Representation, Deflationism, and the Question of Realism

Abstract

How can we distinguish between quasi-realist expressivism and normative realism? The most promising answer to this question is the “explanation” explanation proposed by Dreier (2004), Simpson (2018), and others: the two views might agree in their claims about truth and objectivity, or even in their attributions of semantic content to normative sentences, but they disagree about how to explain normative meaning. Realists explain meaning by invoking normative facts and properties, or representational relations between normative language and the world, the thought goes, while expressivists appeal instead to desire-like mental states in their explanations of meaning. However, I argue that, if we adopt a deflationary approach to representation and other related notions, there need be no such explanatory divide between expressivism and anything recognizable as a plausible notion of normative realism. Any alleged explanatory criterion for realism will either be incompatible with deflationism, or it will fail to capture some standard versions of normative realism. I conclude that, in a deflationary framework, expressivism is compatible with genuine realism.

The Problems of Creeping Minimalism

“…But, first, there is substantial debate over whether explanationist solutions to the PCM are compatible with minimalism. For example, as Taylor (2020) and Golub (2021) have argued, representationalist explanations of meaning seem incompatible with a minimalist framework for a domain, since such frameworks deny any explanatory role for representational relations like truth and reference. If so, then explanationism will be a parochial solution to (2) and, as such, no counterexample to (P1).…”

Should expressivists go global?

“…Relatively little has explicitly been said to connect the two, though recent debates about the problem have drawn connections. SeeDreier (2018);Golub (2021);Simpson (2020a).…”