[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, David Plunkett, (Dartmouth)

[Ryan Cox]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is David Plunkett, (Dartmouth)

The title of the talk is "The Explanatory Emptiness of Conciliatory Expressivism" (joint work with Tristram McPherson). Here is an abstract for the talk:

Expressivism is a prominent kind of metaethical view. Put roughly, according to metaethical expressivism, ethical judgments consist in desire-like mental states, rather than belief-like ones, which people then express when making ethical statements. Proponents of metaethical expressivism often claim that an important comparative advantage of their view is that if can avoid central metaphysical and epistemological challenges that more “realist” metaethical views face. Two important (purported) examples of such problems are 1) explaining the supervenience of the ethical on the natural and 2) explaining our reliability in key parts of ethical judgment. We challenge this understanding. In order to have a form of expressivism that captures key parts of how people actually think and talk, there is significant pressure for expressivists to advance “conciliatory” or “accommodationist” versions of their view. Put roughly, such versions of expressivism – which are the most common kinds of expressivist views in contemporary metaethics – involve taking on board theses about the nature of “beliefs”, “truths”, and “facts” that allow expressivists to say that, in at least one important “deflationary” sense there is a way in which ethical thought does involve truth-apt “ethical beliefs” about “ethical facts”. However, this move leads to a problem. In short, conciliatory expressivism provides the expressive resources to allow us to felicitously express many of the core metaphysical and epistemological explanatory challenges (e.g., the challenges involving supervenience and reliability) that matter for more straightforwardly “realist” metaethical theories (especially “non-naturalist” ones). Moreover, conciliatory expressivism does not provide any distinctive resources for addressing these challenges. If it can “answer” the challenges, it is not because of the view itself, but rather because of optional “add-on” commitments, which are also equally available in combination with other metaethical views. This result has important implications for how we think about the overall prospects of expressivism in metaethics, as well as in other areas of philosophy where it has gained traction in recent years (such as in normative epistemology and in discussions about modality).

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Oct 9 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

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