Two nondescriptivist views of normative and evaluative statements

Chrisman, Matthew

doi:10.1080/00455091.2018.1432400

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…SeeStreet (2010) andBagnoli (2021) for discussion. The view I sketch here is not intended as a version of constructivism, but it might be consistent with some forms of constructivism.4 I tell a different story with a similar conclusion inChrisman (2010Chrisman ( , 2018 exploring other areas of the metaethical terrain.…”

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confidence: 81%

Inferentialism as an Alternative to Expressivism

Chrisman¹

2023

Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 18

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Normative discourse includes statements which appear to be truth-apt expressions of normative beliefs. But normative oughts do not seem to fit cleanly amongst the natural facts. This makes many naturalistically-inclined philosophers sympathetic to some form of the expressivist view that normative statements get their meaning from how they express desire-like attitudes. However, there are serious semantic challenges for expressivism, which lead many other philosophers to accept the idea that normative statements are representational of reality after all. This chapter presents third way that derives from the general program in the theory of meaning which emphasizes the commissive role of language over any descriptive or expressive roles. Here this emphasis is used to sketch a version of metaethical inferentialism and contrast it with expressivism. The chapter concludes with some observations about new perspectives this view offers on three other issues in metaethics.

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confidence: 81%

Inferentialism as an Alternative to Expressivism

Chrisman¹

2023

Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 18

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“…32 Cf. Hare, The Language of Morals,Blackburn,Ruling Passions,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68]110. 33 Raz,The Concept of a Legal System,235.…”

Section: Diverse Uses and Descriptive Semanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But he proposes that the commitments affirmed by "genuinely normative" uses could "be conceived as commitments to reason practically in certain ways. " 68 The key idea is that the general metasemantic function of ought is still the same across these local differences. Tiefensee similarly proposes to understand evaluative terms such as good in terms of a general metaconceptual function of structuring and explaining the legitimacy of certain language exit transitions to intentions, actions, and so on.69 Transposed to the deontic key of this paper, this is to analyze ought as a linguistic instrument for explicating certain commitment structures.…”

Section: Inferentialist Metasemanticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical Commitment in Normative Discourse

Väyrynen

2022

JESP

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Many normative judgments play a practical role in our thought. This paper concerns how their practical role is reflected in language. It is natural to wonder whether the phenomenon is semantic or pragmatic. The standard assumption in moral philosophy is that at least terms which can be used to express “thin” normative concepts – such as good, right, and ought – are associated with certain practical roles somehow as a matter of meaning. But this view is rarely given explicit defense or even articulation. I’ll consider several versions of the view, and argue that even the most promising among them are problematic. Terms like ought are often used in ways where their customary practical role is absent. Such cases give us a choice: either offer some plausible explanation of why the relevant practical upshots don’t show up in these cases despite featuring in our semantic theory for these expressions, or else don’t build them into that theory. I argue that plausible explanations of the requisite sort aren’t forthcoming in either descriptive semantics or metasemantics for normative language. In closing I briefly consider the prospects for a pragmatic account of the phenomenon and some broader ramifications for metaethics and the philosophy of normativity.

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“…But that won't do. "Ought" is best understood in this context as a modal operator (Chrisman 2018). In a deontic modal context, "not-ought-not P" is not equivalent to "ought P." If anything, it would be equivalent to "may P" (i.e., "not obligatory that not P" = "permissible that P" or ¬☐¬p = ♢p).…”

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confidence: 99%

The Validity of the Argument from Inductive Risk

Brown,

Stegenga

2023

Can. J. of Philosophy

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Joyce Havstad has argued in this journal that the argument from inductive risk is deductively valid and sound. As far as we know, this is the best reconstruction of the argument in the literature. Unfortunately, it suffers from a small flaw that renders the argument invalid. We identify this flaw, show that it is superficial, and show that a small amendment to the argument rescues the claim of its validity.

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Two nondescriptivist views of normative and evaluative statements

Cited by 7 publications

References 19 publications

Inferentialism as an Alternative to Expressivism

Inferentialism as an Alternative to Expressivism

Practical Commitment in Normative Discourse

The Validity of the Argument from Inductive Risk

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