Talk:Expressivism

I know nothing about meta-ethics, so excuse me if this is a stupid question, but:

'In the second statement the expressivist account appears to fail, in that the speaker asserting the hypothetical premise is expressing no moral position towards lying, condemnatory or otherwise'

the second statement is 'it is wrong to tell lies': surely the speaker is expressing a moral position here? Hopsyturvy 12:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * It's definitely not a stupid question - the Frege-Geach problem is very badly explained here. It misses out pretty much all of the formal logic argument for the conclusion. Essentially, though, the point of the argument is that if expressivism is correct, then "It is wrong to tell lies" and "If it is wrong to tell lies" refer to entirely different things and thus do not have an equivalent meaning. This would make the simple inference given invalid, which is obviously wrong. The key part is the "if", which alters the meaning of the sentence.


 * If you want a more detailed explanation, then the chapter on this in Alex Miller's "Metaethics" is quite good. Ignore his commentary, though; he's better at explaining than he is at arguing. 129.234.4.76 13:26, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If the explanation is so bad, perhaps you'd like to rewrite it with the logic? But more fundamentally, you miss the key point that the sentence quoted by Hopsyturvy was erroneous - it should have referred to the first statement. I have corrected this now. Raoul2 11:15, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

According to the current article, if someone said "Killing is wrong", then on the expressivist analysis they would really be saying "I approve of the statement "killing is wrong"". I don't think this is what the expressivist had in mind - since if this were the case then all moral propositions would actually be truth apt (in fact, expressivism would be much more akin to metaethical subjectivism on this analysis). The statements which the origonal moral proposition are analysed into must not be truth apt, it must be an expression of something (be it an emotion as in classic emotivism, or some other sentiment) much more akin to "B!x" or "H!y".

I started a rewrite of this article. There were no references/bibliographic information at all, and some of the information was inaccurate (i.e., equation of expressivism with subjectivism). I kept the material on arguments for and against as is; I'll probably replace it later with better stuff.

SCPhilosopher 20:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Difference from non-cognitivism?
I'm trying to clean up and organize meta-ethic articles, in particular the list(s) of theories on the meta-ethics page, and I'm wondering how to categorize expressivism. It is obviously at least a form of non-cognitivism, but given what existing article say, I'm not seeing any room for a non-expressivist form of non-cognitivism; that is, they appear to be two terms for the same thing. The page on non-cognitivism, in the section labelled "Varieties of non-cognitivism", lists emotivism and universal prescriptivism and then follows with a sentence beginning "Expressivism (encapsulating emotivism and prescriptivism) including Simon Blackburn's quasi-realism and Allan Gibbard's norm-expressivism...". That would seem to wrap every form of non-cognitivism under the expressivist banner. I'm going to add a merger template for these two articles, and unless anyone can express any good reasons not to merge them, I'll go ahead and complete the merger. Please comment. If you approve of this merger, please comment whether you think the resulting article should have the Non-cognitivist title or the Expressivist title in the name space. -Pfhorrest (talk) 05:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I am weakly to mildly opposed to merger, on the grounds that while there is some overlap between the concepts, and that there is some historical precedence for the interchangeability between the use of the words, it is all largely inconsistent. Both articles show (expressivism better than non-cognitivism) how there is a history of the development of the two ideas which might be argued to be "drastic" (that's too strong a word).  I would like to see a modern cited reference showing the relation between the two words, or showing the interchangeability of the two words before I agree to merger.  However until then the merger tag should remain.  Otherwise, I might consider the merger to be "original research" based on merely interpreting the concepts as outline on the two pages.

^ This dude is wrong. Just wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.161.133.2 (talk) 22:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC) Mystyc1 (talk) 19:31, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Merging expressivism and non-cognitivism could be a good idea, so long as the following difference is still made clear. (I may be mistaken on this point, and if so ignore me, but feel fairly certain about it.) Non-cognitivism is a negative claim about moral statements (or at least a significant subset of them - see Ayer's four types of moral statements). It claims that they are not alethic/factual in nature. However, expressivism is a related but separate claim that moral statements, while not alethic/factual, do express something nevertheless. One could be a non-cognitivist without being an expressivist by holding that moral statements are nonsensical and express nothing whatsoever. However, it just so happens, that non-cognitivist tend to be expressivists. -PubliusNemo (talk) 3 October 2008 —Preceding undated comment was added at 21:32, 3 October 2008 (UTC).

There should be no merger between non-cognitivism and expressivism. Expressivism is a form of non-cognitivism, but non-cognitivism is not a form of expressivism. For example, one might be a non-cognitivist about modal notions (necessity and possibility), which can be divorced from discussions in ethics. David Hume was arguable a non-cognitivist about necessity. There is also some discussion of this issue in Crispin Wright, 1980, ch. 23.

The solution, I think, is to expand the non-cognitivism section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.36.126.25 (talk) 09:03, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

---

There is no difference between the two. Non-cognitivism is expressivism. There are other non-cognitive areas, but non-cognitivism itself is only a meta-ethical theory that is sometimes referred to as expressivism. Do the merge! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.161.210.163 (talk) 07:43, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Up until recent times, it appears that ideas of emotivism/expressivism and non-cognitivism were synonymous. However, Horgan and Timmons' argument in their essay 'Cognitivist Expressivism' exerts that there is a distinction wherein they separate ideas of descriptivism and cognitivism (through their analysis of the 'semantic assumption') and claim that cognitivism is indeed compatible with expressivism. They distinguish tangible facts (of which statements can be descriptive and cognitive) from genuine truth-apt beliefs (of which statements can be cognitive but not descriptive). Thus, a merger with the non-cognitivist article in this respect becomes a direct contradiction in terms. No merger should occur. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.173.130.92 (talk) 14:49, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

It is simply incorrect to claim Non-cognitivism is expressivism as any reference to any philosophical discusion of the two or particularly stanford online will show you. Expressivism as said 3 above is a non-cognitivist theorem amongst others such as subjectivism. There should not be a merger as doing so will merely limit the available information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.171.255.75 (talk) 17:33, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Expressivism and Non-cognitivism are clearly different theses.

Non-cognitivism is the view that ethical statements are speech acts, and as such have no descriptive meaning. It constitutes the a negative claim about ethical statements- that they fail to have descriptive meanings. By contrast, expressivism is a positive view about the meaning of ethical statements - that their meaning is the attitude that the speaker conveys when giving them.

Views that attribute non-descriptive meanings to ethical statements other than to the attitudes of the speaker are non-cognitivist but are not expressivist. The view that moral statements are imperatives, e.g. the meaning of 'killing is wrong' is 'Don't kill people!' is non-cognitivist but not expressivist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samyoung17 (talk • contribs) 13:53, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Should Mackie be here?
Why is the argument from queerness listed as one for expressivism? Mackie seems to regard moral statements as cognitive, but false, in that moral facts would be queer sorts of things if they were true. The only angle I can imagine for the development of queerness here would be Ayer's later writings, where he says supportive things about Mackie's position. I doubt he uses Mackie's argument, though.131.96.91.66 (talk) 17:09, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Source of Expressivism
I just want to share a potentially source of emotivism. In "Analysis" there is a paper called "Suggestion about Value" by W.H.F. Barnes, that have been published on 1934 [Ayer was on 1936]. Here the DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/1.3.45

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