Propositional clothing and belief

Philosophical Quarterly

Volumn 57, Issue 228, 2007, Pages 342-362

  Sinclair, Neil ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949494603     PISSN: 00318094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.488.x     Document Type: Article

References (44)

1. Descriptivists include R. Boyd, 'How to be a Moral Realist', in G. Sayre-McCord (ed.), Essays on Moral Realism (Cornell UP, 1988), pp. 181-228
2. D. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge UP, 1989)
3. F. Jackson, From Metaphysics to Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)
4. P. Railton, 'Moral Realism', Philosophical Review, 95 (1986), pp. 163-207
5. R. Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism (Oxford UP, 2003)
6. M. Smith, The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994)
7. Expressivists include C.L. Stevenson, Ethics and Language (Yale UP, 1944)
8. S. Blackburn, Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)
9. A. Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Oxford UP, 1990)
10. Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics, pp. 5, 9
11. E. Harcourt, 'Quasi-Realism and Ethical Appearances', Mind, 114 (2005), pp. 249-75, at P. 251
12. See M. Ridge, 'Ecumenical Expressivism: Finessing Frege', Ethics, 116 (2006), pp. 302-36
13. See Blackburn, Spreading the Word, p. 170
14. and 'Through Thick and Thin', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 66 (1992), pp. 285-99
15. Gibbard, 'Thick Concepts and Warrants for Feelings', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 66 (1992), pp. 267-83
16. This point often goes unrecognized, e.g., in M. Smith, 'Some Not Much Discussed Problems for Non-Cognitivism in Ethics', Ratio, 14 (2001), pp. 93-115
17. F. Jackson and P. Pettit, 'A Problem for Expressivism', Analysis, 58 (1998), pp. 239-51
18. See Blackburn, 'Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism', Mind, 107 (1998), pp. 157-80
19. C.J.G. Wright, review of Spreading the Word, Mind, 94 (1985), pp. 310-19
20. and 'Comrades against Quietism', Mind, 107 (1998), pp. 183-202
21. Stevenson, Facts and Values, pp. 214-20
22. Blackburn, 'Moral Realism', in J. Casey (ed.), Morality and Moral Reasoning (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 101-24
23. Spreading the Word, pp. 181-223
24. 'Attitudes and Contents', Ethics, 98 (1988), pp. 501-17
25. Quasi-realism is sometimes understood as the project of explaining how moral discourse, understood expressively, can come to possess these features: see Blackburn, 'Truth, Realism and the Regulation of Theory', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5 (1980), pp. 353-71
26. Quasi-realism is not the view that we can talk and think as if moral sentences can be intelligibly embedded, true, known and explanatory, when in fact they cannot be. This is not quasi-realism but fictionalism: see Blackburn, Essays in Quasi-Realism, pp. 55-60
27. and 'Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism', in M. Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (Oxford UP, 2005), pp. 322-38
28. Wright, 'Realism, Anti-Realism, Irrealism, Quasi-Realism', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 12 (1987), pp. 25-49, at p. 35
29. See also Harcourt, p. 254
30. The relevant weavings can be examined in the following places. For intelligible embedding, see Blackburn, 'Attitudes and Contents', and 'Précis of Ruling Passions', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65 (2002), pp. 122-35
31. Gibbard, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, pp. 83-102
32. For truth-aptness, see Blackburn, 'Attitudes and Contents', Ruling Passions (pp. 68-83)
33. and 'Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism'. For knowledge-aptness, see Blackburn, 'Truth, Realism and the Regulation of Theory'. For explanatory power, see Blackburn, 'Just Causes', Philosophical Studies, 61 (1991), pp. 3-17
34. See H. Lillehammer, 'Moral Cognitivism', Philosophical Papers, 31 (2002), pp. 1-25, at p. 7
35. See D. Velleman, The Possibility of Practical Reason (Oxford UP, 2000), pp. 250-1
36. See N Sinclair, 'The Moral Belief Problem', Ratio, 19 (2006), pp. 249-60
37. Wright, Truth and Objectivity (Harvard UP, 1992), p. 14
38. See Blackburn, 'Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism', p. 160, n. 6
39. See M. Timmons, Morality without Foundations (Oxford UP, 1999), pp. 9-31
40. M. Ridge, in 'Saving the Ethical Appearances', Mind, 115 (2006), pp. 630-50, also notes that expressivists can, on this account, preserve a sense in which a discourse possessing T-features is significant
41. For a vindication of the T-features amounts to showing that the discourse in question involves genuine 'judgement', that is, it makes claims that can be disagreed with and require support. What the expressivist denies is that we can only enter such a space when dealing with representational states. Both Blackburn, in 'Attitudes and Contents' and Ruling Passions (pp. 68-77)
42. and Gibbard, in Thinking How to Live (Harvard UP, 2003), p. 66, emphasize this point
43. For some of these difficulties, see J.L. Mackie, Ethics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 38-42
44. Blackburn, Spreading the Word, pp. 169, 182-7, and 'Moral Realism'