Abstract
This paper has two related goals. First, we develop an expressivist account of negation which, in the spirit of Alan Gibbard, treats disagreement as semantically primitive. Our second goal is to make progress toward a unified expressivist treatment of modality. Metaethical expressivists must be expressivists about deontic modal claims. But then metaethical expressivists must either extend their expressivism to include epistemic and alethic modals, or else accept a semantics for modal expressions that is radically disjunctive. We propose that expressivists look to Amie Thomasson’s work for a general strategy for offering a unified expressivist account of modality. Modals in general, we propose, are devices for expressing metalinguistic commitments within the object language, with deontic, epistemic, and metaphysical modals all expressing different kinds of metalinguistic commitments.
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Notes
We generally think unification a theoretical virtue, especially when the case seems to cry out for it, as the present one does.
We agree that ‘may’ in English is ambiguous between a deontic and an epistemic reading. We will pretend this is not the case for purposes of exposition, but the ambiguity does not create any substantive problems for the view so far as we can tell.
Price however treats negation, roughly, as simultaneously functioning as a modifier of content and a modifier of force; for us, it only plays one of these roles at a time. He does this to avoid Fregean arguments against denial; we see no reason to address these, as they’ve been adequately addressed elsewhere, such as in Restall (2005).
These explanations are obviously incomplete sketches. Also see Price (1990) for criticisms of this kind of explanation. Most notably, Price thinks this explanation makes it obscure why languages need expressions of denial. He argues that the role of negation in facilitating disagreement provides a clearer explanation of why we need an expression of negation.
It might help some to think of the German particle ‘doch’ in this context. It works in a similar way, functioning as an explicit expression of disagreement with a previous statement.
Similar points are made in Incurvati and Schlöder (2019: 8).
Of course, we can sometimes define one logical particle without recourse to itself by use of another. The natural analog of that point is also true here.
All this may seem to put us at odds with recent attempts to develop expressivism as a purely metasemantic doctrine (e.g., Ridge, 2014; Chrisman, 2016; Köhler, 2018). However, it is worth noting that some of dispute here is terminological. Ridge and Chrisman are explicit that by “semantics” they mean formal semantics. The formal account of meaning provided by such a semantics requires interpretation, however, and can be given a realistic or expressivist interpretation. Metasemantics for them includes such an interpretation, as well as metaphysical explanations of why, or in virtue of what, expressions have their meanings. (Köhler’s view is a bit more complicated.)
We prefer the taxonomy found in Baker (2021), on which “semantics” is used more broadly to include all aspects of the literal meaning of an expression. This includes the structural, compositional properties studied in formal semantics, but also the correct interpretation of the formalism. “Metasemantics” on such a taxonomy is reserved for explanations of why things mean what they mean. But for those who prefer other classifications can call the first proposal one in which disagreement is taken as primitive for the purposes of interpretative metasemantics, whereas it is explained in terms of functional roles of attitudes in our explanatory metasemantics.
Also see Price (1990).
Even Schroeder’s A-type expressivism does not reduce semantic inconsistency to expression of incompatible semantic objects, but expression of incompatible semantic objects plus inconsistency transmission of the attitudes (Schroeder, 2008, ch. 3). But, at least at present, inconsistency transmission is explanatorily primitive, and so Schroeder’s reductive move does not seem to lead to any ideological simplification beyond positing primitive disagreement relations.
For the uninitiated, in the example of the missionary and the cannibals, R. M. Hare argues for expressivism on the basis of a way in which disagreement and translation involving normative terms seems unlike disagreement and translation involving descriptive terms. Let us say that by remarkable coincidence the words ‘blue’ and ‘red’ are found in the cannibals’ language. But they typically apply ‘blue’ to what the missionary would call red, and ‘red’ to what he would call blue. It seems natural to say that the words mean different things in the two languages.
Let us say by further remarkable coincident, the cannibals use the word ‘good’, but they apply it to bold, cunning and ruthless warriors, whereas the missionary applies his word ‘good’ to those who are helpful, forgiving and self-effacing. The cannibals also tend to do what they call ‘good’; they recommend ‘good’ acts; they admire the ‘good’ and despise those who are not ‘good’. In this case, we are inclined to think that ‘good’ in the cannibals’ language and ‘good’ in English have the same meaning, and the cannibals and missionary simply disagree about who is good. So while the lack of overlap in the extension to which the color terms are applied counts against translating them as meaning the same thing, the extreme difference in the extensions to which the evaluative terms are applied does not seem to count against their translatability. (See Hare, 1952/2003 for more details.)
See Yalcin (2014) for related discussion.
Additionally, it should be kept in mind that the right hand side of the Genzen calculus is read disjunctively when one interprets ‘\(\vdash\)’ to mean ‘proves’. ‘\(p, q \vdash r, s\)’ means that either r or s follows as a conclusion from the premises p and q. On Restall’s interpretation, this is because accepting p and accepting q while rejecting r and rejecting s is incoherent. So, as long as one accepts both p and q, one must either accept r or s.
Typically, we suppress the side premises indicated with \(\Gamma\) and \(\Delta\) in these readings to make the more easily comprehended.
Thanks to a referee for asking us to be clearer on these points.
See their (2017, 2019, forthcoming). Note that we will not employ a primitive notion of weak rejection. The basic rejection relation for us is a strong one. This should not be understood as denying that weak rejection or weak assertion are genuine linguistic phenomena: Incurvati and Schlöder present independent evidence in favor of the existence of such speech acts. It is only that our semantic story here makes no use of these notions.
A referee wonders if the referentialist could appeal to some sort of story like the expressivist’s, only at a metasemantic level. ‘Good’ conventionally expresses some attitude, in virtue of which it has some reference, in virtue of which the sentences uttered by the missionary and cannibals disagree. Perhaps such an account could be developed. If it could be, with greater simplicity than an expressivist account, our motivation for expressivism would be defeated. The closest view in the neighborhood that we know of would be Ralph Wedgwood’s (2007). We would only note that Wedgwood’s view seems to depend on nonnatural properties to serve as the referent for normative concepts, and without this it would seem to be plagued by the kind of referential indeterminacy discussed in McPherson (2019). Eklund (2017) also provides an excellent exploration of the problems with reference facing normative realists, along with proposed solutions.
We recognize this is slightly controversial. See Portner (2016) for discussion and support of an alternative view.
See Portner (2016).
Two further assumptions may be worth spelling out here, with the proviso that these assumptions are largely made for purposes of exposition, and to make the project of this paper more manageable.
First, we assume that deontic modals always require, recommend or permit actions. This may be unrealistic. Some sentences, such as, “There should be world peace,” seem to require or recommend a state of affairs, without requiring or recommending that anyone bring the state of affairs about. If this is so, our theory only explains one part of the normative uses of modal terms, and the proposal must be extended to cover all of the normative uses of modal language. See Chrisman (2016) for more detailed discussion of this issue.
Our second assumption is that the content of an imperative is an act-type, rather than, say, an act-token. Our general thinking on this is simply that there are many possible token actions of getting revenge which would satisfy the relevant command. But we are not strongly committed to this, and if act-tokens were shown to be a superior content, we would be happy with that.
Thanks to a referee for asking us to be clearer on this issue.
Cf. Thomasson (2020: 61).
We should thank both referees for calling cases like this to our attention.
Chrisman (2016) also proposes treating deontic modals as taking imperatives as their prejacent.
This involves modifying Thomasson’s ideas, since her latter work explicitly adopts an inferentialist rather than expressivist understanding of metaphysical necessity claims. While Thomasson does in fact think that one of the uses of metaphysical modals is to endorse certain semantic rules (2020: 64ff.), they have this function in virtue of their connection to certain inference rules (2020: Chapter 4). Thanks to a referee for asking us to be clearer on this point.
The idea that anti-descriptivists (whether inferentialists or expressivists) will need to provide a unified account of modal terms generally is not novel to us. Both Thomasson (2020: 14ff.) and Chrisman (2016: 194ff.) propose ways of unifying metaphysical modals with deontic modals, and acknowledge that there should be a unified account of modal language generally. Thomasson’s proposal differs significantly from ours, however, in that she seems to regard deontic modality as the primary modal notion in terms of which other forms of modality should be explained (15). Ultimately the function of modal language is to convey rules, with metaphysical modals conveying semantic rules (16). Our proposal, as we will spell it out, is that no class of modals has any priority in understanding the others: all of them express different kinds of metalinguistic commitments. Chrisman’s proposal is closer to ours. He suggests that modal claims are “metaconceptual,” meaning that they play the metalinguistic role of “affirming commitment... to the inferential relations between other words...”(194). He further suggests, as we will, that deontic modals play this kind of metalinguistic role with respect to imperatives. Chrisman’s proposal is developed briefly, however, in a somewhat exploratory section of his book, and is presented in very technical language. Chrisman also only provides an account of necessity operators, not possibility operators. We take our account to be motivated by the same insights, but we aim to present a more fleshed-out account; and while technical language isn’t fully avoidable, we hope to make the spell out the idea in more intuitive language.
A referee asks why accepting \(\phi\) isn’t instead an instance of preferring to \(\phi\). We have to admit we have no good answer. Readers who believe that preferences have enough rational structure to explain the disagreement relations of the relevant imperatives should feel free to replace our talk of intentions with talk of preferences. We intend for our proposal to be somewhat modular, so that various parts can be altered or replaced, without much change to the overall picture.
A complication: depending on which rules we accept, the semantics here might be somewhat different from standard Boolean connectives. Perhaps the conditional is slightly weaker than the classical conditional. The point is simply that we can express the idealized conditional in terms of inferential commitments—however that is to be done—without denying that the ordinary English-language conditional is to be handled differently.
‘Don’t go to the store or get revenge’ is most naturally read as giving the negation widest scope. We use ‘Stay away from the store or get revenge!’ as an equivalent command without any confusing scope ambiguities.
This actually simplifies their view a bit.
A referee notes that Yalcin (2011: 307–9) objects to explaining what it is to think that it might be raining in terms of higher-order attitudes. However, as Yalcin states the objection, he is clearly objecting to accounts which treat the thought that it might be raining as a higher-order belief. On our account, what is higher-order is the metalinguistic intention. Nonetheless, one of his objections would clearly apply to our account: on our account, a dog cannot think that you might be about to give him a bone (ibid.) Again, we are okay with this. We think many of the mental states attributed to animals in everyday conversation involve considerable anthropomorphism, or else are not intended literally. Yalcin’s other criticisms of higher-order attitudes do not seem to apply to our account.
We would like to thank one of our referees for calling this point to our attention, which helped us to develop a more principled account of the kind of disagreement involved in modal expressions.
See Davis (2019: \(\S\)2).
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Acknowledgements
Research appearing in this paper was substantially funded by a General Research Fund grant from the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong SAR, China (Grant Number LU13601218). We would like to thank the audience at the 2016 Lingnan Expressivism Conference at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, for helpful comments, suggestions, questions and criticism. We would also like to thank the two anonymous referees of this paper for the same.
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Baker, D., Woods, J. Handling rejection. Philos Stud 180, 159–190 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01884-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-022-01884-5