Expressivists

For expressivists our talk of justifying reasons expresses the very motivating states that may also be invoked in explaining why we do what we do when the normative judgements we express in such talk come to motivate what we do. ❋ Lenman, James (2009)

If expressivists can give us an adequate account of a moral sentence, such as ˜Teasing the cat is wrong,™ then deflationism tells us that the same account should be sufficient for sentences like ˜It is true that teasing the cat is wrong.™ ❋ Unknown (2009)

Norm-expressivists suggest (roughly) that the states of mind expressed by moral sentences are attitudes of acceptance of various norms or rules governing conduct and emotion, perhaps coupled with a judgment that the objects or action under discussion comports with those norms. ❋ Unknown (2009)

But if naturalism calls into question the credentials of theoretical reason, it thereby undermines the contrast between genuine reasoning and noncognitive forms of normative and evaluative discourse on which expressivists themselves rely. ❋ Wallace, R. Jay (2008)

The point for present purposes is that his discussion highlights an important challenge for expressivists. ❋ Ridge, Michael (2005)

(There is some reason to be careful here since cognitivists may not need to employ the sense of ˜express™ that expressivists need to get their theory off the ground. ❋ Unknown (2009)

Most famously perhaps, expressivists such as Clive Bell and Roger Fry held that art should only seek to express and arouse emotions (Bell ❋ Unknown (2009)

Some contemporary expressivists (Blackburn 1998, Horwich 1993, ❋ McGrath, Matthew (2007)