Woods III, JE orcid.org/0000-0001-8144-0910 (2014) Expressivism and Moore's Paradox. Philosophers' Imprint, 14. 5. pp. 1-12.
Abstract
I argue against expressivism as a descriptive account of moral language. I do this by leveraging features of the connection between ordinary assertion and belief to test the putative connection between moral assertion and various non-cognitive states. Expressivists explain the expression relation which obtains between sincere moral assertion and the conative or affective attitude thereby expressed by appeal to the relation which obtains between sincere assertion and thereby expressed belief. In fact, they often explicitly take these relations to be the same. If the relations really are identical and if expressivism is correct, we should find Moore-paradoxical constructions where we deny that we possess certain non-cognitive attitudes. We do not. Hence either the relations are distinct or expressivism is incorrect as a descriptive account of moral language. I favor the latter. A number of objections are canvassed and rejected.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014, Jack Woods. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License |
Keywords: | Expressivism; Moore's Paradox; Assertion |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 Jan 2017 11:40 |
Last Modified: | 18 Nov 2020 14:27 |
Published Version: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0014.005 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Michigan Publishing |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:108299 |