Abstract
The debate between expressivism and representationalism raises the question of whether ethical claims should be analyzed as predications of ethical properties. Representationalism is the thesis that every meaningful claim represents a time–space located or locatable state of affairs. So, when it is used to account for the meaning of ethical discourse, we are faced with the placement problem (Price, 2011), the problem of placing ethical properties in the physical world. By contrast, classic expressivism (Ayer, 1936/1971) avoids appealing to predication concerning ethical concepts and proposes explaining their meaning in terms of the expression of speakers’ states. This avoids the placement problem but poses the Frege-Geach problem, a difficulty in accounting for the propositional behavior exhibited by ethical claims. This paper maintains that both sides of the debate share a false premise. They both adopt a representationalist notion of proposition, according to which every predication ascribes an instantiable-in-locatable-entities property. I will defend that this notion of proposition does not reflect the linguistic practices of speakers, which exhibit a logico-semantic pluralism that makes it necessary to distinguish between two orders of predication. In particular, I will endorse the view that ethical concepts are higher-order predicables (Frápolli,2019), which operate on non-locatable entities (Frápolli, 2014). From this point of view, I will describe the placement problem as a pseudo-problem resulting from a category mistake and I will claim that the classic expressivist reaction to this problem fails to recognize it as such.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
See Copp (2001) for an exception.
- 2.
- 3.
I prefer the label “non-physicalistic”, as it emphasizes the locational aspect.
References
Ayer, A. J. (1936/1971). Language, truth and logic. Penguin Books.
Bar-On, D. (2012). Expression, truth, and reality: Some variations on themes from Wright. In A. Coliva (Ed.), Mind, meaning, and knowledge: Themes from the philosophy of Crispin Wright (pp. 162–192). Oxford University Press.
Bar-On, D., & Sias, J. (2013). Varieties of expressivism. Philosophy Compass, 8(8), 699–713.
Bar-On, D. (2019). Neo-expressivism: (self-)knowledge, meaning, and truth. In M. J. Frápolli (Ed.), Expressivisms, knowledge and truth, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 86 (pp. 11–34). Cambridge University Press.
Boisvert, D. (2008). Expressive-assertivism. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 89, 169–203.
Brandom, R. B. (1994). Making it explicit. Reasoning, representing, and discursive commitment. Harvard University Press.
Brandom, R. B. (2000). Articulating reasons. Harvard University Press.
Camp, E. (2018). Metaethical expressivism. In T. McPherson & D. Plunkett (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of metaethics (pp. 87–101). Routledge.
Chrisman, M. (2008). Expressivism, inferentialism, and saving the debate. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 77(2), 334–358.
Chrisman, M. (2010). Constructivism, expressivism and ethical knowledge. International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 18(3), 331–353.
Chrisman, M. (2011). Ethical expressivism. In C. Miller (Ed.), The Continuum companion to ethics (pp. 29–54). Continuum.
Chrisman, M. (2018). Two nondescriptivists views of normative and evaluative statements. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 48(3–4), 405–424.
Copp, D. (2001). Realist-expressivism: A neglected option for moral realism. Social Philosophy and Policy, 18(2), 1–43.
Frápolli, M. J. (2014). You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals: Subject naturalism and default positions. Análisis: Revista de investigación filosófica, 1(1), 41–67.
Frápolli, M. J. (2019). Propositions first: Biting Geach’s bullet. In M. J. Frápolli (Ed.), Expressivisms, knowledge and truth, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 86 (pp. 87–110). Cambridge University Press.
Frápolli, M. J. (2021). Frege pragmatised: Bringing sense back into logical theory. Springer.
Frápolli, M. J., & Villanueva, N. (2013). Frege, Sellars, Brandom: Expresivismo e inferencialismo semánticos. In D. Pérez (Ed.), Perspectivas en la filosofía del lenguaje (pp. 583–617). Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza.
Frápolli, M. J. & Villanueva, N. (2015). Expressivism, relativism, and the analytic equivalence test. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01788/full
Frápolli, M. J. & Villanueva, N. (2016). Pragmatism. Propositional priority and the organic model of propositional individuation. Disputatio, 8(43), 203–217.
Frege, G. (1884/1960). The foundations of arithmetic: a logico-mathematical enquiry into the concept of number. Harper & Brothers.
Frege, G. (1891/1997). Function and concept. In M. Beaney (Ed.) The Frege Reader (pp. 130–148), Blackwell.
Geach, P. T. (1960). Ascriptivism. The Philosophical Review, 69(2), 221–225.
Geach. P. T. (1962/1980). Reference and generality: an examination of some medieval and modern theories. Cornell University Press.
Gibbard, A. (2003). Thinking how to live. Harvard University Press.
Gibbard, A. (2012). Meaning and normativity. Oxford University Press.
Moore, G. E. (1903/1993). Principia ethica. Cambridge University Press.
Navarro, L. (2017). Inferencialismo en el discurso ético. Boletín de la Sociedad de Lógica, Metodología y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Special issue (November 2017), 67–80.
Price, H. (2011). Naturalism without mirrors. Oxford University Press.
Price, H. (2013). Expressivism, pragmatism and representationalism. Cambridge University Press.
Ridge, M. (2006). Ecumenical expressivism: Finessing frege. Ethics, 116(2), 302–336.
Ridge, M. (2007). Ecumenical expressivism: The best of both worlds? In R. Shafer-Landau (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics (Vol. 2, pp. 51–76). Oxford University Press.
Ryle, G. (1949/2009). The Concept of Mind. Routledge.
Van Roojen, M. (2018). Moral cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/moral-cognitivism/
Villanueva, N. (2018). Expresivismo y semántica. In D. Pérez (Ed.), Cuestiones de la filosofía del lenguaje (pp. 437–469). Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza.
Williams, C. J. F. (1992). Towards a unified theory of higher-level predication. The Philosophical Quarterly, 42(169), 449–464.
Acknowledgments
This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports (FPU16/04185) and the FiloLab Group of Excellence (University of Granada). I am thankful to Manuel Almagro, Michela Bella, María José Frápolli, María Jiménez, Núria Sara Miras Boronat, Javier Osorio, and the audiences of the Women in Pragmatism International Conference and the V Jornadas Filo-Doc conference for their valuable comments on previous versions of this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Navarro, L. (2022). Where Are Ethical Properties? Predication, Location, and Category Mistake. In: Miras Boronat, N.S., Bella, M. (eds) Women in Pragmatism: Past, Present and Future. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00921-1_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00921-1_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-00920-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-00921-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)