Being For

Meta‐ethics is a veritable smorgasbord of different views, but since I first sampled it, expressivism has spoken to my palate more than any other view. Of course, like every other view, it is bound to have certain unpleasant after‐tastes (if not resulting in outright food poisoning). Mark Schroeder's recent book Being For is the most systematic study of expressivism to date, and it is a discouraging read for anyone attracted to expressivism. In fact, Schroeder argues that extant expressivist views cannot solve the simplest of problems, e.g., the negation problem (why atomic normative sentences are inconsistent with their negations). However, he goes on to construct a semantic theory for expressivists which he argues can solve many of the problems which other expressivist views cannot solve. Unfortunately, the theory has commitments which should encourage scepticism about its prospects. Indeed, ‘the argument of this book ... constitutes a master argument that expressivism is false’ (p. x). For expressivists, this is worrying news

Argument (complex analysis) · Construct (python library) · Epistemology · Expressivism · Extant taxon · Linguistics · Negation · Normative · Skepticism · Computer Science · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Ethics in medical practice · Philosophy · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment