The Truth in Expressivism

Catherine Wilson (CUNY Graduate Center)

Abstract: My aim in this paper is to resolve the impasse in metaethics between expressivism and moral realism considered as rival theories. What has hampered progress in this area is the belief that the analysis of sentences or ‘utterances’ alone can shed light on moral epistemology. Instead, it is useful to break up metaethics into a) the anthropology of moral discourse, including its roots in moralistic aggression; b) the ideational content of normative claims, which involves possible world thinking; and c) the concrete social processes by which propositional beliefs and practices become entrenched or give way to alternatives. The expressivist and the realist each have part of the story right, but they need to join forces to give us a better picture of moral knowledge and its applications.