Disciplined Syntacticism and Moral Expressivism

Lenman, James

doi:10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00242.x

Cited by 39 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 32 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…María José Frápolli and Neftalí Villanueva 476 truth-evaluable statement (Lenman 2003). This claim has nothing to do with the distinction proposed in HOF, but more to do with ND and TCS, as explained in the following sections.…”

Section: Minimal Expressivism 475mentioning

confidence: 97%

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Minimal Expressivism

Frápolli

Fernández

2012

Dialectica

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The purpose of this paper is twofold: first we outline a version of non‐descriptivism, ‘minimal expressivism’, leaving aside certain long‐standing problems associated with conventional expressivist views. Second, we examine the way in which familiar expressivist results can be accommodated within this framework, through a particular interpretation that the expressive realm lends to a theory of meaning. Expressivist theories of meaning address only a portion of the classical problems attributed to this position when they seek to explain why the expressions they deal with have a given meaning. A position can nevertheless be termed ‘expressivist’ – in the minimal sense that we favor – based simply on the following key features of the meaning of these expressions: they can be used as functions of propositions, and they are not used to describe the way the world is.

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Section: Minimal Expressivism 475mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Their use is no different from other expressions that render “truth‐apt” sentences, i.e. sentences that can be used to make a truth‐evaluable statement (Lenman ). This claim has nothing to do with the distinction proposed in HOF, but more to do with ND and TCS, as explained in the following sections.…”

Section: One Small Obstacle Out Of the Waymentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimal Expressivism

Frápolli

Fernández

2012

Dialectica

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“…A. Richards (1923), Bertrand Russell (see Pigden, 2003), W. H. F. Barnes (1933), A. J. Ayer (1946;1949), Rudolf Carnap (1937), C. L. Stevenson (1937;1944), Hare (1952;1963;1981), Simon Blackburn (1984;1993;, Alan Gibbard (1990;, O'Leary-Hawthorne and Price (1996), James Dreier (1999), Max Kölbel (1997;, Lenman (2003), Kalderon (2005), Horgan and Timmons (2000), Ridge (2006), Boisvert (2008), and Schroeder (2010). DOI: 10.1111/phin.12025 Philosophical Investigations 37:1 January 2014 ISSN 0190-0536 of horror, or written with the addition of some special exclamation marks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Against Moral Intellectualism

Adams

2013

Philosophical Investigations

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This paper argues that non‐cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under‐explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine‐grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non‐cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non‐cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non‐cognitivism in the first place. One significant pay‐off of this reconceived formulation of the cognitivism/non‐cognitivism distinction is that it reveals what it would take to properly appreciate the place of virtue ethics in contemporary metaethical debates.

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“…With these constraints in mind, I wish to discuss a recent suggestion: that robust beliefs aim at truth (Lenman 2003;Lillehammer 2002). For a particular belief whose content is captured by the syntactically disciplined sentence ‗p', to aim at truth is for the believer to aim to have that belief only if that content is true (Velleman 2000).…”

Section: Overcoming Inconsistencymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Moral Belief Problem

Sinclair

2006

Ratio

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The moral belief problem is that of reconciling expressivism in ethics with both minimalism in the philosophy of language and the syntactic discipline of moral sentences. It is argued that the problem can be solved by distinguishing minimal and robust senses of belief, where a minimal belief is any state of mind expressed by sincere assertoric use of a syntactically disciplined sentence and a robust belief is a minimal belief with some additional property R. Two attempts to specify R are discussed, both based on the thought that beliefs are states that aim at truth. According to the first, robust beliefs are criticisable to the extent that their content fails to match the state of the world. This sense fails to distinguish robust beliefs from minimal beliefs. According to the second, robust beliefs function to have their content match the state of the world. This sense succeeds in distinguishing robust beliefs from minimal beliefs. The conclusion is that the debate concerning the cognitive status of moral convictions needs to address the issue of the function of moral convictions. Evolutionary theorising may be relevant, but will not be decisive, to answering this question.-The Moral Belief Problem‖ by Neil Sinclair 2 An inconsistent triadThe following three propositions are apparently mutually inconsistent:(1) Moral sentences are syntactically disciplined. This claim has two components: (1a) Moral sentences are syntactically sophisticated, that is, they are capable of significant embedding in negations, conditionals, propositional attitude operators and other subsentential constructions.(1b) Moral sentences are disciplined, that is, they are subject to clear standards of appropriate and inappropriate usage.(2) There is a conceptually necessary connection between a sentence being syntactically disciplined and sincere assertoric use of that sentence serving to express a belief (whose content is captured by such usage). This claim has two components:(2a) There is a conceptually necessary connection between a sentence being syntactically disciplined and that sentence being truth-apt.(2b) There is a conceptually necessary connection between a sentence being truth-apt and sincere assertoric use of that sentence serving to express a belief (whose content is captured by such usage).(3) Moral sentences in their sincere assertoric uses do not serve to express beliefs (whose content is captured by such usage). Rather, they serve to express some affective attitude of the agent, such as an emotion, preference or practical stance.-The Moral Belief Problem‖ by Neil Sinclair 3The first claim -moral syntacticism -is supported by simple reflection on our actual use of moral sentences, which readily feature in negations, conditionals and other such constructions (syntactic sophistication) and are subject to clear standards of appropriate usage (discipline). In this, moral sentences contrast with sentences such as 'Ouch!', which are not syntactically sophisticated and sentences of a private language, which (if Wittgenstein...

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Disciplined Syntacticism and Moral Expressivism

Cited by 39 publications

References 32 publications

Minimal Expressivism

Minimal Expressivism

Against Moral Intellectualism

The Moral Belief Problem

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