Deciding for Others: An Expressivist Theory of Normative Judgment

Abstract

This paper develops a new form of metaethical expressivism according to which the normative judgment that X should Φ consists in a decision that X Φ. When the judgment is first‐personal—e.g., my judgment that I should Φ—the view is similar to Gibbard’s plan expressivism, though the state I call “decision” differs somewhat from a Gibbard‐style plan. The deep difference between the views shows in the account of third‐personal judgments. Gibbard construes the judgment that Mary should Φ as a de se plan on the thinker’s part to Φ if she turns out to be Mary (the Subtle View). I construe the judgment as a decision for Mary that Mary Φ (the Simple View). The main argument for Simple Plan Expressivism is that it solves problems for Gibbard’s approach, resonates with a new and interesting moral psychology, and better makes sense of certain independently plausible constraints on normative judgment. In the end I argue that this account of normative judgment has implications for first‐order ethics, implying in particular that rational egoism as standardly formulated is incoherent.

Expressivism and moral independence

“…what to do and how to live), but there is no deep syntactic distinction between infinitival and other noun phrases. Indeed, we can even make sense of what it is to plan or decide that p, allowing us to plan or decide for others (Ayars, 2022). But I am not committed to there being any deep distinction between planning content and propositional content; in the accounts of plans ruling each other out and of propositional content ruling out planning content that follow, plans will essentially be identified with the set of worlds in which the plan is carried out.…”

Why Plan-Expressivists Can’t Pick Up the Moral Slack

“…When I make a plan for what to do if I am in Jane's circumstances, I am making a hypothetical plan for what to do in that set of worlds whose center is Jane, where Jane's descriptive circumstances are those she is actually in. 11 In fact, Ayars (2021) more than Gibbard insists on a distinction between plans and future intentions. One might form a future intention always to go left in a Buridan's Ass case, but a "plan" of this sort is not a "decision" in Ayars' sense.…”

“…I adapt the term fromAyars (2021).4 Nothing hinges on the fact that, in my examples, it is one and the same act-type, φ, which each of two agents should perform, but which they cannot both perform. The problem I raise clearly generalizes to cases involving two acttypes, A's φ-ing and B's ψ-ing, which each should be performed, but cannot simultaneously be performed.5 CompareVan Roojen (1996: 322): "We have noted a recurring problem [for expressivists], that the resources used to explain inconsistency where all agree there is inconsistency generate inconsistency where there seems to be none.…”