of the “semantic role” of such predicate terms. I am attempting to be neutral among various accounts of these matters. See Devitt, Michael, Realism and Truth, 2d ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 302–20, esp. 316–18.Google Scholar

8 A “basic” moral proposition is a proposition that entails, for some moral property M, that something instantiates M. An example is the proposition that capital punishment is wrong. Among nonbasic moral propositions are propositions such as that nothing is morally wrong and that either abortion is wrong or 2 + 2 = 4.

9 The classic sources of speech-act theory are Austin, J. L., How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar; and Searle, John, Speech Acts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For helpful discussion, see Bach, Kent and Harnish, Robert M., Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Davis, Steven, Philosophy and Language (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976), 1627.Google Scholar

10 Stevenson, Charles, “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” Mind 46, no. 181 (1937): 1437CrossRefGoogle Scholar (all subsequent references to this essay are to the version reprinted in Darwall, , Gibbard, , and Railton, , eds., Moral Discourse and Practice, 7182)Google Scholar; Ayer, A. J., Language, Truth, and Logic, 2d ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), 108Google Scholar; Hare, R. M., The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 15Google Scholar; Blackburn, , “How to Be an Ethical Antirealist”Google Scholar; Gibbard, , Wise Choices, Apt Feelings.Google Scholar

11 Stevenson, , “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” 74, 78, 79Google Scholar; Ayer, , Language, Truth, and Logic, 108Google Scholar; Hare, , The Language of Morals, 4, 13, 20, 168–72.Google Scholar

12 Blackburn, , “How to Be an Ethical Antirealist,” 168–69.Google Scholar

13 Gibbard, , Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, 8.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 7, 46, 70. On norm acceptance, see ibid., 55–57.

15 Ibid., 47. Gibbard ultimately says that normative “beliefs” are “much like any other beliefs” (ibid., 100). In his fully developed view, the state of thinking an action rational is more complex than that of accepting norms that permit it. It consists, roughly, in ruling out all combinations of a normative system with a possible state of the world which are such that the normative system would prohibit the action in the given state of the world.

16 Similarly, if I assert something, my sincerity depends on my believing what I say. Moore's paradox reveals that more than just this is involved in the relation between assertion and belief. To see this, consider the Moore-paradoxical sentence, “There is a smokestack in Bowling Green, but I do not believe there is a smokestack in Bowling Green.” If I utter this sentence, my sincerity in saying that there is a smokestack in Bowling Green depends on my believing that there is a smokestack in Bowling Green, which I then say I do not believe. Hence, I undermine my own sincerity. But, more than this, in uttering the Moore-paradoxical sentence, I do not succeed in asserting that there is a smokestack in Bowling Green, because asserting something involves a kind of commitment to belief that I reject in the last half of the utterance. Indeed, it is not clear, other things being equal, what speech-act I perform in uttering this sentence. Compare this case with that of promising. If I promise that p, my sincerity depends on my intending that p, so it would be odd to say, “I promise to build a smokestack in Bowling Green, but I have no intention of building one.” In saying this, I would undermine the sincerity of my own promise. Despite this, however, I might succeed in promising, for I might obligate myself to build a smokestack even though what I say implies that my promise is insincere. Hence, it seems, the assertion that p involves a commitment to believing that p that cannot be canceled without undermining the assertion. In contrast, although the promise that p involves a kind of commitment to intending that p, it appears that this commitment can be canceled without undermining the promise, even though canceling it does undermine the sincerity of the promise. See Grice, Paul, Studies in the Ways of Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 42.Google Scholar Kent Bach and Robert Harnish provide an account of assertion that elegantly explains why it is that a person who says that p, and then adds that he does not believe that p, would fail thereby to assert that p. See Bach, and Harnish, , Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, 1516.Google Scholar

17 Hare, Compare, The Language of Morals, 10.Google Scholar

18 Gibbard, , Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, 84.Google Scholar

19 Smith, , The Moral Problem, 7.Google Scholar

20 Janice Dowell helped me to think through Smith's example.

21 Steven Davis urged me, in conversation, to note cases of this kind.

22 Hare, , The Language of Morals, 124–26, 167 ff.Google Scholar See also Smith, , The Moral Problem, 6871.Google Scholar

23 For Hare, the amoralist does not make a moral judgment. Rather, he expresses a belief about the moral judgments of other people (Hare, , The Language of Morals, 124Google Scholar), or perhaps a belief about relevant local moral standards, such as the belief that local moral standards require giving to famine relief (ibid., 167). Therefore, on Hare's view, to deny what the amoralist says would be to deny something of this kind. It would not be to make a moral judgment, and hence it would not be to judge that one morally ought not give to famine relief. This is what strikes me as implausible. A full discussion of these matters is outside the scope of this essay.

24 Frege, Gottlob, “On Sense and Meaning,” in Frege, Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, ed. McGuinness, Brian (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 161Google Scholar; Frege, Gottlob, “Concept and Object,”Google Scholar in Frege, , Collected Papers, 185Google Scholar; Frege, Gottlob, “Thoughts,”Google Scholar in Frege, , Collected Papers, 357.Google Scholar See also Frege, Gottlob, “Separating a Thought from Its Trappings,” in Frege, Posthumous Writings, ed. Kambartel, Friedrich and Kaulbach, Friedrich (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 140–41Google Scholar; and Frege, Gottlob, “A Brief Survey of My Logical Doctrines,”Google Scholar in Frege, , Posthumous Writings, 197–98.Google Scholar I owe these references to Janice Dowell and Kent Bach.

25 Recall that a basic moral proposition is a proposition that entails that something in stantiates M, where M is a moral property. See note 8 above.

26 Frege, , “Separating a Thought from Its Trappings,” 140–41.Google Scholar This paragraph and the next follow Frege's discussion.

27 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed., s.v. “cur.” Kent Bach and Thomas E. Hill, Jr., drew my attention, in conversation, to worries about whether the meaning of “cur” in contemporary English undermined the effectiveness of Frege's example.

28 Frege, , “A Brief Survey of My Logical Doctrines,” 197–98.Google Scholar I think it would be preferable to say that the coloring is a property of the sentence used to state the thought rather than a property of the thought itself.

29 Michael Dummett would say, I think, that the relevant difference between “cur” and “mongrel dog” is to be accounted for in “the theory of force,” which he takes to be part of the theory of meaning along with the theory of reference and the theory of sense. See Dummett, Michael, “What Is a Theory of Meaning? (II),” in Dummett, , The Seas of Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 40, 87.Google Scholar

30 Compare Stevenson on the expressions “elderly spinster” and “old maid.” Stevenson, , “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” 77.Google Scholar

31 Frege, , “Separating a Thought from Its Trappings,” 141.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 140.

33 Grice holds that “conversational implicatures” are cancelable but “conventional implicatures” are not. I am disagreeing with him, in effect, since I think coloring is an example of conventional implicature. However, I am using the term “admissible” in a less strict sense than Grice does. Grice, , Studies in the Ways of Words, 44, 39 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

34 Kent Bach suggested to me in conversation that it might be useful to distinguish between two kinds of pejorative terms. There are (a) terms, such as “Yankee” and “cur,” that are used to refer contemptuously to a class of persons or things such that their use typically expresses or implies contempt for all persons or things in that class; and (b) terms, such as “jerk,” that are used to refer contemptuously to persons or things such that their use implies that the speaker has contempt for the person or thing explicitly referred to, but does not imply that she has contempt for anyone or anything else. The remark “Alice is a Yankee” implies that the speaker has contempt for Americans in general as well as for Alice, but the remark “Alice is a jerk” only implies contempt for Alice. Compare “If Alice shows up at the Fourth of July celebration, she is a jerk” with “If Alice shows up at the Fourth of July celebration, she is a Yankee.”

35 Grice uses the notion of detachability to distinguish between “conventional” and “non-conventional” implicatures. Grice, , Studies in the Ways of Words, 39, 4344.Google Scholar

36 I shall not attempt to specify exactly which sentences these are.

37 Neale, Stephen, “Coloring and Composition,” in Murasagi, Kumiko and Stainton, Robert, eds., Philosophy and Linguistics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 7273.Google Scholar I owe this reference to Kent Bach.

38 Ibid., 60–61.

39 Ibid., 75 and throughout. See Bach, Kent, “The Myth of Conventional Implicature,” Linguistics and Philosophy 22, no. 4 (1999): 327–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bach also introduces a multiple-propositions framework. This use of the terms “primary” and “secondary” is his. The multiple-propositions framework is quite flexible. Neale holds that the context in which a sentence is uttered, and the issues that are central in the conversation, can affect whether the falsity of a secondary proposition would lead us to view a speaker's assertion as false. Neale, , “Coloring and Composition,” 75.Google Scholar

40 On this point, see Grice, , Studies in the Ways of Words, 41, 46, 86Google Scholar; Bach, , “The Myth of Conventional Implicature”;Google Scholar and Neale, , “Coloring and Composition,” 5361.Google Scholar

41 Neale, , “Coloring and Composition,” 53.Google Scholar

42 On conversational implicature, see Grice, , Studies in the Ways of Words, 2257.Google Scholar See also Bach, and Harnish, , Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts, 6264Google Scholar; Bach, , “The Myth of Conventional Implicature,” 327Google Scholar; and Neale, , “Coloring and Composition,” 5361.Google Scholar

43 Grice, , Studies in the Ways of Words, 42.Google Scholar

44 Moore's paradox shows that we cannot successfully assert that p while canceling the implication that we believe that p. And we cannot detach the implication that we believe that p by carefully choosing the words we use to assert that p. See ibid.; on Moore's paradox, see note 16 above.

45 It can be difficult to categorize a philosopher's view of these matters. Some of the things said by Jamie Dreier suggest, for example, that his version of “speaker relativism” is an entailment view. However, the better interpretation is surely that it is either a conversational-implicature view or a conventional-implicature view. It is also possible that he holds a view of kind (3c). See Dreier, James, “Internalism and Speaker Relativism,” Ethics 101, no. 1 (1990): 626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Copp, David, Morality, Normativity, and Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 35.Google Scholar

47 Bach, , “The Myth of Conventional Implicature.”Google Scholar Bach does not consider coloring; see ibid., 332 n. 8.

48 Jackson, Frank and Pettit, Philip, “A Problem for Expressivism,” Analysis 58, no. 4 (1998): 239–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I owe this reference to Kent Bach.

49 The quoted phrases are from Grice, , Studies in the Ways of Words, 362, 365.Google Scholar

50 I have elaborated on and defended the position I present in the next few paragraphs in Copp, David, Morality, Normativity, and Society.Google Scholar For a brief introduction to this position, see Copp, David, “Does Moral Theory Need the Concept of Society?Analyse et Kritik 19 (1997): 189212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a reply to some objections, see Copp, David, “Morality and Society—The True and the Nasty: Reply to Leist,” Analyse et Kritik 20 (1998): 3045.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 This position raises questions about the individuation of propositions and beliefs, and about the nature of philosophical analysis, that are beyond the scope of this essay. In the text, I try to finesse these issues. For discussion, see King, Jeffrey C., “What Is a Philosophical Analysis?Philosophical Studies 90, no. 2 (1998): 155–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Recall that a basic moral proposition is a proposition that entails that something instantiates M, where M is a moral property. In Copp, , Morality, Normativity, and SocietyGoogle Scholar, I called basic moral propositions “paradigmatic.” Something that is a standard or norm in my sense need not be embedded in the culture, nor need it be anything that people actually pay attention to in deciding how to live. A standard is the practical analogue of a proposition.

52 See the references cited in note 50 above.

53 See Copp, , Morality, Normativity, and Society, 84.Google Scholar

54 Gibbard, , Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, 33.Google Scholar

55 Bratman, Michael, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

56 I am grateful to Justin D'Arms, Janice Dowell, Don Hubin, Steven Rieber, David Sobel, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, and David Velleman for help with the arguments in this section.

57 The example I use here is similar to Michael Stacker's example of the retired politician. See Stocker, Michael, “Desiring the Bad: An Essay in Moral Psychology,” Journal of Philosophy 76, no. 12 (1979): 741.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 David Sobel pointed this out in discussion.

59 Frege, , “Separating a Thought from Its Trappings,” 141.Google Scholar

60 I was helped with these ideas by discussions with Don Hubin, Steven Rieber, and David Velleman.

61 There is a complication here that I do not want to address in the text. On my view, a person who uses moral terms to assert a basic moral proposition M conventionally implicates that she subscribes to a corresponding standard. Suppose that an individual decolors the moral terms in M by placing them in scare-quotes. On my view, she still asserts that M, for her terms still have their original core meaning. It is part of my view, however, that a person who asserts a basic moral proposition M conversationally implicates that she subscribes to a corresponding moral standard, other things being equal. On my view, then, it appears that the person still implicates that she subscribes to a corresponding moral standard, and that therefore she has not in fact managed to detach the implication by decoloring her terms. If this is correct, it threatens my thesis that moral terms are colored in the first place. The solution to this problem is that other things are not equal when one uses a decolored moral term. In decoloring a colored term, the use of which standardly implicates that p, one both detaches and cancels the implication that p. To see this, consider the term “heretical,” which I take to be colored. To call a view heretical is, I suppose, to implicate conventionally one's disapproval of those who hold the view. Now suppose that I am engaged in a discussion of the conditions under which a religious view would count as heretical. The various things I say might implicate conversationally that I take heresies seriously, so that I disapprove of people who hold heretical views. My use of the term would conventionally implicate the same thing. However, if I were to decolor the term by placing it in scare-quotes, I would not only detach the conventional implication, but would also cancel the conversational implication. In similar fashion, if I called certain views “so-called heresies,” I would not implicate that I disapprove of those who hold them.

62 Smith does not make this mistake.

63 Similarly, a person who calls a dog a “cur” in stating a belief about the dog thereby expresses contempt for the dog, but it does not follow that she must actually have such contempt in order to have the belief she states.

64 Blackburn, , “How to Be an Ethical Antirealist” 173.Google Scholar See also ibid., 168–69.

65 Hare, , The Language of Morals, 146.Google Scholar See also Stevenson, , “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms,” 78.Google Scholar

66 Hare, , The Language of Morals, 148–49.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., 145.

68 Ibid., 109–10, 117–18, 118–20. In these passages, Hare appears to see that he needs to distinguish between the question “What do you mean, good?” and the question “What does ‘good’ mean?” The former asks about speaker's meaning, the latter about the meaning of the term.

69 Stephen Barker has recently proposed an expressivist view according to which a person making a moral assertion that M both asserts some nonmoral empirical proposition and conventionally implicates that she has a conative or motivational state C-M. I am happy enough with the second part of Barker's proposal, but according to the first part, a person making a moral judgment does not express a moral belief—instead, she expresses an ordinary empirical belief. This strikes me as quite implausible. Barker agrees with realist-expressivism that moral terms refer to robust properties, but he has no room in his account for the existence of robust moral properties. For this reason, his view qualifies as a kind of antirealist-expressivism rather than a kind of realist-expressivism. See Barker, Stephen J., “Is Value Content a Component of Conventional Implicature?Analysis 60, no. 3 (2000): 268–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I owe this reference to Kent Bach.

70 Gibbard, , Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, 33.Google Scholar