This paper has two related goals. First, we develop an expressivist account of negation which, in the spirit of Alan Gibbard, treats disagreement as semantically primitive. Our second goal is to make progress toward a unified expressivist treatment of modality. Metaethical expressivists must be expressivists about deontic modal claims. But then metaethical expressivists must either extend their expressivism to include epistemic and alethic modals, or else accept a semantics for modal expressions that is radically disjunctive. We propose that expressivists look to Amie Thomasson's work for a general strategy for offering a unified expressivist account of modality. Modals in general, we propose, are devices for expressing metalinguistic commitments within the object language, with deontic, epistemic, and metaphysical modals all expressing different kinds of metalinguistic commitments.

Attitudinal embeddings, such as ‘I hope that murder is wrong’ or ‘she is glad that eating meat is not wrong’ are a less substantial problem for expressivists than is standardly thought. If expressivists are entitled to talk of normative beliefs, they can explain what it is to for an attitude to be semantically related to a normative content in terms of being functionally related to a belief with a normative content.

Normative discourse frequently involves explanation. For example, we tell children that hitting is wrong because it hurts people. In a recent paper, Selim Berker argues that to account for this kind of explanation, expressivists need an account of normative grounding. Against this, I argue that expressivists should eschew grounding and stick to a more pragmatic picture of explanation, one that focuses on how we use explanatory speech acts to communicate information. This chapter proposes that the standard form of a normative explanation is a generalizing explanation, one which shows a particular moral injunction to follow from a more general injunction. An additional upshot of the resulting view is that it paves the way for a purely metaphysical solution to the problem of creeping minimalism. Quasi-real properties are those that, unlike real properties, stand outside of the metaphysical hierarchy of grounding relations.

I argue that standard explanationist solutions to the problem of creeping minimalism are largely on the right track, but they fail to correctly specify the kind of explanation that is relevant to distinguishing realism from quasirealism. Quasirealism should not be distinguished from realism in terms of the explanations it gives of why a normative judgment—a normative sentence or attitude—has the semantic content that it has. Rather, it should be distinguished in terms of the explanations it offers of what the semantic content of a normative judgment is.

It is plausible that there is a distinctively epistemic standard of correctness for belief. It is also plausible that there are a range of practical reasons bearing on belief. These theses are often thought to be in tension with each other. To resolve the tension, we draw on an analogy with a similar distinction between types of reasons for actions in the context of activities. This motivates a two-level account of the structure of normativity. The account relies upon a further distinction between normative reasons and authoritatively normative reasons. Only the latter constitutively play the functional role of explaining what state one just plain ought to be in. We conjecture that all and only practical reasons are authoritative. Hence, in one important sense, all reasons for belief are practical reasons. But this account also preserves the autonomy and importance of epistemic reasons. Section One: Introduction It is exceedingly plausible that there are distinctively epistemic reasons that provide normative support for or against beliefs.2 Call this thesis evidentialism. For instance, the fact that you see a walrus on the ottoman is a reason to believe there is a walrus on the ottoman. A stronger thesis, anti-pragmatism, maintains that epistemic reasons are the only kinds of reasons for belief. This thesis is significantly less attractive than evidentialism since a range of different cases provide support for the idea that we have practical reasons for belief. Special thanks to two anonymous referees for extraordinarily helpful feedback, and to Sinan Doğramacı, who gave comments on a predecessor at the Southern California Epistemology Workshop at the Pacific APA in 2017. Thanks to Derek Baker, Rima Basu, Selim Berker, Darren Bradley, Michael Bratman, Chris Cowie, Jorah Dannenberg, Edward Elliot, Matti Eklund, Chris Howard, Nadeem Hussain, Jessica Isserow, Jessica Keiser, Benjamin Kiesewetter, Matt Kotzen, Krista Lawlor, Taylor Madigan, Meghan Maguire, Susanne Mantel, Milan Mossé, Austen McDougal, Erum Naqvi, Ram Neta, David Plunkett, Andrew Reisner, Susanna Rinard, Kate Ritchie, Léa Salje, Geoff Sayre-McCord, Karl Schafer, Daniel Star, Pekka Väyrynen, Robbie Williams, and to participants at the Pacific APA in 2017, the Normativity Workshop, NYU Abu Dhabi in 2016, the Workshop on Epistemic Consequentialism at the University of Kent, June 2015, the Centre for Ethics and Metaethics (at Leeds), and a graduate seminar at Stanford in 2017. 1 Order is alphabetical. Both authors contributed equally. Contractions are all Jack’s. 2 For simplicity, we assume all epistemic reasons are evidential; for some arguments against this, see, for example, Wright (2004), Talbot (2014), Schroeder (2015). Throughout, we will be neutral between different varieties of evidentialism and different ways of distinguishing epistemic reasons.

The scientific worldview seems to threaten the common picture of human agency on two fronts. Most obviously, we see human agency as responsible agency: people can be praised or blamed for their act...

There are many different oughts. There is a moral ought, a prudential ought, an epistemic ought, the legal ought, the ought of etiquette, and so on. These oughts can prescribe incompatible actions. What I morally ought to do may be different from what I self-interestedly ought to do. Philosophers have claimed that these conflicts are resolved by an authoritative ought, or by facts about what one ought to do simpliciter or all-things-considered. However, this chapter defends the view that the only coherent notion of an ought simpliciter comes with preposterous first-order normative commitments. It is more reasonable to reject the ought simpliciter in favor of the form of normative pluralism advocated in Tiffany (2007).

Mark Schroeder's expressivist program has made substantial progress in providing a compositional semantics for normative terms. This paper argues that it risks achieving this semantic progress at the cost of abandoning a key theoretical motivation for embracing expressivism in the first place. The problem can be summarized as a dilemma. Either Schroeder must allow that there are cases in which agents are in disagreement with one another, or can make valid inferences, but that these disagreements or inferences are not expressible in natural language; or his version of expressivism must abandon one of the key theoretical advantages expressivist theories seemed to possess over cognitivism, the ability to provide a very straightforward explanation of the action- and attitude-guiding role of normative judgments.

Deliberation often begins with the question 'What do I want to do?' rather than a question about what one ought to do. This paper takes that question at face value, as a question about which of one's desires is strongest, which sometimes guides action. The paper aims to explain which properties of a desire make that desire strong, in the sense of 'strength' relevant to this deliberative question. The paper argues that one's judgment about one wants most will sometimes play a verdictive role, partially determining what the agent most wants, and so making itself true.

A number of philosophers have offered quasi-perceptual theories of desire, according to which to desire something is roughly to “see” it as having value or providing reasons. These are offered as alternatives to the more traditional Humean theory of motivation, which denies that desires have a representational aspect. This paper examines the various considerations offered by advocates to motivate quasi-perceptualism. It argues that Humeanism is in fact able to explain the same data that the quasi-perceptualist can explain, and in one case the Humean explanation is superior. Quasi-perceptual accounts of desire, the paper concludes, are for the most part unmotivated.

Allan Gibbard (2012) argues that the term 'meaning' expresses a normative concept, primarily on the basis of arguments that parallel Moore's famous Open Question Argument. In this paper I argue that Gibbard's evidence for normativity rests on idiosyncrasies of the Open Question Argument, and that when we use related thought experiments designed to bring out unusual semantic intuitions associated with normative terms we fail to find such evidence. These thought experiments, moreover, strongly suggest there are basic requirements for a theory of meaning incompatible with Gibbard's ultimate goal of providing an expressivist account of meaningrelated concepts. I conclude by considering a possible way in which meaning could be normative, consistent with the intuitions about disagreement; but this form of normativism about meaning appears incompatible with Gibbard's expressivism.

I know of no better way of summarizing how good this collection is than to say that the essays within manage to say new and interesting things about motivational internalism. The proper philosophic...

This paper argues that, with certain provisos, predicting one's future actions is incompatible with rationally deliberating about whether to perform those actions. It follows that fully rational omniscient agents are impossible, since an omniscient being could never rationally deliberate about what to do (omniscient beings, the paper argues, will always meet the relevant provisos). Consequently, theories that explain practical reasons in terms of the choices of a perfectly rational omniscient agent must fail. The paper considers several ways of defending the possibility of an omniscient agent, and concludes that while some of these may work, they are inconsistent with the aim of explaining practical normativity by appeal to such an agent.

Human life has special importance. Human decisions must be granted special respect. It is natural to see these claims as connected. It seems likely that human life has value because human beings possess a unique capacity for self-determination. David Velleman’s argument that the nature of autonomy provides us with a prima facie case against the morally permissibility of suicide, at least in most cases, rests on highly questionable premises. Nonetheless, it does point to the importance of a proper understanding of seemingly arcane notions like the self and autonomy in giving principled and systematic answers to practical moral dilemmas. I will argue here that his case against suicide relies on a Kantian understanding of the nature of the self, and consequently of the nature of autonomy and how it should be respected.

Byrne (Philos Top 33:79–104, 2005 ; Self-knowledge, 2011a ; Consciousness of the self: new essays, 2011b ; Proc Aristot Soc Suppl Vol 85:201–219, 2011c ; Introspection and consciousnes, 2012 ) offers a novel interpretation of the idea that the mind is transparent to its possessor, and that one knows one’s own mind by looking out at the world. This paper argues that his (Byrne, Proc Aristot Soc Suppl Vol 85:201–219, 2011c ; Introspection and consciousnes, 2012 ) attempts to extend this picture of self-knowledge force him to sacrifice the theoretical parsimony he presents as the primary virtue of his account. The paper concludes by discussing two general problems transparency accounts of self-knowledge must address.

Joseph Raz and Sergio Tenenbaum argue that the Guise of the Good thesis explains both the possibility of practical reason and its unity with theoretical reason, something Humean psychological theories may be unable to do. This paper will argue, however, that Raz and Tenenbaum face a dilemma: either the version of the Guise of the Good they offer is too strong to allow for weakness of will, or it will lose its theoretical advantage in preserving the unity of reason.(1)

We argue that several difficulties facing expressivist solutions to the Frege-Geach problem are paralleled by almost exactly analogous problems facing realist semantic theories. We show that by adopting a variation on a prominent realist solution, the expressivist brings her account of logical consequence closer to philosophical orthodoxy. Our discussion also demonstrates that a standard objection to expressivism is based on a misinterpretation of the Frege-Geach problem and that the expressivist can appeal to a wide range of attitudinal conflicts in her semantic theorizingfar wider than Mark Schroeder, for example, allows in his recent work.