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The presumption of realism
Umeå University, Faculty of Arts, Department of historical, philosophical and religious studies. (Filosofi)
2024 (English)In: Philosophical Studies, ISSN 0031-8116, E-ISSN 1573-0883, Vol. 181, no 5, p. 1191-1212Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Within contemporary metaethics, it is widely held that there is a “presumption of realism” in moral thought and discourse. Anti-realist views, like error theory and expressivism, may have certain theoretical considerations speaking in their favor, but our pretheoretical stance with respect to morality clearly favors objectivist metaethical views. This article argues against this widely held view. It does so by drawing from recent discussions about so-called “subjective attitude verbs” in linguistics and philosophy of language. Unlike pretheoretically objective predicates (e.g., “is made of wood”, “is 185 cm tall”), moral predicates embed felicitously under subjective attitude verbs like the English “find”. Moreover, it is argued that the widespread notion that moral discourse bears all the marks of fact-stating discourse is rooted in a blinkered focus on examples from English. Cross-linguistic considerations suggest that subjective attitude verbs are actually the default terms by which we ascribe moral views to people. Impressions to the contrary in English have to do with some unfortunate quirks of the term “think”.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer, 2024. Vol. 181, no 5, p. 1191-1212
Keywords [en]
Moral realism, Moral antirealism, expressivism, subjective attitude verbs
National Category
Philosophy
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-223969DOI: 10.1007/s11098-024-02140-8ISI: 001209547700008Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85191740879OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-223969DiVA, id: diva2:1855810
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2019-02905Available from: 2024-05-03 Created: 2024-05-03 Last updated: 2024-07-03Bibliographically approved

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Franzén, Nils

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