Expression and guidance in Schroeder’s expressivist semantics
Document Type
Journal article
Source Publication
Erkenntnis
Publication Date
7-2017
Volume
Advance online publication
Publisher
Springer
Abstract
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.
DOI
10.1007/s10670-017-9916-0
Print ISSN
01650106
E-ISSN
15728420
Funding Information
Research appearing in this paper was partially funded by a grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, China (LU342612). {LU342612}
Publisher Statement
Copyright © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017. Access to external full text or publisher's version may require subscription.
Full-text Version
Publisher’s Version
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Baker, D. (2017). Expression and guidance in Schroeder’s expressivist semantics. Erkenntnis. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1007/s10670-017-9916-0