expressivist

Expressivism is a family of theories in the philosophy of language and metaethics that holds that the primary function of evaluative and normative sentences is to express the speaker’s attitudes, commitments, or prescriptions rather than to state propositions that are true or false. In semantics, expressivists argue that terms like “good” or “moral ought to” do not report facts but express attitudes such as approval or encouragement, making moral discourse non-cognitive.

Historically, expressivism developed as an evolution of emotivism in the early 20th century. In the late 20th century, philosophers such as Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard refined non-cognitivist approaches. Blackburn’s quasi-realism seeks to describe moral talk in realist-looking terms without committing to mind-independent moral properties, while Gibbard’s norm-expressivism explains moral judgments as expressions of endorsement or rejection of social norms.

Key claims include that moral disagreement often reflects differing attitudes rather than factual disputes, and that moral judgments are not truth-apt in the way beliefs are. Expressivists typically seek to account for the way reasons can still bear on us—how we might be motivated or guided—without asserting objective moral facts.

Variants range from simple expressivism, which focuses on the expressivist meaning of evaluative terms, to norm-expressivism, which ties evaluation to the endorsement of norms. Some expressivists also address the semantics of imperatives and prescriptions, and attempt to reconcile expressivist claims with plausible realism through quasi-realistic strategies.

Criticisms include charges that expressivism cannot capture genuine moral truth-tracking or progress, and that it undercounts the cognitive content of moral judgments. Proponents reply that expressivism can explain motivational force and the structure of moral language while preserving a non-cognitive account of meaning.

Expressivism remains influential in non-cognitivist metaethics, shaping debates about moral semantics, psychology, and realism. See also non-cognitivism, emotivism, moral realism, Gibbard, Blackburn.