EXPRESSIVE FICTIONALISM By
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EXPRESSIVE FICTIONALISM by SIMON LOWE A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Laws The University of Birmingham January 2018 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT In this thesis I will present a theoretical, non-realist account of moral language which I call ‘Expressive Fictionalism’. Expressive Fictionalism is a combined approach involving semantic content based on Joycean revisionary fictionalism and pragmatic expressivism with influences of projectivism and the quasi-realism of Simon Blackburn. The result is a marriage between the two which ultimately works towards mutual advantage. The aim of this thesis is to provide a non-realist account of moral language in the form of expressive fictionalism, which, I posit, can explain a form of moral communication, on both a semantic and a pragmatic level, without compromising its own non-realism in the process, which avoids issues which are associated with the Frege-Geach problem and which is a non- error theoretic account of moral discourse. My methodology is a combination of semantics, pragmatics, thought experiment with some influences of empiricism, references to modern studies in behavioural & cognitive psychology as well as historical analogy. The thesis ultimately rests on a portrayal of moral language as a means of communicating emotions, as well as projecting these emotions onto the world through moral utterance, using a constructed ‘morality narrative’ as a contextual platform for self-expression. 2 Table of Contents Section 1 – Non-Realism, Expressivism & Quasi-Realism Chapter 1: Introduction(s)..........................................................................................................4 Chapter 2: The Case against Moral Realism..............................................................................9 2.1.: In Defence of Non-Realism Chapter 3: Non-Cognitivism, Expressivism, Projectivism & the Notion of Agnosticism 22 Chapter 4: Alternative Non/Anti-Realist Approaches to Moral Language 28 Chapter 5: Simon Blackburn and Quasi-Realism.....................................................................35 Chapter 6: The Frege-Geach Problem......................................................................................41 Chapter 7: Blackburn’s Logic of Attitudes..............................................................................48 Chapter 8: Andy Egan..............................................................................................................55 Chapter 9: A Defence by Nicholas Smyth...............................................................................62 Chapter 10: Initial Conclusions................................................................................................66 Section 2 – Quasi-Realism vs. Moral Fictionalism Chapter 1: Quasi-Realism and Moral Fictionalism..................................................................68 Chapter 2: G.F Schueler...........................................................................................................72 Chapter 3: Desires, Wishes and Intentions..............................................................................77 Chapter 4: Van Roojen.............................................................................................................81 Chapter 5: Quasi-Realism No Fictionalism......................................................................... .88 Chapter 6: Fictionalism............................................................................................................97 Chapter 7: Richard Joyce and Moral Fictionalism.................................................................105 Chapter 8: The Case against Fictionalism..............................................................................110 Chapter 9: Olson & the Case against Fictionalism.................................................................117 Chapter 10: Expressive Fictionalism......................................................................................128 Section 3 – Expressive Fictionalism Chapter 1: Introduction................................................................................................................................................................133 Chapter 2: Semantics & Pragmatic Discourse...........................................................................................................136 Chapter 3: Emotions & Ethics---A Scientific Perspective................................................................................140 Chapter 4: From Science to Language.............................................................................................................................148 Chapter 5: Translating Attitudes into Moral Language.......................................................................................154 5.1.: Empathy & Compassion 5.2.: Combining the Models Chapter 6: Critical Context(s) & the Problem of Deception...........................................................................177 Chapter 7: Moral Progress........................................................................................................................................................183 Chapter 8: Wilson on Moral Progress..............................................................................................................................188 Chapter 9: Applying Expressive Fictionalism---A Historical Narrative................................................195 Chapter 10: The Final Result..................................................................................................................................................201 Bibliography..............................................................................................................................................................................206 3 Section 1 – Non-Realism, Expressivism & Quasi-Realism Chapter 1: Introduction(s) “Kicking cats is wrong!” “It is good to stop people from doing things like that!” These are moral sentiments that (for the most part at least) we take for granted and are devoid of controversy, and yet the question of what exactly these kinds of utterances actually mean is impressively difficult to answer philosophically. It is equally difficult to answer what exactly is going on linguistically, semantically or pragmatically. What exactly am I doing when I declare with no small degree of passion and conviction that it is wrong to kick the cat? Am I stating a fact? Am I making people aware of some important feature of the world and about the nature of kicking living organisms? If not, then what am I communicating? Am I trying to express some attitude towards kicking living things? How does that work? Are these attitudes expressed semantically? Am I even making an assertion at all when I say things like that? If not, then why does it sound like I am? Am I deceiving people in speaking like this? Am I deceiving myself? Are these adjectives of right and wrong, of good and of evil referential? Do they refer to natural qualities inherent in the world, or are they more like projections, the result of psychological constructions in response to perceived realities? What exactly is going on? There are two primary directions that we can go in order to answer questions like these within philosophy of language. We can examine the case for what we call ‘moral realism’, in which we take a stance of saying that these moral adjectives refer to qualities of right and wrong found in the world and in certain kinds of behaviour. This then leads us on a long and difficult quest of figuring out exactly how these kinds of qualities operate metaphysically, what constitutes them and how these moral ‘facts’ may be accessed epistemologically. Alternatively, we can examine the case for doubting the existence of qualities of right and wrong, proceeding on the basis that these kinds of qualities either simply do not exist or that we simply cannot have any epistemic access to them even if they do; this is what I call throughout the thesis ‘non-realism’. If we take a non-realist approach to the question of meaning in moral utterances like ‘kicking cats is wrong’, then we must account for meaning without relying in any way on metaphysics or epistemology, but purely through philosophy 4 of language and on the psychology of moral speakers, and this is what I will be doing over the following three sections. The aim of my thesis is to present a fully functioning, non-realist account of moral language. To do this, such an account needs to do the following things: 1. It must account for the semantic meaning of moral utterances like ‘kicking cats is wrong!’ That is it must be able to explain the content of that sentence and what the literal meaning of the words are. 2. It must explain what is being communicated in its entirety. This may involve going beyond semantics and