Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:40:25.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Creeping Minimalism and Subject Matter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2020

Matthew Simpson Open the ORCID record for Matthew Simpson [Opens in a new window]
Matthew Simpson*
Affiliation:
University College London, UK
*
Email: matthew.simpson@cantab.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The problem of creeping minimalism concerns how to tell the difference between metaethical expressivism and its rivals given contemporary expressivists’ acceptance of minimalism about truth and related concepts. Explanationism finds the difference in what expressivists use to explain why ethical language and thought has the content it does. I argue that two recent versions of explanationism are unsatisfactory and offer a third version, subject matter explanationism. This view, I argue, captures the advantages of previous views without their disadvantages and gives us a principled and general characterisation of non-representational views about all kinds of language and thought.

Keywords

Creeping minimalismexpressivismminimalismsubject matterexplanationismnon-representationalism
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 6 , August 2020 , pp. 750 - 766
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blackburn, S. 1980. “Opinions and Chances.” In Prospects for Pragmatism, edited by Mellor, D. H., 175–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reprinted in his Essays in Quasi-Realism. Oxford University Press, 1993), 75–93.Google Scholar
Blackburn, S. 1998. “Wittgenstein, Wright, Rorty and Minimalism.” Mind 107: 157–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, S. 1999. “Is Objective Moral Justification Possible on A Quasi-Realist Foundation?” Inquiry 42: 213–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, S. 2010. “The Steps from Doing to Saying.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110: 1–13. Reprinted in his Practical Tortoise Raising: And Other Philosophical Essays. Oxford University Press, 2010), 169–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blackburn, S. 2013. “Pragmatism: All or Some?” In Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism, edited by Price, H., 59–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blackburn, S. 2015. “Blessed Are the Peacemakers.” Philosophical Studies 172 (4), 843–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, R. 1988. “How to Be a Moral Realist.” In Essays on Moral Realism, edited by Sayre-McCord, G., 181–228. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Brandom, R. 1994. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Chrisman, M. 2008. “Expressivism, Inferentialism, and Saving the Debate.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 77: 334–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chrisman, M. 2016. The Meaning of “Ought”: Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Crane, T. 2013. The Objects of Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Divers, J., and Elstein, D.. 2012. “Manifesting Belief in Absolute Necessity.” Philosophical Studies 158 (1): 109–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreier, J. 2004. “Meta-Ethics and the Problem of Creeping Minimalism.” Philosophical Perspectives 18 (1): 23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreier, J. 2018. “The Real and the Quasi-Real: Problems of Distinction.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3–4): 532–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eklund, M. 2017. Choosing Normative Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, K. 2001. “The Question of Realism.” Philosophers’ Imprint 1 (2): 1–30.Google Scholar
Gibbard, A. 2015. “Global Expressivism and the Truth in Representation.” In Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism, edited by Gross, S., Tebben, N., and Williams, M., 210–43. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golub, C. 2017. “Expressivism and Realist Explanations.” Philosophical Studies 174: 1385–1409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, S., Tebben, N., and Williams, M., eds. 2015. Meaning without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, P. 1998. Truth. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horwich, P. 2008. “Being and Truth.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 33: 258–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackson, F. 1979. “On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals.” Philosophical Review 88: 565–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. 1986. On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Liggins, D. 2016. “Deflationism, Conceptual Explanation, and the Truth Asymmetry.” The Philosophical Quarterly 66 (262): 84–101.Google Scholar
Macarthur, D., and Price, H.. 2007. “Pragmatism, Quasi-Realism, and the Global Challenge.” In The New Pragmatists, edited by Misak, C., 91–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Price’s Naturalism without Mirrors. 2011. Oxford University Press, 228–52.Google Scholar
McFetridge, I. 1990. “Truth, Correspondence, Explanation and Knowledge.” In Logical Necessity and Other Essays, edited by Haldane, J. and Scruton, R., 29–52. London: Aristotelian Society.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. H. 1993. “How to Believe a Conditional.” Journal of Philosophy 90: 233–48. Reprinted in his Mind, Meaning and Reality. 2012. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 34–46.Google Scholar
Mellor, D. H. 1995. The Facts of Causation. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellor, D. H. 2005. Probability: A Philosophical Introduction. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Price, H. 2011. Naturalism without Mirrors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Price, H., ed. 2013. Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, H. 2015a. “From Quasi-Realism to Global Expressivism—And Back Again?” In Passions and Projections: Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn, edited by Johnson, R. N. and Smith, M., 134–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, H. 2015b. “Idling and Sidling Towards Philosophical Peace.” In Meaning without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism, edited by Gross, S., Tebben, N., and Williams, M., 307–30. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, H., and O’Leary-Hawthorne, J.. 1996. “How to Stand Up for Non-Cognitivists.” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74 (2): 275–92. Reprinted in Price’s Naturalism without Mirrors. Oxford University Press, 2011), 112–31.Google Scholar
Ramsey, F. P. 1926. “Truth and Probability.” In Philosophical Papers, edited by Mellor, D. H., 52–109. Cambridge University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Ridge, M. 2014. Impassioned Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schnieder, B. 2006. “Truth-Making without Truth-Makers.” Synthese 152 (1): 21–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, M. 2018. “Solving the Problem of Creeping Minimalism.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3–4): 510–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stalnaker, R. 1984. Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, D. E. Forthcoming. “Deflationism, Creeping Minimalism, and Explanations of Content.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Google Scholar
Wedgwood, R. 2001. “Conceptual Role Semantics for Moral Terms.” Philosophical Review 110 (1): 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, M. 2013. “How Pragmatists Can Be Local Expressivists.” In Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism, edited by Price, H., 113–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar