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Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVol. XCI No. 1, July
2015doi: 10.1111/phpr.12138 2014 Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, LLC
How to Be an Ethical Expressivist
ALEX SILK
University of Birmingham
Expressivism promises an illuminating account of the nature of
normative judgment. Butworries about the details of expressivist
semantics have led many to doubt whether ex-pressivisms putative
advantages can be secured. Drawing on insights from
linguisticsemantics and decision theory, I develop a novel
framework for implementing an express-ivist semantics that I call
ordering expressivism. I argue that by systematically
interpretingthe orderings that gure in analyses of normative terms
in terms of the basic practical atti-tude of conditional weak
preference, the expressivist can explain the semantic propertiesof
normative sentences in terms of the logical properties of that
attitude. Expressivismsproblems with capturing the logical
relations among normative sentences can be reducedto the familiar,
more tractable problem of explaining certain coherence constraints
on pref-erences. Particular attention is given to the
interpretation of wide-scope negation. The pro-posed solution is
also extended to other types of embedded contextsmost
notably,disjunctions.
1. The Expressivist Program
Expressivism is something of a four-letter word in some circles.
(Is thatnot triply a lie?) And yet there is something persistently
alluring about itsresearch program. Though expressivism was
originally developed as a meta-ethical position about normative
language and judgment, its appeal hasextended across philosophical
disciplines. Expressivist semantics have beengiven for a diverse
class of expressionsnot just for normative terms likeought, wrong,
and rational, but also for epistemic terms like mightand probably,
for attitude verbs like knows and believes, and even formeans
itself.1 Expressivism promises an illuminating account of
themeanings of such expressions, the nature of judgments involving
them, andthe connection between such judgments and motivation or
action. But
1 See, e.g., Hare 1952, 1981; Price 1983; Blackburn 1984, 1998;
Gibbard 1990, 2001,2003, 2012; Field 2000; Horgan & Timmons
2006; Yalcin 2007, 2012; Schroeder2008a; Swanson 2012; Moss 2012. I
will treat expressivism as a thesis primarily aboutnatural language
expressions rather than concepts.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 47
Philosophy andPhenomenological Research
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foundational worries about the details of expressivist semantics
have ledmany to doubt whether these advantages can be secured.
On a standard truth-conditional semantics the semantic
properties of sen-tences (e.g., inconsistencies, entailments) are,
in the rst instance, explainedin terms of properties of the
contents of those sentences: To a very roughrst approximation, the
sentences Grass is green and Grass is not greenare inconsistent
because they have incompatible truth-conditions. The pri-mary
explanatory weight is placed on an assignment of contents to
sen-tences and on relations among those items of content.
Expressivists take adifferent tack. Though it is somewhat
contentious how best to understandexpressivism, I take as my
starting point the following familiar characteriza-tion. At the
explanatory outset, the expressivist attempts to account for
thesemantic properties of sentences in terms of properties of the
attitudes orstates of mind that utterances of those sentences
conventionally express.2
Contents or truth-conditions, even if or when they are assigned
to sentences,do no work in fundamental explanations of the semantic
properties of thosesentences. Expressivists can be understood as
accepting the followingrequirement on fundamental semantic
explanation:
THE EXPRESSIVIST PROGRAM
The semantic properties of sentences are to be explained,
fundamentally, interms of properties of the attitudes
conventionally expressed by utterances ofthose sentences.
In the case of ordinary factual sentences, this requirement
might not seemoverly difcult to satisfy. For example, the meaning
of Grass is greenwould be explained in terms of the belief that
grass is green, or what it isto bear the belief relation toward a
certain representational content. And theinconsistency between
Grass is green and Grass is not green would beexplained in terms of
the incoherence in both believing that grass is greenand believing
that grass is not green. There is of course something to
beexplained here, but this, as they say, is everyones problem.
Fortunately for us who like a good philosophical puzzle,
expressivistsstandardly deny that all declarative sentences express
ordinary factualbeliefs. (Probably why expressivist treatments of
Grass is green tend notto get a lot of press.) It is with these
other sentences that expressivism getsits teeth. An expressivist
about some linguistic expression E claims (perhapsinter alia) that
E-sentences dont conventionally represent how the world,
2 See, e.g., Rosen 1998: 391392; Unwin 2001: 62, 72; Schroeder
2008b: 576, 580, 586;Dreier 2009: 97. There may be good reasons to
think there are positions deserving to becalled expressivist that
dont proceed in this way (see Charlow 2013b, Silk 2013). Butsince
this is a standard way of understanding expressivism, I accept it
here for the sakeof argument.
48 ALEX SILK
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narrowly construed, might be, or even where or when one might be
locatedin the world. E-sentences dont conventionally determine
ordinary possibleworlds propositions; they dont have
truth-conditions in the canonical sense.Insofar as E-expressions
can gure in valid reasoning and be embedded incomplex linguistic
environments, the expressivist must give an alternativeaccount of
what their meanings are, and how these meanings composition-ally
interact with the meanings of other expressions to determine the
mean-ings of expressions of arbitrary complexity. This is a
technical challenge,but, given THE EXPRESSIVIST PROGRAM, it isnt
merely technical. Whatever for-mal solution is given, the
expressivist must provide a systematic way ofinterpreting the
formalism, and of characterizing what states of mind corre-spond to
what formal objects in such a way that explains the semantic
prop-erties of the sentences that express those states of mind.
This is the root of the so-called Frege-Geach problem.3 Many
haveregarded it as fatal to expressivism. But I am more optimistic.
In this paperI develop a novel framework for implementing an
expressivist semanticsthat I call ordering expressivism. Drawing on
developments in linguisticsemantics and decision theory, I argue
that ordering expressivism provides aformally and interpretively
adequate solution to the Frege-Geach problem.For concreteness I
focus on expressivist treatments of normative terms, butthe points
can be applied to expressivist treatments of other
expressions.Following work by Jamie Dreier, I treat the semantic
properties of sentencesas explained, fundamentally, in terms of
coherence constraints on attitudes.I then show how to implement
this idea in an existing, general composi-tional semantic
framework. The resulting view addresses complications con-cerning
indecision, indifference, and incomparability, and generalizes
tocover normative, non-normative, and mixed sentences. This avoids
limita-tions in previous accounts. Ordering expressivism
constitutes a more securesemantic basis for a broader expressivist
theory of language and judgment.
The structure of the paper is as follows. I focus primarily on
one promi-nent instance of the Frege-Geach problem: the
interpretation of wide-scopenegation (the negation problem). 2
characterizes the problem. 3 consid-ers three prominent
accountsthose by Allan Gibbard, Mark Schroeder,and Jamie Dreierin
terms of which I will situate my proposed solution.4 motivates and
develops the ordering expressivist framework and showshow it can
solve the negation problem. 5 extends the proposed treatmentof
negation to the case of other types of embedded contexts, with
particularattention to Mark Schroeders recent problem of mixed
disjunctions.Ordering expressivism combines the advantages of
Gibbards and Dreiersaccounts while avoiding their limitations.
3So-called because it was prominently raised by Geach (1960,
1965), who attributed itto Freges distinction between content and
assertoric force. See also Searle 1962.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 49
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2. The Negation Problem
The negation problem is the problem of saying in general what
attitude cor-responds to wide-scope negationwhat attitude is
expressed by sentencesof the form :/and of doing so in such a way
that captures how a nor-mative sentence and its negation are
logically contradictory, as per THE EX-PRESSIVIST PROGRAM.
Lets ll this in. Consider the following normative sentence.
MUST Alice has to help the poor.
For the expressivist, the meaning of MUST is, in the rst
instance, to begiven, not in terms of its content or
truth-conditions, but in terms of the atti-tude or state of mind it
conventionally expresses. For concreteness, sayMUST expresses the
attitude of requiring Alice to help the poor. Now con-sider MUST
NOT.
MUST NOT Alice has to not help the poor.
Since the deontic modal have to is the primary operator in MUST
NOT as itis in MUST, MUST NOT, the expressivist tells us, expresses
the same sort ofattitude as MUST. No fancy footwork necessary: MUST
NOT expresses the atti-tude of requiring Alice not to help the
poor. The internal negationthenegation within the scope of have
toposes no new challenges.
We have accounts of what attitudes are expressed by MUST and
MUSTNOT. But what about NOT MUST?
NOT MUST Alice doesnt have to help the poor. (/Its not the case
that Alicehas to help the poor.)
In NOT MUST we have an external negation, a negation that takes
scope overhave to. What attitude should we say that NOT MUST
expresses? Because ofTHE EXPRESSIVIST PROGRAM, not just any answer
will do. Since NOT MUST isthe contradictory of MUST, the attitude
expressed by NOT MUST must berelated in the right sort of way to
the attitude of requiring Alice to help thepoor to reect the
logical inconsistency between MUST and NOT MUST.
First, does NOT MUST express the requiring attitude toward Alice
not help-ing the poor? No. Both requiring / and requiring :/ might
be incompatiblein such a way as to capture the inconsistency
between a sentence and itsnegation. But as we just saw, the
attitude of requiring Alice not to help thepoor is the attitude
expressed by the internally negated sentence MUST NOT.And MUST NOT
and NOT MUST dont have the same meaning or express thesame
attitude.
Second, does NOT MUST express the lack of the requiring
attitude, the atti-tude of failing to require Alice to help the
poor? No. Both requiring / andfailing to require / might be
incompatible in such a way as to capture the
50 ALEX SILK
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inconsistency between a sentence and its negation. But the
attitude of failingto require Alice to help the poor is the
attitude ascribed in NOT BELIEVEwith, say, Bert as subjectbut the
attitude we need to explain is the attitudeascribed in BELIEVE
NOT.
NOT BELIEVE Bert doesnt believe that Alice has to help the
poor.
BELIEVE NOT Bert believes that Alice doesnt have to help the
poor.
NOT BELIEVE, but not BELIEVE NOT, is true if Bert has no views
on whetherAlice has to help the poor.
Third, does NOT MUST express the attitude of permitting Alice
not to helpthe poor. Yes! But because of THE EXPRESSIVIST PROGRAM
we arent off thehook just yet. What we need to explain is how MUST
and NOT MUST are logi-cally inconsistent. But if we take the
attitudes of permitting and requiring asbasic, we must stipulate
how they are logically related, i.e., that requiring /is
inconsistent with permitting :/. But this is precisely what we need
toexplain. Sure enough, NOT MUST expresses an attitude of
permitting. But theproblem is to say how this attitude is logically
related to the attitude ofrequiring, and to do so in such a way
that doesnt presuppose an interpreta-tion of external negation.
In sum, we started by saying that the unembedded sentence
MUSTexpresses an attitude of requiring. We then asked what attitude
its negationNOT MUST expresses that captures the logical
inconsistency between the twosentences. Neither way of inserting a
negation into the requiring attitudefailing to require / and
requiring :/captures the attitude expressed byNOT MUST. So we might
posit a distinct attitude, an attitude of permitting,and say that
it corresponds to the external negation of have to. ThoughNOT MUST
does express an attitude of permitting, we cannot stop here lestwe
leave opaque the logical relations between the distinct attitudes
ofrequiring and permitting and thus, given THE EXPRESSIVIST
PROGRAM, betweenthe sentences that express them. So, either we
capture the inconsistencybetween MUST and NOT MUST but get the
attitudes expressed wrong, or weget the attitudes expressed right
but fail to capture the inconsistency. This isthe negation
problem.4
3. A Stylized History
A brief recapor at least a stylized historyof the current state
of playwill be instructive. For purposes of situating my positive
account, I willfocus on developments stemming from work by Allan
Gibbard and JamieDreier, understood in part in the context of work
by Mark Schroeder. In this
4 See especially Unwin 1999, 2001, Gibbard 2003, Dreier 2006,
2009, Schroeder 2008a,b, c, Horgan & Timmons 2009.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 51
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section I will highlight what I take to be the crucial advances
in theiraccounts, and will raise several problems and potential
limitations. In 45I will develop a framework for implementing an
expressivist semantics thatcombines the virtues of Gibbards and
Dreiers accounts while avoidingtheir costs.5
3.1. Enter Gibbard
In his response to the Frege-Geach problem, Allan Gibbard (1990,
2003)introduces an extension of ordinary possible worlds semantics.
Rather thantreating the contents of sentences as (determining) sets
of possible worlds,Gibbard (2003) treats the contents of sentences
as (determining) sets ofpairs of possible worlds and hyperplans.6 A
hyperplan is a maximal contin-gency plan, a plan that, for any
occasion for choice one might conceivablybe in and for any action
open on that occasion, either forbids or permitseither rejects or
rejects rejectingthat action on that occasion (2003: 56);
itrepresents the plan of someone who is maximally decided. The
content ofan attitude or judgment is given in terms of the
world-hyperplan pairsthepossible ways things might be factually and
normativelythat it rules out.
On rst glance it might seem that the model theory itself sufces
for aresponse to the negation problem. One might say the following.
The contentof MUST is a certain set of hyperplans, those that
require Alice to help thepoor. Since negation means set
complementation, the content of NOT MUSTis the complement set of
hyperplans. Since these two sets of hyperplans aredisjoint, we have
incompatibility of content. So we predict the inconsistencyof the
sentences. Were home free.
Or not. As Gibbard himself recognizesalong with many
interpretersafter himthe formal semantics isnt sufcient for an
expressivist responseto the negation problem. As per THE
EXPRESSIVIST PROGRAM, the expressivistcannot help herself to
content or truth-conditions, even of a more ne-grained sort, to
explain the semantic properties of sentences. Rather,
thefundamental explanation of the inconsistency of MUST and NOT
MUST mustbe in terms of the nature of the attitudes expressed. The
expressivist mustsystematically interpret the formal objects in
question by mapping themonto psychological attitudes whose
individual natures and interrelations dothe explaining of the
semantic properties in question.7
Then what is Gibbard up to? The crucial contribution of
Gibbardsaccount, on my view, is that it starts with an existing
framework for doingformal semanticspossible worlds semanticsand
then systematically
5 Thanks to Jamie Dreier and an anonymous referee for helpful
discussion about how bestto situate my positive account.
6 The theory in Gibbard 1990 is couched in terms of systems of
norms.7 Cf. Unwin 2001: 72; Dreier 2006: 221, 2009: 95, 97;
Schroeder 2008b: 586.
52 ALEX SILK
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provides that framework with an expressivist interpretation. The
composi-tional semantics proceeds roughly as usual; the abstract
objects that Gibbarduses as semantic valuessets of world-hyperplan
pairsfunction like setsof possible worlds. What makes Gibbards use
of the framework distinc-tively expressivist is the interpretation
he gives for it. Gibbards expressi-vist extension of possible
worlds semantics thus provides a crucial piece ofapparatus for what
Simon Blackburn (1988) once called a fast track solu-tion to the
general Frege-Geach problem. By systematically interpreting
ele-ments of a familiar formal apparatus in terms of states of
mind, Gibbardoffers a general strategy for implementing an overall
expressivist semantictheory.
The prospects for Gibbards account turn on the details of the
expressi-vist interpretations he gives for the various elements of
the formalism. Forthe particular case of negation, one way of
interpreting Gibbard is asattempting to solve the negation problem
through the completeness ofhyperplans (see esp. 2003: 5359, 7175).
A hyperplan represents the plansof an agent who is fully decided
about what to do. For any relevant circum-stance and available
action, a hyperplan either rejects the action or permitsitthat is,
either disagrees with performing it or disagrees with
disagreeingwith performing it. A hyperplan that fails to require :/
(fails to disagreewith /) ipso facto permits /. We can thus
interdene the attitudes of requir-ing and permitting without
external negation: permitting / is dened as dis-agreeing with
requiring :/. Negation corresponds to a basic attitude
ofdisagreeing. Roughly, MUST expresses an attitude of requiring
Alice to helpthe poor, and NOT MUST expresses an attitude of
disagreeing with requiringAlice to help the poor. These attitudes
are plausibly related in the right sortof way as to explain the
logical inconsistency between the sentences thatexpress them.
Permitting is interdened with requiring so as to illuminatethe
logical relations among sentences that express those
attitudes.8
In 2 we noted that we must distinguish thinking that one
doesnthave to do somethingthinking its contradictory is
permittedfrom notthinking that one has to do somethingnot thinking
it is required. I have
8 Dreier (2006: 222224), Schroeder (2008b: 585586), and Charlow
(2011: 241, 265266) interpret Gibbards completeness constraint on
hyperplans as requiring hyperplansto either require or forbid every
available action. I view this interpretation as incorrect.Gibbard
is clear that a hyperplan can merely permit an action (permit but
not require it);contrary actions can be tied for best according to
a hyperplan (see Gibbard 1990: 88n.3;2003: 56). Schroeder (2008b:
598n.7) claims that Gibbards argument that normativeterms pick out
natural properties relies on the claim that hyperplanners cannot be
indif-ferent. I disagree. The argument relies on there being a
natural property that describeswhat is permitted by the hyperplan
in a situation; but I dont see why this propertycouldnt be a
disjunctive property. In any case, it isnt my aim to be doing
Gibbard exe-gesis. What will be important is that the view
described in the main text (which I amattributing to Gibbard) is
insufcient.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 53
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two worries with Gibbards account of negation, which stem from
twoways in which these attitudes can come apart: indecision and
decidedagnosticism.
First, human agents arent hyperplanners. We can be undecided.
So, theexpressivist must be able to represent a state of
indecision, and distinguishit from states of permitting or
indifference. The challenge is to do so in amanner amenable to
expressivism, i.e., not in terms of agents beliefs. Onemust be able
to say more than that, fundamentally, indifference
betweenalternatives is believing them to be equally good (in the
relevant sense), andindecision about alternatives is having no
belief about which is better (inthe relevant sense). The worry isnt
that Gibbards formal frameworkdoesnt have enough structure to
represent the distinction between unde-cided and indifferent states
of mind. It does. But we need some story aboutwhat it is about an
agents state of mind such that the one type of abstractobject
rather than the other represents that state of mind. Absent such
astory, the worry is that any adequate one will be incompatible
with expres-sivism (cf. Dreier 2006: 227228).
Second, even restricting our attention to decided states of
mind, Gib-bards way of interdening permitting and requiring
mischaracterizes theseattitudes and hence the attitudes intuitively
expressed by MUST and NOTMUST. Even if one is fully decided, one
can disagree with requiring /because one rejects taking any
attitude toward /. One might take neutralityto be the stance to
take; one might be decidedly agnostic. Disagreeing withrequiring /
isnt equivalent to permitting :/, even in the context of
ahyperplan. One might reply that the relevant attitude of
disagreement is adecided state of mind that is incompatible with
agnosticism. But this raisesthe worry that we may no longer be
trading in a familiar general notion ofdisagreement in attitude. We
may be assuming precisely what needs to beexplained, namely, that
there is such an attitude and that it neednt beunderstood in terms
of belief.9
3.2. Enter Dreier
In response to the problem of distinguishing indifference from
indecision,Jamie Dreier (2006; cf. 2009: 105107) proposes to take
the attitude ofstrict preference as basic and then dene the
attitude of indifference interms of preference. On Dreiers
denition, someone is indifferent(dened indifferent) between two
options / and w iff (a) she doesntprefer / to w and doesnt prefer w
to /, and (b) for any option v, sheprefers / to v iff she prefers w
to v and prefers v to w iff she prefers v to/ (2006: 228; cf.
Broome 2004: 21). That is, one is indifferent between
9 Cf. Unwin 2001: 6567; Hawthorne 2002: 176; Gibbard 2003:
7175.
54 ALEX SILK
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two alternatives iff one prefers each of them to exactly the
same things,and one prefers exactly the same things to each of
them. One is undecidedbetween two alternatives iff one isnt
indifferent between them and onefails to prefer either alternative
to the other. According to these denitions,whereas indifference is
a transitive relation, indecision is not. (I might beundecided
between eating ten jellybeans and eating a donut, and
undecidedbetween eating a donut and eating eleven jellybeans,
though I prefer eatingeleven jellybeans to eating ten.) So, says
Dreier, we can cash out the atti-tude of indifference, and
distinguish it from indecision, in terms of themore basic practical
attitude of strict preference.
The crucial advance in Dreiers account, in my view, is its move
to inter-dene various relevant attitudes in terms of a more basic
practical atti-tudein Dreiers case, strict preferencethe logic of
which is used toexplain the semantic properties of normative
sentences. To see the impor-tance of this move, it can be helpful
to situate Dreiers account in the con-text of Mark Schroeders
(2008a,b) way of framing the negation problem.10
Schroeder distinguishes two types of ways that states of mind
can be incon-sistent. States of mind are A-type inconsistent iff
they are the same attitudetoward inconsistent contents. Believing
that / and believing that :/ is anexample of A-type inconsistency.
States of mind are B-type inconsistent iffthey are distinct and
apparently logically unrelated attitudes toward thesame content
(2008b: 581; emphasis in original). Requiring / and permit-ting /
is (allegedly) an example of B-type inconsistency. According to
Sch-roeder, expressivists can help themselves to A-type
inconsistency but not toB-type inconsistency; helping themselves to
B-type inconsistency would behelping themselves to everything they
need to explain, namely, how certainattitudes can be inconsistent
in a way that doesnt ultimately reduce to theirbeing inconsistent
beliefs.
What Dreiers account highlights is that A-type inconsistency
isnt theonly promising model of inconsistency in attitude. Not all
logical relationsamong attitudes need be explained in terms of
logical relations among theobjects of those attitudes. If we can
interdene requiring and permitting interms of preference, then the
inconsistency between sentences like MUST andNOT MUST neednt be
explained either in terms of distinct fundamental atti-tudes or a
single attitude toward inconsistent contents. The
inconsistencycould be explained in terms of familiar coherence
constraints on preferences(more on which in 4). Like belief,
preference has a logic; combinations ofpreferences can be
incoherent. Suppose you prefer to go back to sleep, butalso prefer
not to lose your job. If you realize that the only way to keepyour
job is to get up, then something in your attitudes has to change,
as
10 Thanks to an anonymous referee for encouraging me to frame
the importance of Dreiersaccount in this way.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 55
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Dreier (2009: 106) puts it, like how something would have to
change ifyou believed that all ravens are black and that Tweety is
a raven but seethat Tweety isnt black. If normative sentences
express preferences, thenMUST and NOT MUST would be inconsistent,
the thought goes, because theyexpress an incoherent body of
preferences. Dreier himself only sketcheshow to apply this model,
and only for simple cases. I wont ultimately betaking up his
apparent suggestions about how to do so. What is importanthere is
that Dreiers proposal brings into a relief a strategy for
respondingto the negation problem that may avoid the putative
problems detailed inSchroeder 2008a for expressivist accounts
framed in terms of A-type incon-sistency.
Despite these contributions, I would like to raise three worries
for Dre-iers account. The rst two arent intended to be decisive. I
raise them sim-ply to highlight potential limitations in Dreiers
account. It would bepreferable if we could develop an expressivist
theory that avoided them.The third limitation is more serious.
Call indifference according to Dreiers denition D-indifference.
SupposeChip has the following preference structure. He prefers
eating vanilla icecream to being stabbed, he prefers chocolate ice
cream to being stabbed, heprefers winning the lottery to eating
vanilla ice cream, and he prefers win-ning the lottery to eating
chocolate ice cream. However, he has neverconsidered the question
of how to compare vanilla and chocolate ice cream.So, he fails to
prefer chocolate to vanilla and fails to prefer vanilla to
choc-olate. Chip is D-indifferent between eating chocolate and
eating vanilla.Both are ranked below the same alternativeswinning
the lotteryandboth are ranked above the same alternativesgetting
stabbed. But Chipisnt indifferent between vanilla and chocolate; he
is undecided betweenthem. So being D-indifferent isnt sufcient for
being indifferent. One canbe D-indifferent while still being
intuitively undecided.
Dreier recognizes that cases like Chips pose a problem for his
denition(2006: 230). He notes that his denition relies on there
being a sufcientlyrich eld of preference to exclude treating cases
like Chips with incom-plete preferences from representing
indifference. But cases like Chips can-not be regarded as dont
cares by the theory. They are precisely the sortsof preference
structures that distinguish indifference from indecision. (Or, aswe
will see shortly, they are at least one such sort of preference
structure.)Two alternatives can be D-indifferent either by being
ranked the same, orby failing to be ranked relative to one another
but bearing the same rela-tions to every other alternative. Only
the former case represents indiffer-ence. Unless we assume that the
preference relation is completeandthereby rule out indecision from
the startsatisfying D-indifference isntsufcient for
indifference.
56 ALEX SILK
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There is certainly more to be said in reply. I wont press the
worry fur-ther here.11 Sufce it to say that Dreiers account
requires that agents havea suitably rich eld of preferences in
order to distinguish indifference andindecision. At minimum, it is
worth investigating whether we can developan expressivist theory
that avoids this requirement.
A second limitation in Dreiers account stems from a second way
inwhich ones preferences can be incomplete. Lacking preference and
notbeing (D-)indifferent isnt sufcient for being undecided. Suppose
you areforced to make a choice about which of your children, A or
B, to save andwhich to let die. You fail to prefer either
alternative to the other. But youarent indifferent. You treat the
lives of each of your children as uniquelyprecious. Being told, for
example, that you could get a free box of tissuesif, but only if,
you saved A, wouldnt settle for you what to choose. Youprefer
saving A and getting the tissues to just saving A without
gettingthem, but its not the case that you prefer saving A and
getting the issues tojust saving B. Your attitude is insensitive to
mild sweetening, as they say(Hare 2010; De Sousa 1974). And yet,
intuitively, you arent undecidedabout what to prefer. You have
considered the question, and, we can sup-pose, no further reection
would lead you to change your attitude. Youdecidedly treat
alternatives where you save A as incomparable to alterna-tives
where you save B. If this is right, the expressivist now has three
atti-tudes to distinguish: indifference, indecision, and what we
might calldecidedly treating as incomparable.12
Even if there are in fact no genuine incomparabilities in
values, it isntimpossible to think otherwise. Whether it is
rational is more contentious.13
This may affect whether an attitude of decidedly treating as
incomparable isthe sort of attitude that needs to be characterized
in giving an expressivistsemantics. Nevertheless, it would be
preferable if the viability ofexpressivism wasnt held hostage to
these debates.
11 Dreier invokes preferences among lotteriesobjects engineered
to enrich the eld ofpreference in just the way we need (2006:
231)to motivate that cases like Chipsmay be rare enough that
conating indifference and indecision in these cases wont besuch a
serious bullet to bite. The problem is that lotteries can do
precisely what Dreiersays: they can enrich agents preferences.
Delineating an enhanced prospect, and forcingchoices that involve
it, can articially rene an agents (incomplete) preference
structure.It can function precisely to remove the basis for ones
indecision. Hypothetical choicecan explain actual preference only
insofar as the agent is already sensitive to anddecided among the
relevant options.
12 Ruth Chang (2002) claims that, in addition to
incomparability, understood negatively asthe lack of any
comparative relation, there is also a fourth positive value
relation ofparity (the other three being better than, worse than,
and equally good). I willput aside any purported differences
between incomparability and parity in what follows.
13 For survey discussion, see Hsieh 2008.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 57
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Third, and most importantly, Dreiers account is only directly
applied tosentences that express pure practical states of mind. No
attempt is made toimplement the account of normative language and
preference in a generalcompositional semantic theory. Doing so is
non-negotiable. Some havethought that complex sentences combining
normative and non-normativeclauses raise unique problems. An
adequate expressivist treatment of thepurely normative fragment of
the language must generalize to cover non-normative sentences and
mixed sentences as well.
The lesson from this section is this: We need an account that
combinesthe virtues of Gibbard and Dreier. We need a way of
integrating a Dreier-style account of inconsistency in attitude
into a general, independentlymotivated formal semantic framework.
We need a Gibbard-style fast-trackapparatus with a Dreier-style
expressivist interpretation. In the remainder ofthe paper I will
develop a positive expressivist account that providesprecisely
this. This account avoids the potential limitations in Gibbards
andDreiers accounts described in this section.
4. The Negation Problem: A Solution
4.1. Ordering Expressivism
Given THE EXPRESSIVIST PROGRAM (1), merely offering a formalism
thatassigns contents to sentences wont sufce for an expressivist
explanationof the semantic properties of normative sentences.
Nevertheless I want totake a step back from THE EXPRESSIVIST
PROGRAM for a moment and simplyexamine how we might formally
distinguish the various attitudes in ques-tion. Perhaps the
resulting formalism will suggest new possibilities for
ex-pressivists to explore.
Forget the framework of Gibbardian hyperplans for a moment.
Norma-tive terms are semantically modal. They concern not what
happens in theactual worldor not merely what happens in the actual
worldbut whathappens in certain alternative possibilities. On the
consensus best theoryin linguistic semantics, modal expressions are
analyzed in terms of anordering semantics.14 Modals are interpreted
as quantiers over possibleworlds. The domain of quantication is set
by two parameters: a set ofrelevant (accessible) worlds and a
preorder . (a reexive and transitive
14 Equivalently, a premise semantics (Lewis 1981a). See
especially Lewis 1973, van Fraas-sen 1973, Veltman 1976, Kratzer
1977, 1981, 1991. For simplicity I will make the limitassumption
(Lewis 1973: 1920) to ensure that there is a set of most highly
rankedworlds. I will sometimes follow common usage among
philosophers and use order andordering to refer to preorders (Lewis
1973: 48), though mathematicians typicallyreserve order for
specically antisymmetric preorders, i.e. preorders that dont
permitties. Familiar examples of preorders are the relations of
being at least as tall as, at leastas clever as, etc.
58 ALEX SILK
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relation), where this preorder ranks worlds along a relevant
dimension.Different choices of accessibility relations and
preorders correspond todifferent readings of modalse.g., epistemic,
deontic, goal-based. Amodal quanties over the accessible worlds
that rank (among the) highestin the preorder, i.e., over the
accessible worlds that arent .-bettered byany other accessible
world. Call these worlds the .-best worlds. To arst approximation,
necessity modals like have to and must univer-sally quantify over
the set of .-best worlds, and possibility modals likemay
existentially quantify over the set of .-best worlds. For
example,According to the law, you have to pay your taxes is true
iff you payyour taxes in all the relevant worlds that best
approximate the legalideal. Since our concern here is with
normative language, hereafter I willassume that . is a practical
normative ranking of possibilities; . can beunderstood as reecting
the content of a practical normative view.15
Before getting all in a huff about how the expressivist cant
appeal to suchtruth-conditions to do fundamental explanatory work,
notice that this frame-work appears to make many of the
distinctions we need. We could say that .requires / iff all the
.-best worlds are /-worlds (worlds in which / is true);that .
forbids / iff none of the .-best worlds are /-worlds; that .
merelypermits / iff some but not all of the .-best worlds are
/-worlds; that . isindifferent between alternatives u and v iff u .
v ^ v . u; and that . treatsalternatives u and v as incomparable
iff u 6. v ^ v 6. u. (We will return toindecision below.)
This formal apparatus suggests the following strategy for the
expressivist,given a normative term N and preorder . that gures in
the interpretationof N-sentences:
How to solve the Frege-Geach problem:
1. Interpret . as some suitable practical attitude.
2. Use of the logic of this basic attitude to capture the
semanticproperties of N-sentences.
3. Dene any other attitudes intuitively expressed by
N-sentencesin terms of the basic attitude corresponding to ..
This, schematically, is my proposal for how expressivists can
solve theFrege-Geach problem. Call an expressivist theory that
makes use of this
15 I use expressions like .-best to emphasize that best is being
used neutrally to referto the maximal elements of the preorder,
regardless of the dimension along which thoseelements are being
ranked. The preorders in question neednt rank worlds along a
specif-ically evaluative dimension. Making use of orderings thus
doesnt prejudge the questionof whether to go in for a teleological
normative theory, or even a maximizing theory.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 59
-
strategy ordering expressivism. Ordering expressivism is a
framework fordeveloping an expressivist theory. It can be
implemented in various waysdepending on a range of broader
linguistic and metaethical issues. Whatis most important for
present purposes is the structure of the solutiondisclosed by
ordering expressivism. For concreteness it will help to llin some
of the details. But I make no claim that the particular theory
tofollow is the only adequate way of implementing ordering
expressiv-ismor even that the general ordering expressivist
framework constitutesthe only way of solving the Frege-Geach
problem. I welcome thedevelopment of alternatives with which the
present account may becompared.
What attitude should we say is represented by . in the formal
seman-tics? Not just any choice of attitude will do. Here are three
constraints.First, the attitude must be a practical attitude. If we
are to capture thepractical character of normative language and
judgment, the attitude wechoose to explain the meanings of
normative terms must itself be practi-cal in nature. It must be
action-guiding and motivating; it must regulatechoice and behavior.
Relatedly, second, the attitude must be expressivist-friendly. It
mustnt require being understood in terms of belief. Third,the
attitude must have a logic. Given that normative sentences have
logi-cal properties, can stand in logical relations, and can gure
in valid rea-soning, the attitude expressed by normative sentences
must imposecertain logical constraints.
For concreteness I will follow Dreier in starting with an
attitude ofpreference. But since . is a preorder, I suggest,
naturally enough, thatwe interpret it as the attitude of weak
preference, or preferring at leastas much. This choice of attitude
has several advantages. First, weakpreference is a practical
attitude. Its connection with action is well stud-ied in decision
theory. Second, weak preference is plausibly expressivist-friendly.
The majority view is that it neednt be construed as a beliefthat
one alternative is at least as good as another.16 Third, there are
richliteratures in preference logic and decision theory describing
and justify-ing the logical properties of and coherence constraints
on preferences(3.2).17 Fourth, there is a tradition in preference
logic of treating weakpreference as the primitive relation. This
independent research provides apromising basis for an expressivist
account of the meaning of normativelanguage.
16 For relevant discussion, see, e.g., Smith 1987, Lewis 1988,
Broome 1991, 1993, Byrne& Hajek 1997.
17 Classic references include Ramsey 1928, Davidson et al. 1955,
Davidson 1976. For sur-vey discussion, see, e.g., Hansson 2001,
Hansson & Grune-Yanoff 2012.
60 ALEX SILK
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(Some theorists who mark a fundamental distinction between
evalua-tive vocabulary (good, bad, beautiful, desirable, base) and
deonticvocabulary (must, may, right, wrong, permissible,
obligatory,forbidden) may wish to say that the former, but not the
latter,express weak preferences. Such theorists may recast the
ensuing discus-sion in terms of capturing the logical inconsistency
between, say, sen-tences about what is evaluatively best and their
negations. Since thisisnt the place to take up issues concerning
the relation between deonticand evaluative language and attitudes,
for expository purposes I willassume that our example deontic modal
sentences express weak prefer-ences. Theorists with different
commitments about specically deonticlanguage may feel free to
recast our discussion in terms of their pre-ferred choice of
attitude, assuming it meets the constraints describedabove.)
An agents weak preferences inherit the logic of the preorder.
Just as wesay that ordinary belief states are inconsistent if they
arent representable interms of a non-empty set of worlds, so the
expressivist may say that statesof weak preference are inconsistent
if they arent representable in terms of anon-empty preorder. Of
course at the end of the day she will need someexplanation for why
having preferences that arent representable in this wayis
incoherentjust like how everyone, expressivists and
non-expressivistsalike, needs an analogous story in the case of
belief. And she must showhow the relevant sort of incoherence is of
the right kind to explain the logi-cal inconsistency of normative
sentencesjust like how an expressivist, likeSchroeder, who appeals
to A-type inconsistency (2) must explain why agiven type of
attitude (belief, being for) is inconsistency transmitting, i.e.why
the attitude is such that bearing it toward inconsistent contents
is inco-herent in a way that explains the logical inconsistency of
sentences (or,more generally, why logical relations among the
objects of the attitude placeconstraints on the logic of the
attitude itself). Accounts of preferentialincoherence are
well-known, and the literatures on them vast (nn. 1617).I wont
attempt to offer such an account here. Sufce it to say that it
isindependently plausible that there are coherence constraints on
preferences,and that these constraints are of the right sort to
underwrite fundamentalsemantic explanations. At minimum we have
made progress if we canreduce expressivisms problem with negation
to the familiar, more tractableproblem in decision theory of
explaining why preferences that dont satisfycertain constraints are
incoherent.
The expressivist can then use the logical properties of
preferences tocapture the logical properties of certain normative
sentences. Consider thefollowing ordering expressivist
interpretations of the familiar truth-conditionsfor MUST and NOT
MUST:
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 61
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(1) a. MUST is true at w, according to ., iff Alice gives to the
poor in allthe .-best worlds
b. MUST expresses an attitude of having all of ones most
weaklypreferred alternatives be ones where Alice gives to the
poor
(2) a. NOT MUST is true at w, according to ., iff Alice doesnt
give to thepoor in some of the .-best worlds
b. NOT MUST expresses an attitude of having some of ones most
weaklypreferred alternatives be ones where Alice doesnt give to the
poor
In response to the negation problem, we can say that MUST and
NOT MUSTare inconsistent because their conjunction expresses an
incoherent set ofweak preferences. It is incoherent to have all of
ones most weakly pre-ferred alternatives be ones where Alice helps
the poor and some of onesmost weakly preferred alternatives be ones
where Alice doesnt help thepoor. There is no (non-empty) preorder
that represents such a body of pref-erences. Preferential
incoherence appears to be the right kind of inconsis-tency in
attitude to explain the inconsistency between normative sentences/
and :/.
Taking the weak preference attitude as basic, we can dene in
terms of itvarious other attitudes intuitively expressed by
normative sentencese.g.,requiring, permitting, merely permitting,
and forbidding. To a rst approxi-mation: A requires / iff all of As
most weakly preferred alternatives are /-worlds; A permits / iff
some of As most weakly preferred alternatives are/-worlds; A merely
permits / iff some but not all of As most weakly pre-ferred
alternatives are /-worlds; and A forbids / iff all of As most
weaklypreferred alternatives are :/-worlds. By dening requiring and
permittingin terms of the single basic attitude of weak preference,
we can avoid theworries discussed in 2 with taking, say, the
attitude of requiring as basicand then dening permitting in terms
of failing to require or disagreeingwith requiring. The
inconsistency between requiring / and permitting :/the attitudes
intuitively expressed by MUST and NOT MUST, respectivelyisexplained
in terms of the incoherence of the preferences in terms of
whichthey are dened.
In this way, the expressivist can import developments in
truth-condi-tional semantics for modals, though with some
interpretive tweaks. Ihave shown how she can do so in terms of a
standard ordering seman-tics because of its familiarity. But
adopting this kind of ordering seman-tics, or any ordering
semantics for that matter, isnt essential to theunderlying
expressivist maneuver. Even if an alternative way of
analyzingmodals proves to be superior, the expressivist will be
able to implementour general strategy as long as there is some
particular element in theanalysis corresponding to the normative
reading of the expression (e.g.,
62 ALEX SILK
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the preorder in an ordering semantics), where the structure of
this ele-ment captures any logical relations among sentences
containing normativeterms. Given requirements of compositionality
and empirically adequacy,it is hard to see how a successful
semantics could fail to have this prop-erty. Despite its name,
ordering expressivism neednt be held hostage toan ordering
semantics for modals.
This point may become relevant depending on ones broader
viewsabout the semantics of modals and the nature of preference (or
whateverpractical attitude is chosen)e.g., concerning
quanticational vs. scalarsemantics for modals; relations among
comparative and quantitativenotions of possibility and probability;
information-sensitivity in normativemodals; the objects of
preference; the relation between exclusionary andcombinative
preferences; and the justication of coherence constraintson
preference. A plurality of implementations of ordering
expressivismwill be possible depending on ones commitments on these
sorts ofissues.18 How the semantics, metasemantics, philosophy of
mind, psy-chology, and decision theory interact and mutually
constrain theorizinglikely wont be straightforward. Moreover, for
all I have said, theprospects of ordering expressivism may vary for
different normativeexpressions and practical attitudes. It isnt
trivial that the best philosophi-cal interpretation of the best
semantics for a given expression will beconsistent with
expressivism.
Such complications neednt detain us here. For present purposes,
Iwill continue to assume a standard ordering semantics for
modalscoupled with an interpretation of the preorder in terms of
weakpreference. The preorder on worlds in the semantics can be
understoodas reecting preferences among maximally specic
possibilities. Thiscoheres nicely with the standard use of maximal
states of affairs (pointpropositions, or maximally consistent sets
of sentences, in the limitingcase) as the objects of preference in
decision theory and preference logic.However, there may be large
equivalence classes in the preorderdepending on which features of
the world are relevant to onespreferences in the given context.
Preference relations on non-maximal
18 To take just one example: Many authors in the literature on
information-sensitivity haveargued that a deontic modals domain of
quantication can reect what alternatives arebest given a relevant
body of information (e.g., Kolodny & MacFarlane 2010, Carianiet
al. 2011, Charlow 2013a, Dowell 2013, Silk 2014). If this is right,
then certain deon-tic modal claims may be understood as expressing
ones derived preferences given onesinformation (beliefs,
credences). (More on this in 5.) How one implements this
woulddepend on ones views about the details of the semantics and
how much decision-theo-retic apparatus, if any, is explicitly
encoded (e.g., whether there is an explicit representa-tion of
information-independent desires/utilities/values). Thanks to an
anonymous refereefor raising this issue.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 63
-
possibilities may be relevant in the interpretation of other
kinds of nor-mative expressions.19
4.2. Indecision
In 2 we raised the challenge of capturing in an
expressivist-friendly man-ner the difference between indifference
and indecision. In 3.2 we consid-ered Dreiers response and noted
two limitations. First, it fails to distinguishindifference and
indecision in certain agents with impoverished preferences.Second,
it fails to distinguish two ways in which ones preferences can
beincomplete. Indecision is distinct from having incomparabilities
in onespreferences. Given the coherence of thinking that one might
nd oneself ina practical dilemma, there is a third attitude to be
explained: the attitude ofdecidedly treating as incomparable. In
this section I will argue that the ex-pressivist can distinguish
these attitudes by showing how they encode dif-ferent practical
dispositionsspecically, different dispositions in choicesituations.
(To be clear, the aim isnt to reduce these attitudes to patterns
ofchoice behavior. Choice behavior is treated as revealing
attitudes, not asconstituting them.)
Start with distinguishing indifference from decidedly treating
as incom-parable. Much work in revealed preference theory has
concerned how toderive a preference order among alternatives by
treating choice asbasic.20 Agents are modeled by choice functions
which select elementsfrom (nite) sets of options. An agents choices
are treated as revealingher psychological state of mind, her
preferences. Traditionally, choosingboth alternatives u and v from
an option set has been interpreted asrevealing indifference between
u and v. But an alternative is to interpretsuch a choice as
revealing that no other element in the option set isstrictly
preferred to u or v.21 This might be because one is indifferent
19 The literature on comparative modal notions may be relevant
here (e.g., Portner 2009,Lassiter 2011, Katz et al. 2012; for
related discussion on generating orderings on propo-sitions from
orderings on worlds, see Lewis 1973, Halpern 1997). Note that the
appealto preferences on maximally specic possibilities is neutral
on whether preferences onmaximal vs. non-maximal possibilities are
more fundamental. What is important forpresent purposes is simply
that there are preferences on maximal alternatives. Thoughdecision
theorists standardly treat preference as a relation on (mutually
exclusive, possi-bly singleton) sets of worlds, this neednt hinder
the expressivist from utilizing a classicordering semantics for
modals, given the systematic availability of reductions of
preor-ders to partial orders (i.e., antisymmetric preorders,
preorders without ties): for any pre-order . on worlds, there is a
corresponding partial order on the set of equivalenceclasses of
worlds with respect to .. Thanks to an anonymous referee for
pressing me onthese issues.
20 For classic discussions, see Samuelson 1938, Arrow 1959,
Richter 1966, Hansson 1968,Sen 1970.
21 See, e.g., Nehring 1997, Sen 1997, Eliaz & Ok 2006.
64 ALEX SILK
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between u and v, but it also might be because one treats them as
incom-parable. Nevertheless we can distinguish these two types of
attitudes onthe basis of further choice behavior. Results in Eliaz
& Ok 2006 attestto the fruitfulness of the following approach.
The technical details wouldtake us too far aeld, but the rough
intuitive idea is this: We check if,for all choice situations, the
agent chooses u whenever she chooses vand vice versa; we check if u
and v are treated identically in all occa-sions for choice that
involve them. If they are, this reveals that the agentis
indifferent between u and v. If they are not, she is better
regarded astreating u and v as incomparable.22
For example, suppose Alice must choose what beer to buy out of
x, y,and z. The relevant factors guiding her choice are taste and
smell. As fortaste, she strictly prefers x to y and y to z. As for
smell, she strictly prefersy to z and z to x. Since she strictly
prefers y to z with regard to both tasteand smell, she will not
choose z when y is an option. But suppose thatwhile Alice is still
contemplating her choice Bert swoops in and takes thelast of beer
y. Left with a choice between x and z, Alice seems to have noway of
choosing merely in light of her preferences; after all, x is
preferredto z with regard to taste but z is preferred to x with
regard to smell, and(lets suppose) she has no further preferences.
Her choice set for {x, z}might thus be {x, z} (in the sense that
she might subjectively randomizechoice between x and z). However,
we can determine that Alice treats x andz as incomparable and isnt
indifferent between them in light of her furtherchoice behavior.
For there is some other choice situation that doesnt con-tain (say)
znamely, where the option set is {x, y}with respect to which
22 More precisely (cf. Eliaz & Ok 2006: 6667): An agent
treats u and v as incomparable ifboth u and v are choosable from
fu; vg i:e:; cfu; vg fu; vg, for choice functioncand there exists a
(nite, non-empty) set S of alternatives that contains u but not v,
suchthat at least one of the following holds, where S*:= (S [
{v})n{u}, i.e., the option set thatresults from swapping u with
v:
a. u 2 cS ^ v 62 cSb. u 62 cS ^ v 2 cSc. c(S)n{u} 6 c(S)n{v}
Eliaz & Ok 2006 prove that choice behavior that satises a
weakened version of the WeakAxiom of Revealed Preference can be
used to derive a unique, possibly incomplete prefer-ence relation
(whose strict part is suitably rich). The pairs which the agent
treats as incom-parable in the above sense can be proven to be
precisely those pairs which areincomparable relative to this
preference relation. Eliaz & Ok 2006, as well as others in
thetradition in theory of choice stemming from Aumann 1962, treat
themselves as characteriz-ing indecision (via incomparabilities),
but, for reasons discussed in 3.2, I prefer to inter-pret their
results as characterizing the attitude of decidedly treating as
incomparable.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 65
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x and z arent treated symmetrically: whereas x is choosable out
of {x, y}, zisnt choosable out of {z, y}, the set that results from
swapping x with z, aswe have seen. (In terms of the denition in
note 22, it is the (a)-conditionthat is satised.)
Now turn to indecision. In theory of choice, there is a
requirementthat an agent must, when given a set of options, select
a subset of thatset. Dropping this requirement, by allowing as a
possible response theaction of positively refraining from choosing,
seems to provide onenatural way of characterizing indecision.
Indecision between u and vwould be revealed by (perhaps inter alia)
deferring choice between uand v. It isnt counterintuitive that if I
am genuinely undecided betweenu and ve.g., because I have never
considered the question of how tocompare u and vI may, if presented
with a choice between them,refuse to make a choice, at least for
the time being. After all, I haventworked out my preferences, and
so any choice, even choosing both uand v, would give a false
impression of my state of mind. Indecisionbetween alternatives, as
revealed in this way, amounts to a kind ofunwillingness even to
pick, or a preference to defer choosing amongthem.
I see two general ways in which this kind of
indecision-revealing choicebehavior could be used to generate
representations of agents states of mind:one introduces more
structure into the representation of normative beliefs;the other
introduces more structure into the representation of bodies of
pref-erences themselves. For space purposes I describe only the
former option inthe main text; I leave discussion of the latter
option for an extended note(n. 25). Before proceeding I want to
reiterate that the question of how torepresent indecision is
subordinate for the expressivist to the question ofhow to
characterize indecision. What is primary is our characterization
ofindecision as a preference to defer choice, as revealed by a
refusal tochoose. This is what undergirds our expressivist
explanation for why a cer-tain agent should count as being in a
state of mind represented by the rele-vant type of formal object.
Nevertheless, although questions of how torepresent indecision may
be of secondary importance, they are importantjust the same.
Our indecision-revealing choice behavior can be used to
characterize aset of preference preorders, representing ways in
which the agent couldcoherently resolve her indecision (complete
her preferences) given the restof her choice behavior. For example,
simplifying by only considering twoalternatives u and v, the state
of mind of an agent who defers choosingbetween them could be
modeled in terms of the set {.1, .2, .3}, where.1, .2, and .3 are
characterized as follows, representing strictly preferring
66 ALEX SILK
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u to v, strictly preferring v to u, and being indifferent
between u and v,respectively:23
.1: u
-
(4) A doesnt believe that / is required iff for some weak
preference preorderin As practical alternatives, some of the most
weakly preferredalternatives are :/-worlds (i.e., iff some of the
weak preference preordersin As practical alternatives permit
:/).
(5) A believes that :/ is permitted iff for all weak preference
preorders inAs practical alternatives, some of the most weakly
preferred alternativesare :/-worlds (i.e., iff all of the weak
preference preorders in Aspractical alternatives permit :/).
This reects how failing to believe that / is required is weaker
than believ-ing that :/ is permitted. The former holds only if some
weak preferencepreorders consistent with ones preferences are a
certain way, whereas thelatter holds only if all the weak
preference preorders consistent with onespreference are that way.
Similarly, one decidedly treats two alternatives asincomparable
only if they are incomparable in all the weak preference pre-orders
in ones practical alternatives.25
25 An alternative way of representing indecision is by enriching
our representation ofbodies of preferences. Suppose we represent a
body of weak preferences with a set ofpreorders rather than a
single preorder. Intuitively, we might think of each preorder inthe
set as representing a partial strategy that the agent accepts, and
the set of preordersas representing the agents overall plan for
action. A strategy, in the decision-theoreticsense, assigns a
single act to every possible occasion for choice. It represents
what theagent takes to be a permissible course of action given her
preferences. One could thensay that / is required according to a
overall planthe set of preordersiff for all preor-ders in the set,
all the most weakly preferred alternatives are /-worlds; and that /
is per-mitted according to the overall plan iff for some preorder
in the set, all the most weaklypreferred alternatives are /-worlds.
This choice of representation entails that an overallplan can fail
to require / without thereby permitting :/; required and
permittedwont be duals: Its not the case that / is required iff for
some preorder in the set, someof the .-best worlds are :/-worlds;
but :/ is permitted iff for some preorder in theset, all the .-best
worlds are :/-worlds. And an overall plan can be undecided about
asingle proposition without merely permitting it: / is merely
permitted iff for some butnot all of the preorders in the set, all
the .-best worlds are /-worlds; but the overallplan is undecided
about / if, e.g., for none of the preorders in the set, all the
.-bestworlds are /-worlds. On this representation, a subjects
practical state of mind has thesame structure as a body of
preferences. Indecision is encoded in the representation
ofpreference itself.
A brief example may be helpful. Suppose my overall plan consists
of the followingpartial strategies, represented as sets of
propositions: = {{I eat a cookie, I give to thepoor},{I eat a
brownie, I give to the poor}}. (These sets of propositions can
determinepreorders in the usual way: given a set of propositions P,
for any worlds u and v,u .P v iff all propositions in P that are
true in v are also true in u.) On this overall plan,my eating a
cookie and my eating a brownie are both merely permitted, since
some butnot all of my partial strategies entail that I take the
action in question; my giving to thepoor is required since all of
my partial strategies entail that I give to the poor; and I
amundecided about all other actions (not entailed by these), since
they arent entailed byany of my partial strategies. So, unlike
hyperplans, overall plans in this sense neednt becomplete (or
consistent: incomparabilities may be represented by all of ones
partialstrategies entailing contrary propositions).
68 ALEX SILK
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In sum, I have suggested that the expressivist can distinguish
the atti-tudes of indecision, indifference, and decidedly treating
as incomparablein terms of differences in choice behavior.
Indifference among alterna-tives is revealed by treating them
identically in all relevant occasions forchoice. Treating them as
incomparable is revealed by not treating themidentically in this
way but still choosing all of them when presented withall and only
them. Indecision is revealed by deferring choice. It remainsto be
seen how best to develop these ideas more comprehensively.
Nev-ertheless I take them to constitute a promising expressivist
strategy. Thisstrategy avoids problems and limitations of previous
approaches, likeDreiers, as discussed in 3.2. It is also
independently interesting andattractive.
5. Beyond Negation: The Disjunction Problem
Lets recap. Ordering expressivism combines the virtues of
Gibbards andDreiers accounts (3). Following Dreier, semantic
properties of sentences,like inconsistency, are explained,
fundamentally, in terms of (non-A-type)coherence constraints on
attitudes. Given the counterintuitive consequencesof expressivist
accounts framed in terms of A-type inconsistency canvassedin
Schroeder 2008a, it would be promising if an alternative way of
solvingthe Frege-Geach problem was available. Ordering expressivism
is one suchalternative. Ordering expressivism takes a single
practical attitude to beexplanatorily basice.g., weak preferenceand
denes the attitudes intui-tively expressed by various kinds of
normative sentences in terms of it. Thelogical relations between
the apparently logically unrelated attitudes of,e.g., permitting
and requiring are illuminated by dening both attitudes interms of
weak preference (Schroeder 2008b: 581; emphases altered). Evenif
positing brute inconsistency relations between distinct attitudes
isproblematic, explaining inconsistency relationships between
attitudes interms of the logic of a more fundamental attitude is
not. A-typeinconsistency isnt the only legitimate kind of
inconsistency in town.
Like Gibbard in his extension of possible worlds semantics,
orderingexpressivism co-opts independently motivated apparatus from
formalsemantics on modals, but gives it a systematic expressivist
interpretation.A concern some have with expressivism is that it
seems to require us torebuild compositional semantics from the
ground up. It would beunfortunate, to put it mildly, if we had to
reexplain everything that con-temporary truth-conditional semantics
has taught us. An advantage of thegeneral ordering expressivist
strategy in 4.1 is that it allowsexpressivists to import
developments in truth-conditional semantics formodals in giving
their semantics for normative terms. It provides a rec-ipe for
giving an expressivist account of complex normative sentences,
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 69
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and recovering the state of mind expressed by a sentence from
its com-positional semantics: interpret all occurrences of . in the
semantics interms of the practical attitude associated with .. To a
rst approxima-tion, some examples with conjunction, quantiers, and
conditionals are asfollows. The (a)-examples give the ordinary
truth-conditions; the (b)-examples give the attitude expressed. (In
(7) I give the reading wheremost takes wide scope.)26
(6) a. Alice has to give to the poor, and Bert has to give to
the poor istrue at w, according to ., iff Alice gives to the poor
in all the.-best worlds and Bert gives to the poor in all the
.-best worlds.
b. Alice has to give to the poor, and Bert has to give to the
poor expressesthe attitude of having all of ones most weakly
preferred alternativesbe ones where Alice gives to the poor, and
having all of ones mostweakly preferred alternatives be ones where
Bert gives to the poor.
(7) a. Most people have to give to the poor is true at w,
according to .,iff for most people x in w, x gives to the poor in
all the.-best worlds.
b. Most people have to give to the poor expresses the attitude
of havingall of ones most weakly preferred alternatives be ones
where, for most(actual) people x, x gives to the poor.
(8) a. If Alice has a job, she has to give to the poor is true
at w, accordingto ., iff Alice gives to the poor in all the .-best
worlds where Alicehas a job.
b. If Alice has a job, she has to give to the poor expresses the
attitudeof having all of ones most weakly preferred alternatives
where Alicehas a job be alternatives where Alice gives to the
poor.
Perhaps there are other types of normative sentences whose
semantic proper-ties the expressivist cannot capture in this way.
The devil will be in the details.But these examples should give the
expressivist a license for optimism.
Perhaps not for long. Mark Schroeder has objected that
expressivistscannot directly apply the tools of truth-conditional
semantics (2011: 9).Schroeders Exhibit A: disjunction. In the
remainder of this paper I willfocus on Schroeders objection
concerning mixed disjunctions, disjunctivesentences where one
disjunct expresses a pure belief state and the other dis-junct
expresses a pure practical state.
26 How one develops an expressivist treatment of deontic
conditionals will depend on onesbroader views on the syntax and
semantics of different types of implicitly and explicitlymodalized
conditionals. These issues, notoriously complex as they are, are
complicatedfurther by the fact that conditionals are themselves
constructions that have been subjectto expressivist treatments. I
offer the interpretation in (8) simply for illustrative
purposes.
70 ALEX SILK
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(Since Schroeders objection is partly technical in nature, some
parts ofthis section are, of necessity, a bit more formal than the
others. To keep thediscussion generally accessible, I only mention
those technical points thatare directly relevant to the
philosophical issues. The important philosophicalpoints should be
clear enough, I hope, even for readers less interested in
thetechnical details.)
As noted in 3.1, expressivists can implement their compositional
seman-tics with an extension of possible worlds semantics, treating
the contents ofsentences as sets of pairs of worlds w and (say)
weak preference preorders ..But because of THE EXPRESSIVIST
PROGRAM, she must provide a systematic wayof interpreting the
formalism and characterizing what states of mind corre-spond to
what formal objects in such a way that explains the semantic
proper-ties of the sentences that express those states of mind. In
the special cases ofpreference-independent and world-independent
contentssets of pairssuch that if one pair is in the set, so is
every pair with the same w or . coordi-nate, respectivelythe
expressivist has a story: The former characterize ordin-ary factual
beliefs, like the belief that grass is green, and the latter
characterizepreferences, like the belief that murder is wrong. But
what should we sayabout contents that are neither
preference-independent nor world-indepen-dent? Schroeder objects
that the expressivist cannot give an adequate generalanswer to this
question, and that, as a result, the expressivist interpretation
ofmixed disjunctions is empirically incorrect.
Schroeder argues that, on certain natural assumptions,
expressivism pre-dicts that if / is a non-normative sentence and w
is a normative sen-tence, then it is impossible to believe / _ w
without either believing / orbelieving w:
[I]f / is normative and w is non-normative, there is no state of
puredescriptive belief that someone who believes that / _ w is
guaranteed tobe in, and there is no [pure preference state] that
she is guaranteed to bein. So ipso facto there is no combination of
a descriptive belief state and[pure preference state] that she is
guaranteed to be in. . .
But since were assuming that the only states of mind there are
are ordin-ary descriptive beliefs, ordinary [preference states],
and their combina-tions. . . on this view there is no room for such
a state. (2011: 14, 12,variables adapted; cf. p. 31, 2008a:
124127)
A bit more slowly: Giving or its usual interpretation as set
union, thecontent of the state of mind expressed by the mixed
disjunctionAlice doesnt have a job or Alice has to help the poor is
as follows.
(9) {hw, .i: Alice doesnt have a job in w, or Alice helps the
poor in allthe .-best worlds}
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 71
-
Call this set S. Bert believes that Alice doesnt have a job or
she has tohelp the poor iff Berts total belief statehis
doxastic-practical alternatives(4.2; cf. n. 25)is a subset of S.
But assuming that the only states of mindare ordinary factual
beliefs and pure preference states and their combina-tions, then
since S is the union of a world-independent content (a contentthat
only constrains .) and a preference-independent content (a content
thatonly constrains w), Bert can have this disjunctive belief only
if either Bertsdoxastic alternatives is a subset of S or Berts
practical alternatives is a sub-set of S. So Bert believes that
Alice doesnt have a job or she has to helpthe poor only if either
Bert believes that Alice doesnt have a job or Bertbelieves that
Alice has to help the poor. But this is incorrect. Bert canbelieve
that Alice doesnt have a job or she should help the poor but
beuncertain about which. One can believe a disjunction without
believingeither disjunct. So, Schroeder concludes, the expressivist
conates believing/ _ w with either believing / or believing w.
Like the case of the negation problem, this objection is partly
technicaland partly interpretive. It is technical because we need a
way of blockingthe entailment in question. It is interpretive
because whatever story we tellabout how to block this entailment,
we need to be able to interpret theresulting apparatus so as to
explain what states of mind are expressed bydisjunctive sentences
and how these states of mind are logically related toother states
of mind.
As Schroeder notes, an intuitive way of thinking of the attitude
expressedby a disjunctive sentence is in terms of Blackburns (1988)
notion of beingtied to a tree. A disjunction / _ w can be
understood as expressing a con-ditional commitment to take on the
attitude expressed by / upon rejectingthe attitude expressed by w,
and vice versa. But saying this raises a nowfamiliar problem:
another attitude has been introducedthe attitude of beingtied to a
treeand it must be explained how this attitude is logically
relatedto the other attitudes in the expressivists repertoire so as
to capture the logi-cal relations among disjunctive and
non-disjunctive sentences. For example,we need to capture how / _
w, :/, and :w are logically inconsistent.But the situation isnt
hopeless. The attitude expressed by disjunctive sen-tences neednt
be construed as an attitude that is logically unrelated to
theattitudes of requiring, permitting, etc. Taking up our strategy
in response tothe negation problem, if we can derive these
attitudes from a common corewe can capture their logical relations
sans stipulation.
Before turning to questions of interpretation, observe that
Schroedersobjection fails if we drop the assumption that total
belief states must becharacterized into a purely descriptive
component and a purely practicalcomponent, or that the only states
of mind there are are ordinary
72 ALEX SILK
-
descriptive beliefs, ordinary [preference states], and their
combinations.27
The reason for Schroeders assumption, of course, is a worry that
the ex-pressivist lacks a systematic way of interpreting sets of
world-preferencepairs that are neither world-independent nor
preference-independent. Butour solution to the negation problem
suggests a natural response. I suggestthat we characterize these
states in terms of ordinary belief and conditional(weak)
preference. One might worry about introducing a new attitude,
butthe attitude of conditional preference, its logic, and its
connection withbelief and action are already well studied in
decision theory and preferencelogic. Preferenceslike norms, values,
goals, etc.typically dont come inthe form of blunt categorical
injunctions. They arent usually of the formNo matter what, /!.
Rather they often come with conditions under whichthey apply. For
instance, if I want to go for a run, my preference neednt bethat I
go for a run, come what may. More plausibly it is that I go for a
rungiven that its sunny, that Im not injured, that I didnt just eat
a burrito,and so on. Our preferences are often conditional,
preferences for certain cir-cumstances. (Categorical preferences
can be treated as preferences that holdconditional on any
possibility.)
Thus far I have been treating modals as interpreted with respect
to preor-ders. But since modals can themselves occur in intensional
contexts, it isstandard in ordering semantics to index preorders to
a world of evaluation(written .w). Which preorder is relevant for
the interpretation of a givenmodal sentence can depend on how
things are in the actual world, or onhow things could be but arent
or could have been but werent. What con-text supplies for the
interpretation of the modal is a function from worlds topreorders.
Call such a function a preorder function. Preorder functions
pro-vide a natural way of representing conditional preferences.
Intuitively, a pre-
27 For a simple example, suppose our model contains only the
following world-preferencepairs: hw1;.1i; hw2;.1i; hw1;.2i;
hw2;.2i. Suppose we have a non-normative sentence/ and a normative
sentence w such that s/t fhw1;.1i; hw1;.2ig andswt fhw1;.1i;
hw2;.1ig, so that s/t [ swt fhw1;.1i;hw1;.2i; hw2;.1ig. (sat isthe
set of world-preference pairs that verify a.) Suppose that Alice
believes / _ w. ThenBelA s/t [ swt, where BelA is the set of hw, .i
pairs that characterize Alices totalbelief state. If, as Schroeder
suggests, BelA must be a subset of the intersection of
onlyworld-independent and preference-independent sets of hw, .i
pairsthat is, if Alicesbelief state must be characterizable only in
terms of purely descriptive beliefs and purelypractical beliefsthen
it indeed follows that BelA s/t _ BelA swt, that is, that
Alicebelieves / or Alice believes w. (Given that BelA s/t [ swt,
the only total belief statesthat are the intersection of world- and
preference-independent sets of world-preferencepairs are s/t; swt;
fhw1;.1ig, fhw1;.2ig, and fhw2;.1ig, and each of these is either
a(possibly improper) subset of s/t or a (possibly improper) subset
of swt. So ifBelA s/t _ swt, then BelA s/t or BelA swt.) But
dropping Schroeders assump-tion blocks the entailment, for the
following total belief states that are (possibly impro-per) subsets
of s/t [ swt neither entail / nor entail w: s/t [ swt itself,
andfhw1;.2i; hw2;.1ig.
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 73
-
order function kw ..w encodes ones preferences for the situation
of wbeing actual; an indexed preorder .w represents ones
preferences given therelevant circumstances in w. (Hereafter I use
the unindexed . as short forkw ..w to denote preorder functions.)
Suppose I prefer to go for a rungiven that its sunny, and I prefer
not to run given that it isnt sunny. Let-ting S and S be
representatives of relevant equivalence classes of worldswhere its
sunny and not sunny, respectively, we can represent these
condi-tional preferences with a preorder function . that is such
that worlds whereI run are, other things equal, .S-better than
worlds where I dont run, andis such that worlds where I dont run
are, other things equal, .S-better thanworlds where I do (n.
19).
In this way, preorder functions can be interpreted as
preferences condi-tional on maximally specic possibilities. As in
4.1, this isnt to deny thatagents have preferences conditional on
non-maximal possibilities, and it isneutral on the relation between
preferences conditional on maximal vs. non-maximal possibilities.
Since not all circumstances in a world may be rele-vant to ones
preferences, just as the preorders themselves may permit ties(they
neednt be antisymmetric), so too preorder functions may map
differ-ent worlds to the same preorder (they neednt be injective).
Representingbodies of conditional preference with preorder
functions has the advantageof utilizing existing apparatus from
contemporary ordering semantics formodals. However, like in 4.1,
alternative implementations will be possibledepending on ones
broader views about the sorts of issues mentionedthere.
A world-preference pair now consists of a possible world w and a
body ofpreferences conditional on w being actual. The singleton
{hw, .wi} representsa fully opinionated and decided state of mind;
it represents a state of mind thatis settled on w being the actual
world, and decided on a body of conditionalpreferences ., which
together determine the preferences .w. Generalizing, anarbitrary
set of world-preference pairs fhi;.ii; h j;.ji; . . .;
hu;.ui;hv;.vi; . . .g represents a belief state that is compatible
with i, j, u, v, . . ., anda preference state compatible with .
conditional on i, j, . . ., .* conditional onu, v, . . ., and so
on; it represents a state of uncertainty and indecision.
Forexample, the set fhw1;.1w1i; hw1;.2w1i; hw2;.1w2ig represents a
state of mindthat is uncertain about whether w1 or w2 is actual,
and is undecided aboutwhether to have the preferences .1w1 , .
2w1 , or .
1w2 . There are two important
things to notice about this: First, indecision in ones
preferences can be theresult of uncertainty, but it doesnt have to
be. Second, ones preferencesneednt be independent of ones
beliefs.
Lets consider a concrete example to illustrate how appealing to
condi-tional preferences, and representing them in terms of
preorder functions, canhelp solve the disjunction problem. Let J,
J, G, and G be (representativesof equivalence classes of) relevant
worlds in which Alice has or doesnt
74 ALEX SILK
-
have a Job, and Gives or doesnt give to the poor. And let .1, .
. . , .4 bepreorder functions with the following properties:
.1: G\1J G;G\1J G
.2: G\2J G; G\2J G
.3: G\3J G;G\3J G
.4: G\4J G; G\4J G
Intuitively, .1 represents a preference that Alice give to the
poor regardlessof whether she has a job; .2 represents a preference
that Alice give to thepoor iff she has a job; .3 represents a
preference that Alice give to the pooriff she doesnt have a job;
and .4 represents a preference that Alice notgive to the poor
regardless of whether she has a job. The contents of Alicedoesnt
have a job (:job) and Alice has to give to the poor
(M(give)),respectively, are as follows:
s:jobt fhw;.wi : Alice doesn't have a job in wg fh J;.1Ji; h
J;.2Ji; h J;.3Ji; h J;.4Jig
sMgivet fhw;.wi : Alice gives to the poor in all the .w-best
worldsg fhJ;.1Ji; h J;.1Ji; hJ;.2Ji; hJ;.3Jig
The content of the mixed disjunction Alice doesnt have a job or
she hasto give to the poor is the union of these sets:
s:job _Mgivet s:jobt [ sMgivet fhJ;.1Ji; hJ;.1Ji; hJ;.2Ji;
hJ;.2Ji; hJ;.3Ji; hJ;.4Jig
For concreteness, consider the following subset of this set, T
fhJ;.2Ji;hJ;.2Jig. The crucial question is this: What state of mind
is represented byT? Intuitively, it is the state of mind of being
uncertain about whether Alicehas a job, and of preferring that she
give to the poor conditional on her hav-ing a job and preferring
that she not give to the poor conditional on her nothaving a job.
It is a state of uncertainty and indecision (in this case, wherethe
indecision derives from the uncertainty). Since T is a subset of
the con-tent of the mixed disjunction but not of the content of
either disjunct, ifT represents Berts total state of mind, then
Bert counts as believing thatAlice doesnt have a job or has to give
to the poor, without believing that
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 75
-
Alice doesnt have a job or believing that she has to give to the
poor. Theinference from believing / _ w to believing / or believing
w is blocked.
To be clear, the proposal is not that utterances of mixed
disjunctionsconventionally express simple conditional
preferencese.g., preferencesthat hold conditional on the negation
of a factual antecedent. Saying thiswould fail to provide a general
interpretation of disjunction. For instance, itwont apply to
disjunctions in which each disjunct is normative. It also
nat-urally raises a worry that disjunctions in which one disjunct
is itself amixed disjunction will require us to iterate the go
conditional strategypast the point where we have an independent
grasp on the posited attitude(what would conditional conditional
preference be?). An agent might countas believing that Alice doesnt
have a job or has to give to the poor in vir-tue of having a
standing conditional preference for Alice to give to the poorgiven
that she a job. But having this conditional preference isnt
necessaryfor believing the mixed disjunction. It isnt the state of
mind conventionallyexpressed by an utterance of :job _ M(give). The
attitude conventionallyexpressed by an utterance of a sentence / is
the least committal way ofthinking that /.
Rather, the strategy is to give a general recipe for
interpreting arbitrarysets of world-preference pairs in terms of
ordinary beliefs about ways theworld might be and preferences that
hold given that the world is certain ofthose ways (see above). This
recipe is to apply to any disjunction, whethermixed or non-mixed,
simple or complex. Indeed, it is to apply to any sen-tence (or at
least any sentence whose content is a set of
world-preferencepairs).28 The strategy is this:
How to solve the disjunction problem:
1. Give disjunction the formal semantics we would normally give
it.(E.g., treat the content of / _ w as the union of the content
of/ and the content of w.)
2. Drop the assumption that total belief states must be
factorable intopurely descriptive and purely practical
components.
28 Treating disjunctions with normative disjuncts as
conventionally expressing attitudes ofindecision (perhaps among
other things) is compatible with granting that one can acceptsuch
disjunctions without being undecided. This is no different from the
ordinary factualcase. Disjunctions with ordinary factual sentences
conventionally express attitudes ofuncertainty, though one can
accept them while being certain about which disjunct istrue.There
may ultimately be reasons for further complicating the proposed
representationsof semantic contents and states of mind in light of
independent issues concerning episte-mic vocabulary (might,
probably, etc.). See note 1; for specic discussion of disjunc-tion
in epistemic expressivist theories, see Rothschild 2012, Swanson
2012.
76 ALEX SILK
-
3. Give a general way of interpreting (i.e., characterizing what
statesof mind correspond to) arbitrary sets of world-preference
pairs.
4. Apply this general strategy to the case of the contents of
disjunc-tive sentences.
5. Note that Schroeders problematic entailment is blocked.
Ordering expressivism offers a general way of characterizing
what states ofmind are represented by arbitrary sets of
world-preference pairs that lets usdrop Schroeders assumption in
Step 2 above. This interpretation explainsthe logical relations
among mixed states of mind and their pure counter-parts, and, thus,
among disjunctive and non-disjunctive sentences. It cor-rectly
blocks problematic entailments in cases with mixed disjunctions,
anddistinguishes believing / _ w from believing / or believing w.
Moregenerally, in providing such a recipe for interpreting
arbitrary sets of world-preference pairs, we can give a systematic
expressivist interpretation ofnormative, descriptive, and mixed
language. It is in this way that orderingexpressivism makes
progress toward a fast track solution to the Frege-Geach problem
(3).
6. Conclusion
Despite its checkered past, expressivism has found robust
support in a vari-ety of domains. In the case of normative language
and judgment, expressi-vism promises a substantive account of its
distinctive practical character, afeature which alternative
theories that assimilate the normative case to thenon-normative
case often struggle to capture. But it is often thought
thatexpressivism has intractable problems with capturing the
meanings andlogical properties of complex sentences and so cannot
make good on thispromise.
I have argued that we can make progress in eliminating
expressivismssemantic stumbling block by developing what I call
ordering expressivism.By interdening the attitudes intuitively
expressed by normative sentencesin terms of a single basic
practical attitude, the expressivist can capture thelogical
relations among these attitudes and thus among the sentences
thatexpress them. Though I have focused on the particular cases of
negationand disjunction, the structure of our solution suggests a
more general strat-egy for implementing an expressivist semantics.
Ordering expressivism co-opts developments from linguistic
semantics for modals by systematicallyinterpreting the orderings in
these analyses in terms of a suitable practicalattitude. Though
expressivism does make novel claims about semanticexplanation and
the nature of normative language and judgment, it neednt
HOW TO BE AN ETHICAL EXPRESSIVIST 77
-
reinvent the compositional semantic wheel. This, I hope, will
promptrenewed interest in other distinctive aspects of
expressivism, as in philoso-phy of mind and psychology.29
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29 Thanks to Jamie Dreier, Kit Fine, Allan Gibbard, Sarah Moss,
Peter Railton, Ian Rumtt,Mark Schroeder, Scott Sturgeon, Eric
Swanson, audiences at the 2014 Central APA,MIT, the University of
Birmingham