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Global Expressivism by the Method of Differences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2019

Huw Price
Huw Price*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
*
hp331@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

In this piece I characterise global expressivism, as I understand it, by contrasting it with five other views: the so-called Canberra Plan; Moorean non-naturalism and platonism; ‘relaxed realism’ and quietism; local expressivism; and response-dependent realism. Some other familiar positions, including fictionalism, error theories, and idealism, are also mentioned, but as sub-cases to one of these five.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 86: Expressivisms, Knowledge and Truth , October 2019 , pp. 133 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2019 

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References

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2 See, e.g., Macarthur, David and Price, Huw, ‘Pragmatism, Quasi-realism and the Global Challenge’, in Misak, Cheryl, ed., The New Pragmatists (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 91–120Google Scholar.

3 See Price, Huw, ‘Expressivism for Two Voices’, in Knowles, J. and Rydenfelt, H., eds., Pragmatism, Science and Naturalism (Zürich: Peter Lang, 2011), 87–113Google Scholar.

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25 Versions of that argument may be found in McDowell, John, ‘Anti-realism and the Epistemology of Understanding’, in Bouveresse, J. and Parret, H., eds, Meaning and Understanding (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1981), 225–248Google Scholar; Boghossian, Paul, ‘The Status of Content’, Philosophical Review 99 (1990), 157–184CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, Crispin, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Humberstone, Lloyd, ‘Critical Notice of F. Jackson, Conditionals’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (1991), 227–234CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 As I put it in Facts and the Function of Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), the problem isn't in getting the projectivist project (as we then called it) on the road; it is in stopping it anywhere short of a global conclusion.

27 A powerful framework to develop this idea is that of Brandom, Robert, Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. When Brandom asks what one has to be able to do, in order to say particular things, this is an enquiry about the pragmatic grounds of a discourse, in my terminology.

28 Price, Huw, ‘Two Paths to Pragmatism’, in Menzies, Peter, ed., Response-Dependent Concepts (Canberra: Philosophy Program, RSSS, ANU), 46–82Google Scholar; updated version reprinted as ‘Two Paths to Pragmatism II’, in R. Casati and C. Tappolet, eds., European Review of Philosophy 3 (1998), 109–147.

29 See also the discussion in Price, Huw ‘Epilogue: Ramsey's Ubiquitous Pragmatism’, in Misak, Cheryl and Price, Huw, eds., The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in the British Long Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 149–162Google Scholar, at 155–156.

30 See my ‘Prospects for Global Expressivism’, in Price, Huw, Blackburn, Simon, Brandom, Robert, Horwich, Paul, and Williams, Michael, Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 147–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially Section 5; and Price, Huw, ‘Wilfrid Sellars meets Cambridge Pragmatism’, in Pereplyotchik, David and Barnbaum, Deborah, eds., Sellars and Contemporary Philosophy (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), 123–140Google Scholar.

31 There may be more to be said about whether the response of this section leaves any real disagreement between GE and LE. Matthew Simpson, ‘What is Global Expressivism?’, Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming, argues that it does not. In one sense this conclusion is congenial to me, for I don't want there to be a coherent alternative to GE in this neighbourhood. But it does seem overly charitable to traditional proponents of LE, who didn't have the e-representation/i-representation distinction on which the irenic resolution depends.

32 See their respective contributions to Haldane, J. and Wright, C., eds., Reality, Representation, and Projection, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar: Wright's ‘Realism: The Contemporary Debate—W(h)ither Now?’, 63–84; and Johnston's ‘Objectivity Refigured: Pragmatism Without Verificationism’, 85–130.

33 Blackburn, Simon, Essays in Quasi-Realism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 10–11Google Scholar.

34 Huw Price, ‘Two Paths to Pragmatism’, op. cit., note 28.

35 Brandom, Robert, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2000), 4Google Scholar.

36 Op. cit., 4.

37 Op. cit., 12.

38 In Huw Price ‘Epilogue: Ramsey's Ubiquitous Pragmatism’, op. cit. note 29, and ‘Wilfrid Sellars meets Cambridge Pragmatism’, op. cit. note 30.

39 Op. cit. note 13, 141.

40 Misak, Cheryl, ‘Ramsey's 1929 Pragmatism’, in Misak, Cheryl and Price, Huw, eds., The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in the British Long Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 11–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See Huw Price ‘Epilogue: Ramsey's Ubiquitous Pragmatism’, op. cit. note 28, 152–156.

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