Bar-On, Dorit and Matthew Chrisman. Ethical Neo-Expressivism
2009, In Shafter-Landau, R. (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 4: 132-64. New York: Oxford University Press.
Added by: Graham Bex-Priestley
Abstract: A standard way to explain the connection between ethical claims and motivation is to say that these claims express motivational attitudes. Unless this connection is taken to be merely a matter of contingent psychological regularity, it may seem that there are only two options for understanding it. We can either treat ethical claims as expressing propositions that one cannot believe without being at least somewhat motivated (subjectivism), or we can treat ethical claims as nonpropositional and as having their semantic content constituted by the motivational attitudes they express (noncognitivism). In this paper, we argue that there is another option, which can be recognized once we see that there is no need to build the expression relation between ethical claims and motivational states of mind into the semantic content of ethical claims.
Comment: This is a different way of incorporating what seems attractive about expressivism without losing the semantic advantages of cognitivism. It draws upon resources from the philosophy of language.