N.º 74 (2026): Número en curso
Artículos

Expressivists Beware—Moral Judgments Do Not Aim at a Deflationary Truth

PDF (Inglês)
  • Rodrigo Valencia-Pacheco
Rodrigo Valencia-Pacheco
University of Leeds

Publicado 2025-09-30

Palavras-chave

  • expressivism,
  • interpretationism,
  • deflationism,
  • metaethics,
  • moral beliefs,
  • aiming at truth,
  • propositional attitudes,
  • non-representational belief,
  • desire-like state,
  • Brown
    • ...Mais
    Menos

Direitos de Autor (c) 2025 Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía

Creative Commons License

Este trabalho encontra-se publicado com a Licença Internacional Creative Commons Atribuição-NãoComercial-SemDerivações 4.0.

Como Citar

Valencia-Pacheco, R. (2025). Expressivists Beware—Moral Judgments Do Not Aim at a Deflationary Truth. Tópicos, Revista De Filosofía, 74, 45-64. https://doi.org/10.21555/top.v740.3093
Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC

Resumo

Brown (2022) has recently argued that metaethical expressivists should adopt an interpretationist account of propositional attitudes. Expressivism has traditionally been the view that moral judgments are best understood as desire-like states with a primarily practical function of guiding and producing actions. Most problems for expressivists, however, come from the fact that moral judgments have many belief-like properties: being truth evaluable, epistemically evaluable, embeddable in complex truth-functional constructions, etc. By adopting Brown’s proposal, expressivists would avoid several of these problems since they could claim that moral judgments are just beliefs but of a non-representational variety. In this article, I argue that, while promising, this view has a substantial problem. A crucial element of the rationalising interpretation is that beliefs are governed by a norm of aiming at truth. But contrary to what Brown suggests, deflationist accounts of truth cannot help expressivists explain why moral judgments are also subject to this norm. 

PDF (Inglês)

Downloads

Os dados de download ainda não estão disponíveis.

Referências

  1. Alston, W. P. (2005). Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501720574
  2. Armour-Garb, B., Stoljar, D., & Woodbridge, J. (2021). Deflationism About Truth. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/truth-deflationary/
  3. Beddor, B. (2019). Non-Cognitivism and Epistemic Evaluations. Philosophers’ Imprint, 19(10), 1-27. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0019.010
  4. Bedke, M. (2016). Cognitivism and Non-Cognitivism. In T. C. McPherson & D. Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics (pp. 292-307). Routledge.
  5. Blackburn, S. (1993). Essays in Quasi-Realism. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195080414.001.0001
  6. Blackburn, S. (1998). Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198247852.001.0001
  7. Blackburn, S. (2005). Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism. In M. E. Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (pp. 322-337). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199282180.003.0012
  8. Blackburn, S. (2010). Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. In R. Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics (pp. 295-314). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199548057.003.0003
  9. Brown, J. L. D. (2022). Interpretative Expressivism: A Theory of Normative Belief. Philosophical Studies, 179(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01648-7
  10. Chrisman, M. (2011). Ethical Expressivism. In C. Miller (ed.), Continuum Companion to Ethics (pp. 29-54). Continuum.
  11. Dogramaci, S. (2013). Communist Conventions for Deductive Reasoning. Noûs, 49(4), 776-799. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12025
  12. Dreier, J. (1996). Expressivist Embeddings and Minimalist Truth. Philosophical Studies, 83(1), 29-51. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00372434
  13. Dreier, J. (2009). Relativism (and Expressivism) and the Problem of Disagreement. Philosophical Perspectives, 23(1), 79-110. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1520-8583.2009.00162.x
  14. Dreier, J. (2018). The Real and the Quasi-Real: Problems of Distinction. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 48(3-4), 532-547. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2018.1432394
  15. Elstein, D. & Williams, R. (2014). Suppositions, Revisions and Decisions. [Manuscript]. https://philpapers.org/archive/ELSSAD-2.pdf
  16. Field, H. H. (2001). Truth and the Absence of Fact. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0199242895.001.0001
  17. Gamester, W. (2022). Fallibility without Facts. Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 8(40), 444-473. https://doi.org/10.3998/ergo.2241
  18. Gendler, T. S. (2003). On the Relation between Pretense and Belief. In M. Kieran & D. McIver Lopes (eds.), Imagination, Philosophy and the Arts (pp. 125-141). Routledge.
  19. Gibbard, A. (1992). Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment. Cambridge University Press.
  20. Gibbard, A. (2003). Thinking How to Live. Harvard University Press.
  21. Gilmore, J. (2020). Apt Imaginings: Feelings for Fictions and Other Creatures of the Mind. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190096342.001.0001
  22. Gregory, A. (2012). Changing Direction on Direction of Fit. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 15(5), 603-614. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-012-9355-6
  23. Horwich, P. (1999). Truth. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0198752237.001.0001
  24. Horwich, P. (2010). Truth – Meaning – Reality. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268900.001.0001
  25. Kung, P. (2016). Imagination and Modal Knowledge. In A. Kind (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination (pp. 437-450). Oxford University Press.
  26. Lenman, J. (2003). Disciplined Syntacticism and Moral Expressivism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 66(1), 32–57. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00242.x
  27. Lewis, D. K. (1974). Radical Interpretation. Synthese, 23, 331-344. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00484599
  28. Liao, S.-y. & Gendler, T. (2019). Imagination. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/imagination/
  29. Lynch, M. P. (2009). Truth as One and Many. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199218738.001.0001
  30. McHugh, C. & Whiting, D. (2014). The Normativity of Belief. Analysis, 74(4), 698-713. https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anu079
  31. Schellenberg, S. (2013). Belief and Desire in Imagination and Immersion. Journal of Philosophy, 110(9), 497-517. https://doi.org/10.5840/jphil2013110914
  32. Schroeder, M. (2018). The Moral Truth. In M. Glanzberg (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Truth (pp. 579-601). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199557929.013.23
  33. Schroeder, M. (2024). Non-Cognitivism in Ethics. Routledge.
  34. Shah, N. (2006). A New Argument for Evidentialism. Philosophical Quarterly, 56(225), 481-498. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2006.454.x
  35. Shah, N. & Velleman, D. (2005). Doxastic Deliberation. Philosophical Review, 114, 497-534. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-114-4-497
  36. Shieh, S. (2018). Truth, Objectivity, and Realism. In M. Glanzberg (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Truth (pp. 433-476). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199557929.013.14
  37. Sinclair, N. (2006). The Moral Belief Problem. Ratio, 19(2), 249-260. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9329.2006.00323.x
  38. Sinhababu, N. (2013). Distinguishing Belief and Imagination. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 94(2), 152-165. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0114.2012.01449.x
  39. Sinhababu, N. (2015). Advantages of Propositionalism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 96(1), 165-180. https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12070
  40. Sinhababu, N. (2017). Humean Nature. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198783893.001.0001
  41. Sosa, E. (2015). Judgment & Agency. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198719694.001.0001
  42. Sterelny, K. (2003). Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition. Wiley-Blackwell.
  43. Valencia Pacheco, R. (2023). Expressivism and Moral Epistemology [PhD thesis, University of Leeds]. White Rose eThesis Online. https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/id/oai_id/oai:etheses.whiterose.ac.uk:34002
  44. Wedgwood, R. (2002). The Aim of Belief. Philosophical Perspectives, 16, 267-297. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0068.36.s16.10
  45. Wedgwood, R. (2023). Rationality and Belief. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198874492.001.0001
  46. Williams, J. R. G. (2019). The Metaphysics of Representation. Oxford University Press.
  47. Wright, C. (1992). Truth and Objectivity. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674045385
  48. Wright, C. (2021). Minimalism, Deflationism, Pragmatism, Pluralism. In M. P. Lynch, J. Wyatt, J. Kim, & N. Kellen (eds.) The Nature of Truth (pp. 567-596). The MIT Press.