Expressivism, Anti-Archimedeanism and Supervenience
Author(s): | Tiefensee, Christine |
Title of the Journal: | Res Publica : a journal of moral, legal and political philosophy |
ISSN: | 1572-8692, 1356-4765 |
Publisher Information: | Springer |
Year of publication: | 2014 |
Volume: | 20 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 163-181 |
Language(s): | English |
DOI: | 10.1007/s11158-014-9239-9 |
Abstract: | Metaethics is traditionally understood as a non-moral discipline that examines moral judgements from a standpoint outside of ethics. This orthodox understanding has recently come under pressure from anti-Archimedeans, such as Ronald Dworkin and Matthew Kramer, who proclaim that rather than assessing morality from an external perspective, metaethical theses are themselves substantive moral claims. In this paper, I scrutinise this anti-Archimedean challenge as applied to the metaethical position of expressivism. More precisely, I examine the claim that expressivists do not avoid moral commitments when accounting for moral thought, but instead presuppose them; they do not look at ethics from the outside, but operate from within ethics. This paper defends the non-moral status of expressivism against anti-Archimedeanism by rejecting a new anti-Archimedean challenge which, on the basis of Hume’s Law, aims to exploit expressivist explanations of supervenience in order to show that expressivism is a substantive moral position. |
Keywords: | Expressivism, Minimalism, Anti-Archimedeanism, Supervenience, Metaethics |
Type: | Article |
URI: | https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/54014 |
Release Date: | 11. May 2022 |

originated at the
University of Bamberg
University of Bamberg