Recent Work in Expressivism

Abstract

According to descriptivists, the distinctive linguistic function of a given discourse is to describe the world as being thus-and-so. The judgements of the discourse are therefore apt for truth in the following sense: they are true if the world really is the way the judgement represents it as being, false otherwise. Realists are descriptivists who hold that there exists an independent reality that the judgements can successfully describe. Expressivism is one among a family of views contrasted with descriptivism. Its siblings include fictionalism, which holds that the target judgements pretend to describe (Joyce 2001; Kalderon 2005), and prescriptivism, which holds that they prescribe (Hare 1952). A position is expressivist to the extent that the linguistic function of the target discourse is to express mental states. This basic taxonomy is complicated by the claim that judgements describe in virtue of expressing beliefs – mental states that represent the world as being thus-and-so (Gibbard 1990; 2003). To remain distinctive, expressivists must therefore hold that the target judgements express non-belief-like mental states or ‘attitudes’. Thus, the debate moves from a contrast in pure semantics between describing and expressing to a contrast in semantics-cum-psychology between expressing beliefs and expressing attitudes. On either conception of the debate, it is incumbent on an expressivist to do two things: first, articulate the non-belief-like states of mind that are expressed by the target judgements; second, provide an account of why such states would come to be expressed in the discourse exhibiting the distinctive features of the target discourse, or, if this is not possible, to explain away these features as explicable errors on the part of users of the discourse.

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