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Who Is Afraid of the Logical Problem in Meta-Ethics?

Open Access
|Oct 2023

Abstract

Expressivism, as applied to a certain class of statements, evaluative ones, for instance, is constituted by two doctrines, only the first of which will concern me in this paper. Evaluative statements, according to this doctrine, aren’t propositional (susceptible of truth or falsity). In this paper, I will argue that one of the vexing problems (that I label the “logical problem”) this doctrine engenders for the expressivist is equally pressing for some cognitivists (who think evaluative statements do have a truth-value). I will present the difficulty and argue that some constructivists, who are cognitivists, cannot contend with it at all, and others must resort to more complex ways than the one available to other cognitivists.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2022-0020 | Journal eISSN: 2182-2875 | Journal ISSN: 0873-626X
Language: English, Portuguese
Page range: 411 - 426
Published on: Oct 5, 2023
Published by: University of Lisbon
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 4 times per year

© 2023 Ruth Weintraub, published by University of Lisbon
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.