Epistemic Expressivism Workshop
Expressivism is typically understood as a theory about the meaning and function of ethical discourse. The core idea is that ethical claims are not descriptions of reality but expressions of practical attitudes. Arguably this traces back to David Hume, but there are several well know attempts to turn it into a viable theory in 20th century. Some have sought to extend expressivism to discourse about aesthetics, modality, causality, and probability. Recently, it has even been argued that it could also extend to epistemic discourse – that is, discourse about, e.g., knowledge, justification and also when something might or must be the case.
This idea is the organizing theme of our workshop, and builds naturally on Edinburgh’s twin strengths in meta-normative theory and epistemology. Some participants have prominently defended epistemic expressivism, while others have prominently argued that it faces special problems having to do with the presuppositions of specifically epistemic discourse. By bringing together many of the main defenders and critics of this view to present new papers in the area, we hope to move this debate forward in a significant way.
This workshop is generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust, The Scots Philosophical Association, and the Edinburgh Philosophy Department.
Contact Details
Further Information
Provisional Programme
Saturday, October 15th
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| 09:00 – 09:25 | Registration; tea and coffee |
| 09.25 – 09:30 | Welcoming remarks |
| 09:30 – 11:00 | Matthew Chrisman (University of Edinburgh) "Epistemic Discourse as Rational but not Descriptive" |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | Seth Yalcin (University of California, Berkeley) "Knowledge in the Absence of Truth" |
| 12:30 – 13:30 | Lunch |
| 13:30 – 15:30 | Michael Ridge (University of Edinburgh) "How to be an Epistemic Expressivist" |
| 15:30 – 16:30 | Klemens Kappel (University of Copenhagen) "Epistemic Expressivism and the Argument from Motivation" |
| 16:30 – 17:00 | Tea and coffee |
| 17:00 – 18:30 | Michael Lynch (University of Connecticut) "Epistemic Realism and Epistemic Incommensurability" |
| 19:30 | Conference Dinner at Chop Chop, Haymarket (see below for details) |
Sunday, October 16th
| Time | Event |
|---|---|
| 09:30 – 10:00 | Tea and coffee |
| 10:00 – 11:30 | Allan Gibbard (University of Michigan) "Credence, Probability, and Deflationary Truth" |
| 11:30 – 13:00 | Benjamin Schnieder & Moritz Schulz (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin) "Expressivism and Objectification" |
| 13:00 – 14:00 | Lunch |
| 14:00 – 15:30 | Lisa Warenski (Union College) "Irrealism Without Anarchy: Valuing Truth Within a Nonfactualist Metaepistemology" |
| 15:30 – 16:00 | Tea and coffee |
| 16:00 – 17:30 | Terence Cuneo (University of Vermont) "Epistemic Expressivism and the Unity of Ought Thoughts" |
Registration has now closed.
Abstracts
Epistemic Discourse as Rational but Not Descriptive
Matthew Chrisman
Much of the recent debate in metaethics proceeds under the assumption that a domain-unspecific (and "thin") normative term like 'ought' functions either in descriptions of some putative normative features of the world or in the expression of a noncognitive attitude whose answerability to norms of rationality is markedly different from cognitive attitudes like belief. I believe this is a false dichotomy. I also believe this false dichotomy has lead to a systemic blindness to the possibility and attractiveness of non-descriptivist (e.g. expressivist) accounts of domain-specific (and "thick") normative phrases like 'justifiedly believes'. In this paper, I extend my previous defense of non-descriptivism about the term 'knows' in light of the space opened up by the rejection of this false dichotomy. (PDF)
Knowledge in the Absence of Truth
Seth Yalcin
I present some examples which motivate the thesis that, in at least some cases, knowledge-ascriptions don't have truth-conditions. I then explore the options for giving a formal semantics for "knows" which can accommodate the data. I distinguish relativist from expressivist construals of the semantics, defending the latter. I close by suggesting we understand expressivism about any given fragment of discourse as a thesis about its formal pragmatics. (PDF)
How to be an Epistemic Expressivist
Michael Ridge
In this paper I discuss whether the arguments for expressivism in the moral case carry over to the epistemic case, and draw some surprising conclusions. In particular, I contend that those arguments carry over much better for 'all things considered' epistemic judgments than for pro tanto reason to believe judgments. A (very tentative) hypothesis I explore in light of this conclusion: perhaps in the epistemic case, we should be expressivists about the all things considered 'ought' but cognitivists about judgments about pro tanto reasons. This would be a strange asymmetry, but perhaps an intelligible one. I consider some challenges to its intelligibility. A further challenge I consider is, even if such a view is coherent, why we would come to have a set of epistemic concepts that is bifurcated in this way. (PPT)
Epistemic Expressivism and the Argument from Motivation
Klemens Kappel (with Emil FL Moeller)
Epistemic expressivism is the general idea that epistemic judgements are to be understood in part as conative attitudes. One general motivation for epistemic expressivism trades on the similarity to the ethical domain. Sui generis epistemic properties, for example, would seem queer in the sense that Mackie that worried about, or at least just as queer as moral properties. The argumentative strategy exploiting the parallel between the two domains has been suggested in various places, but only to a limited extend elaborated more fully. In this paper we discuss in detail the argument from motivation as this applies to epistemic motivation, in particular epistemic motivation that pertains to attributions of knowledge.
Epistemic Realism and Epistemic Incommensurability
Michael Lynch
It is commonly assumed that at least some epistemic facts are objective. Leading candidates are those epistemic facts that supervene on natural facts about the reliability of belief-forming methods. In this paper, I raise and discuss a challenge to this assumption — not because I am unsympathetic but because I think that its nature and ground bear further examination. It turns out that realism about matters epistemic is more complex to articulate and defend than generally assumed. (PDF)
Credence, Probability, and Deflationary Truth
Allan Gibbard
The term "epistemic expressivism" might mean the metatheory of either of two kinds of epistemic discourse and thinking. One is normative epistemology, understood as the theory of rational belief, full or partial. The other is epistemic modality, what "may", "might", or "ought" to be the case, on an epistemic reading. (Words like 'maybe' and 'perhaps' have only an epistemic reading.) The paper will sketch or explore rough expressivistic metatheories of these two varieties, including some of the ways in which they contrast. Claims in normative epistemology, I hold, are capable of what I'll call full deflationary truth, which allows truth-functional composition and the like. We can ask whether there is any intelligible notion of truth that goes beyond this; I'm agnostic on this issue, but haven't encountered any clear explanation of a stronger kind of truth. As for epistemic modality, we can agree or disagree with "perhaps" statements and the like, but if we accordingly call them "true" or "false", it is in a much less robust sense of "true". One aim of the paper is to explore what is involved in full deflationary truth for expressivistically explained thinking and language. Another may be to elaborate some aspects of normative epistemology on such a picture, and contrast it with epistemically modal language. (PDF)
Expressivism and Objectification
Benjamin Schnieder & Moritz Schulz
A general consequence of expressivism which disproves it in many do- mains partially confirms it with respect to epistemic modals: the limited embeddability of expressivist terms. But although the standard argument against expressivism does not apply—at least not straightforwardly—to epistemic modals, expressivism is far from unproblematic even in this case. We will address some of the problems of expressivism which arise over and above the Frege-Geach problem. In particular, we will be concerned with a battery of objections against expressivism leveled by Papafragou (2005). Most extensively, we will focus on the problem that an epistemic modal like 'might' can also be used in an objective sense. This is somewhat unexpected if 'might' were an expressivist term. To have a sufciently unified account, a core feature of epistemic modals needs to be identified from which the two ways of using these expressions can be derived. We will go some way towards such an explanation by sketching an account of epistemic modals as modifiers according to which they may modify speech-acts in a way analogous to how they can be taken to modify the truth-conditional content of a sentence.
Irrealism Without Anarchy: Valuing Truth Within a Nonfactualist Metaepistemology
Lisa Warenski
An irrealist metaphysics for normative properties is attractive for those who think normative properties cannot be naturalized via reduction or given any plausible nonnaturalistic construal. An irrealist account of normative properties also has the virtue of being able to explain normative disagreement. But irrealist views are often developed in such a way that they do not appear to have the resources to counter relativism or give a satisfactory account of important normative concepts. For many, this is too high a price to pay for an attractive metaphysics and the promise of accommodating normative disagreement.
I think metaepistemological irrealism does have the resources to both explain correctness of epistemic judgement and account for important epistemic concepts. The key to addressing these challenges is to tell the right kind of story about how to value truth. On the version of epistemic irrealism that I favor, normative epistemic properties are understood as evaluative properties that reflect our norms of belief formation and appraisal. As a first step toward explaining correct epistemic judgement, I attempt to give a general characterization of a prima facie good epistemic norm, or equivalently, a norm that is admissible from an epistemic point of view. My account of admissible epistemic norms is pluralist, and it also leads to a very modest relativism, but this very modest relativism should be unobjectionable.
Epistemic Expressivism and the Unity of Ought Thoughts
Terence Cuneo
In this paper, I articulate a general challenge to epistemic expressivism, contending that advocates of this view need to explain how it could be that normative judgments at once do not purport to represent normative features but also fall under epistemic merit concepts such as being rational, entitled, warranted, justified, and so forth.
One response to this challenge is to appeal to deflationism about normative features, truth, and representation. I contend that this response may have less going for it than appears. The general worry I raise is that there appear to be some normative domains that don't happily admit of a deflationary treatment. Consider, for example, games such as chess and baseball. On the face of it, these games are constituted by rights, responsibilities, and obligations that attach to their practitioners. We created these rights, responsibilities, and obligations and it seems as if we can form de re/predicative thoughts about them. It is plausible to maintain that expressivism should, however, offer us a unified account of normative thought. The worry I develop is that, given a natural understanding of conventional normativity, expressivism cannot achieve this unity. (PDF)
This workshop is generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust, The Scots Philosophical Association, and the Edinburgh Philosophy Department.