Varieties of Expressivism

Abstract

After offering a characterization of what unites versions of 'expressivism', we highlight a number of dimensions along which expressivist views should be distinguished. We then separate four theses often associated with expressivisma positive expressivist thesis, a positive constitutivist thesis, a negative ontological thesis, and a negative semantic thesisand describe how traditional expressivists have attempted to incorporate them. We argue that expressivism in its traditional form may be fatally flawed, but that expressivists nonetheless have the resources for preserving what is essential to their view. These resources comprise a re-configuring of expressivism, the result of which is the view we call 'neo-expressivism'. After illustrating how the neo-expressivist model works in the case of avowals and ethical claims, we explain how it avoids the problems of traditional expressivism.

Expressivism and realist explanations

“…Some of these views articulate the expressive function of normative discourse in pragmatic terms, e.g. Bar-On and Chrisman (2009), Bar-On (2012), Bar-On and Sias (2013), and Yalcin (2012). Others restate expressivism as a meta-semantic view, i.e.…”

The Logical Possibility of Moral Dilemmas in Expressivist Semantics

“…7 For this reason, Schroeder's expressivist semantics is worth exploring also for those who are attracted to the recent movements of applying the expressivist idea to other types of discourse than the ethical. See e.g., Bar-On and Sias (2013) for discussion. 8 Also, it should be noted that the overall aim of Schroeder's book Being For is to illustrate the costs of ethical expressivism (see Preface).…”

Más allá de Geach: un lugar para los expresivismos

“…Entre otras versiones. 6 De acuerdo con la caracterización clásica, lo que permite que toda esta gama de posiciones sea agrupada bajo la misma etiqueta de expresivismo no es una tesis específica acerca de cuál o cuáles estados conativos específicos expresa un tipo de expresión, sino la tesis más general según la cual hay tipos de expresiones por medio de los cuales los hablantes expresan estados mentales que no tienen como objetivo describir el mundo (Schroeder, 2008(Schroeder, , 2015Bar-On y Sias, 2013;Richard, 2015;Pérez Carballo y Santorio, 2016;Simpson, 2020). Este rasgo hace que, la mayoría de las veces, el expresivista clásico defienda que este tipo de expresiones no son usadas para decir algo verdadero o falso (cfr.…”