Against Sonderholm: Still Committed to Expressivism

Expressivism Concerning Epistemic Modals

In this paper, a new argument for an expressivist account of epistemic modals is developed. The argument starts from a puzzle about epistemic modals that Seth Yalcin recently presented. Yalcin’s own solution to the puzzle is rejected and a better explanation is given which is based on expressivism concerning epistemic modals. Furthermore, two alleged problems for expressivism are addressed: fir...

A problem for expressivism

Language, Truth and Logic added expressivism to the inventory of substantive positions in meta-ethics, and the recent defences of versions of it by Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard have enhanced its status as a major position. 1 Ayer presented the doctrine as an improvement on subjectivism – that is, on the doctrine that ethical sentences serve to report attitudes of approval and disapproval –...

Expressivism for Two Voices

I discuss the relationship between the two forms of expressivism defended by Robert Brandom, on one hand, and philosophers in the Humean tradition, such as Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard, on the other. I identify three apparent points of difference between the two programs, but argue that all three are superficial. Both projects benefit from the insights of the other, and the combination is ...

Expressivism and Contrary-forming Negation

A well known challenge faced by any version of metaethical expressivism is to provide an adequate treatment of the so-called Frege-Geach problem. The task is to make sense of logically complex sentences like 'If I insulted the host then I ought to apologize', to do so by making sense of the states of mind such sentences would be used to express, and to preserve the validity of intuitively valid...

Expressivism and Moore’s Paradox: a Reply to Woods