Practical expressivism

Sinclair, Neil

Abstract

Morality is a human institution that can be adequately understood as a naturalistically explicable coordination device, whereby human beings work towards, sustain, and refine mutually beneficial patterns of action and reaction. This morality owes nothing to an ethical reality that exists outside of human inclination: moral judgements and argument do not (attempt to) discover, describe or cognize a robust realm of moral facts or properties. Rather, such judgements express affective or practical states of mind, similar to preferences, desires, policies, or plans. Practical Expressivism argues that the locating of this expression within the wider coordinating practice of morality provides an attractive explanation and partial vindication of the forms and assumptions of this uniquely human institution. This book therefore defends a version of expressivism about morality, and one that embraces the ‘quasi-realist’ project of showing how an expressivist understanding of morality is consistent with the judgements of that practice being potentially disagreed with, logically regimented, and mind-independently true. In doing so it provides domesticating accounts of disagreement, logic, truth, and mind-independence, and shows how expressivism is compatible with truth-conditional semantics. The version of expressivism defended is ‘practical’ both insofar as it emphasizes the importance of the practical, coordinating, role of moral practice in pursuing the quasi-realist project, and insofar as it generates recipes and strategies that expressivists can repeatedly deploy to explain the forms and assumptions of our moral practice.

Citation

Sinclair, N. (2021). Practical expressivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press (OUP). https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198866107.001.0001

• Book Type: Authored Book
• Online Publication Date: Feb 18, 2021
• Publication Date: Feb 4, 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 26, 2021
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
• ISBN: 9780198866107
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198866107.001.0001
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5417078
• Publisher URL: https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198866107.001.0001/oso-9780198866107