Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-18T12:49:11.294Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Expressivism, meaning, and all that

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sebastian Köhler*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy and Law, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Frankfurt, Germany

Abstract

It has recently been suggested that meta-normative expressivism is best seen as a meta-semantic, rather than a semantic view. One strong motivation for this is that expressivism becomes, thereby, compatible with truth-conditional semantics. While this approach is promising, however, many of its details are still unexplored. One issue that still needs to be explored in particular, is what accounts of propositional contents are open to meta-semantic expressivists. This paper makes progress on this issue by developing an expressivist-friendly deflationary account of such contents.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baker, Derek, and Woods, Jack. 2015. “How Expressivists Can and Should Explain Inconsistency.” Ethics 125: 391424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, Simon. 1993. “Attitudes and Contents.” In Essays in Quasi-Realism, edited by Blackburn, Simon, 182197. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Blackburn, Simon. 1998. Ruling Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Block, Ned. 1986. “Advertisement for a Semantics for Psychology.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10: 615678.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandom, Robert. 1994. Making It Explicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Charlow, Nate. 2014. “The Problem with the Frege–Geach Problem.” Philosophical Studies 167(3): 635665. doi: 10.1007/s11098-013-0119-5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charlow, Nate. 2015. “Prospects for an Expressivist Theory of Meaning.” Philosophers’ Imprint 15(23): 143.Google Scholar
Chrisman, Matthew. 2016. The Meaning of “Ought”: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald. 1990. “The Structure and Content of Truth.” Journal of Philosophy 87(6): 279328. 10.2307/2026863CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, Hartry. 1978. “Mental representation.” Erkenntnis 13(1): 961. doi: 10.1007/BF00160888.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, Hartry. 1994. “Deflationist Views of Meaning and Content.” Mind 103(411): 249285. 10.1093/mind/103.411.249CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, Hartry. 2001. “Attributions of Meaning and Content.” In Truth and the Absence of Fact, edited by Field, Hartry, 157174. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/0199242895.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbard, Allan. 2003. Thinking How to Live. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grover, Dorothy L., Camp, Joseph L., and Belnap, Nuel D.. 1975. “A Prosentential Theory of Truth.” Philosophical Studies 27(2): 73125. doi: 10.1007/BF01209340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, Gilbert. 1999. “(Nonsolipsistic) Conceptual Role Semantics.” In Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind, edited by Harman, Gilbert, 207232. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/0198238029.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, Terence, and Timmons, Mark. 2006. “Cognitivist Expressivism.” In Metaethics after Moore, edited by Horgan, Terry and Timmons, Mark, 255298. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199269914.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, Paul. 1998a. Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/019823824X.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, Paul. 1998b. Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/0198752237.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köhler, Sebastian. 2017. “Expressivism, Belief, And All That.” The Journal of Philosophy 114(4): 189207. 10.5840/jphil2017114416CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Huw. 1988. Facts and the Function of Truth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Price, Huw. 2013. Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511842498CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramsey, Frank. 1927. “Facts and Propositions.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7(1): 153206. 10.1093/aristoteliansupp/7.1.153CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ridge, Michael. 2014. Impassioned Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199682669.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, Gideon. 1998. “Blackburn's Essays in Quasi-Realism.” Noûs 32: 386405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shiffer, Stephen. 1996. “Language-Created, Language-Independent Entities.” Philosophical Topics 24(1): 149167. 10.5840/philtopics199624117CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffer, Stephen. 2003. The Things We Mean. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/0199257760.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. 2008. Being For: Evaluating the Semantic Program of Expressivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199534654.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. 2010. Noncognitivism in Ethics. New York: Rougtledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. 2013. “Two Roles for Propositions: Cause for Divorce?Noûs 47: 409430. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0068.2011.00833.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid. 1954. “Some Reflections on Language Games.” Philosophy of Science 21(3): 204228. 10.1086/287344CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid. 1969. “Language as Thought and as Communication.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 29: 417437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sellars, Wilfrid. 1974. “Meaning as Functional Classifications.” Synthese 27: 417437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silk, Alex. 2013. “Truth Conditions and the Meanings of Ethical Terms.” In Oxford Studies in Metaethics, edited by Shafer-Landau, Russ, Vol. 8, 195222. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedgwood, Ralph. 2008. The Nature of Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Michael. 1999. “Meaning and Deflationary Truth.” Journal of Philosophy 96: 545564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar