A Primitive Solution to the Negation Problem

It has recently been alleged that expressivism cannot account for the obvious fact that normative sentences and their negations express inconsistent kinds of attitudes. I explain how the expressivist can respond to this objection. I offer an account of attitudinal inconsistency that takes it to be a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ethical theory and moral practice
Main Author: Shiller, Derek (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V [2016]
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
RelBib Classification:NCA Ethics
VA Philosophy
ZD Psychology
Further subjects:B Parsimony
B Expressivism
B Negation problem Inconsistency
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:It has recently been alleged that expressivism cannot account for the obvious fact that normative sentences and their negations express inconsistent kinds of attitudes. I explain how the expressivist can respond to this objection. I offer an account of attitudinal inconsistency that takes it to be a combination of descriptive and normative relations. The account I offer to explain these relations relies on a combination of functionalism about normative judgments and expressivism about the norms governing them. It holds that the inconsistency of normative judgments is primitive. One potential problem for this view is that the large number of normative primitives that the expressivist will allegedly need to accept will render the view grossly unparsimonious. In defending this thesis, I suggest that it is a mistake to hold the lack of normative parsimony of expressivism against its core psychological claims.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-015-9670-9