Derek Parfit

Quasi-Realist Expressivism
On What Matters: Volume Three

Derek Parfit
Print publication date: 2017

Print ISBN-13: 9780198778608
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: December 2017
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198778608.001.0001
Derek Parfit
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198778608.003.0010
Abstract and Keywords

This chapter explains how, for quasi-realism to be a distinctive meta-ethical view,
quasi-realists must use the word ‘true’ in some stronger, more-than-minimal
sense. It demonstrates this sense through an assumption that, when we make
some claims which seem to be meta-ethical, we are really making first-order,
normative claims. In addition, the chapter argues that, when we believe that
some act is wrong, most of us assume that our belief is, or at least might be,
true. If expressivists deny that such beliefs might be true, they should become
error theorists. Quasi-realist expressivists could instead claim that, when we say
that some act is wrong, we both express an attitude of being against such acts,
and claim that, in having this attitude, we are getting things right. If we are
getting things right, such claims would be true. This wider version of quasi-
realism would be one form of cognitivism.
Keywords: quasi-realism, quasi-realist expressivism, meta-ethical views, expressivism, cognitivism,

moral truth
149 Desires, Attitudes, and Beliefs

We can now return to the views of Quasi-Realist Expressivists, such as Gibbard
and Blackburn. To explain the meaning of some normative claims, Expressivists
believe, we should describe the states of mind that these claims express. As I
have said, Gibbard writes:
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in saying that suffering matters, I am saying to care whether there is

suffering, and if you believe what I say, you tell yourself to care whether
there is suffering.
Expressivists are Quasi-Realists if they add that, though we use certain claims to
express certain attitudes, such claims can be true. Gibbard also writes:
since suffering matters, if you say that it does, you get it right.
That is enough, Gibbard suggests, to make such claims true. He writes

elsewhere:
some moral truths seem so utterly clear as to be pointless to state. It’s

wrong to torture people for fun.
Compared with Non-Realist Cognitivism of the kind that Nagel, Scanlon, and I
accept, Quasi-Realist Expressivism is in some ways more ambitious. There are, I
have claimed, some irreducibly normative truths, but these truths are too
fundamental to be helpfully explained in other terms. Quasi-Realist Expressivists
have tried to give such explanations. Gibbard (p.166) and Blackburn start with
psychological facts about our desires, concerns, and decisions, and suggest how,
out of psychological states which we share with some other animals, human
beings developed normative concepts, and came to have normative beliefs.
Gibbard and Blackburn then try to show that we can justifiably call some of
these beliefs true.
Though Quasi-Realists believe that some normative claims are true, they deny
that the meaning of these claims is the same as their truth conditions—or what it
would be for these claims to be true. So we can ask
Q1: How might such claims be true? If we say, for example, that some act
is wrong, what would it be for this claim to be true, because this act is
wrong?
Expressivists, I earlier claimed, cannot answer this question. Blackburn

comments:
Parfit is himself in no position to insist that the question ‘what would it be’
for our judgments to be true or false needs a rich robust answer. When he
is not just repeating that they are true or false, the answers he himself
gives are no richer or more robust than mine. His own best explanations of
‘what it would be’ for moral judgments to be true or false consist in
restating them in closely equivalent terms. ‘What it would be’ for
something to be wrong, for instance, is that there are decisive reasons
against doing it, and so forth.
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I did not, however, claim that our answer to Q1 needed to be rich and robust. I
claimed only that, to be justified in believing that some moral judgments are
true, we must be able to give some answer to this question. Though Cognitivists
can give an answer, pure Expressivists, I claimed, cannot. I am now arguing that,
for Quasi-Realists to defend their belief that some moral judgments are true,
they should develop their theories in ways that carry them beyond pure
Expressivism. Quasi-Realists might then achieve their aims.
We can use the phrase ‘morally wrong’, I believe, in several senses. In one such
sense, when we claim that some act is wrong we mean that everyone has morally
decisive reasons not to act in this way. This claim’s meaning partly explains how
it might be true. We could say: (p.167)
(A) If we all have morally decisive reasons not to act in some way, that’s
what it would be for such acts to be wrong.
Expressivists believe that when we claim that some act is wrong, we express an
attitude of being against such acts. If we used the word ‘wrong’ in this
expressivist sense, this claim’s meaning would not explain how it might be true.
Expressivists could not defensibly say that
(B) if we are against some kind of act, that’s what it would be for such acts
to be wrong.
Blackburn would not claim that acts are wrong whenever he is against such acts.
As Blackburn would agree, he is not the supreme moral authority. Nor could
Expressivists defensibly claim that acts are wrong whenever anyone is against
such acts. It would be more plausible to claim that
(C) if we and most other people are against some kind of act, that’s what it
would be for such acts to be wrong.
Blackburn calls himself a Humean, and Hume made some remarks that suggest
some view like (C). But Blackburn would reject this view, which is not
Expressivist, but one form of Naturalism. (C) states one kind of response-
dependent view, like the views that being funny is being something that we and
many others would find amusing, and that being a great work of art is being a
work that we and many others do or would admire. Of those who accept (C),
some would add that
(D) when we claim that some act is wrong, we mean that we and most
other people are against such acts.
As Blackburn points out, this is not how most of us think about morality. Suppose
I claim that some act is wrong in the sense described by (D). You might accept
that my claim is true, agreeing that such acts are in my sense wrong, because I
and most other people are against such acts. You might then add that you are
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strongly in favour of such acts, and that you hope that everyone acts in this way.
As this example suggests, when we claim that some act is wrong, we are not
making claims about how we and others regard such acts. Like those who accept
such response- (p.168) dependent views, Blackburn believes that our moral
thinking is best explained as involving certain attitudes, such as the attitude of
being against some kind of act. But when we make moral claims, Blackburn
argues, we are not claiming that we and others have certain disapproving
attitudes. We are expressing these attitudes. That is how, when you and I have
conflicting attitudes, we are disagreeing.
We can now return to the question of whether and how such moral claims might
be true. Blackburn and Gibbard sometimes suggest that, to defend their Quasi-
Realism, they can use the word ‘true’ in the minimal sense in which, if we say ‘P
is true’, that is merely another way of saying ‘P’. If Quasi-Realists used this
minimal sense, they might say:
(E) If someone claims that some act is wrong, thereby expressing an

attitude of being against such acts, we might say ‘That’s true’, thereby
expressing the same attitude. That is how such claims might be true.
Cognitivists might object:
(F) Though you can call such expressive claims true in this minimal sense,
these claims couldn’t be true in any more important, deeper sense.
These Quasi-Realists might reply that
(G) there is no such deeper sense, since the minimal sense of ‘true’ is the
only intelligible sense.
Quasi-Realists could not, I believe, defend their view by appealing to (G), since
this Minimalist view about truth would undermine the distinctions between
Quasi-Realism and most other meta-ethical views. If we can call our moral
claims true only in the sense that we can use the word ‘true’ to repeat these
claims, even Emotivists like Ayer would have to agree that, in the only
intelligible sense, moral claims can be true. Ayer believed that, when we make
claims like ‘Lying is wrong’, what we mean is something like ‘Don’t lie!’, or ‘Boo
to lying!’. But when Ayer said ‘Lying is wrong’, other people might have said
‘That’s true’. If this were the only intelligible sense of ‘true’, these other people
could justifiably (p.169) believe that Ayer’s moral claims were as true as any
truth could be. Ayer’s Emotivism would then be hard to distinguish from Moral
Cognitivism, and there would be little room for Quasi-Realists to squeeze in
between.
Though Blackburn sometimes suggests (G), he also claims that
quasi-realism is trying to earn our right to talk of moral truth.

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If the minimal sense of ‘true’ were the only intelligible sense, Quasi-Realists
would not have to earn this right, since we always have the right to repeat the
claims with which we or others express our attitudes. Blackburn seems to mean
that Quasi-Realists are trying to earn the right to call some moral claims true in
something more than the minimal sense.
In some passages, Blackburn seems to suggest another way of defending Quasi-

Realism. If we say that certain acts are wrong, we are making what Blackburn
calls an internal moralclaim. We can also make external, meta-ethicalclaims that
are about the meaning and status of such internal claims. One example is the
Quasi-Realist claim that
(H) though the meaning of our moral claims is given by the attitudes that
these claims express, such claims can be true.
I asked
Q1: How might such claims be true? What would it be, for example, for
some act to be wrong?
When Blackburn discusses similar questions about what is good or bad, he

writes:
the expressivist thinks we can say interestingly what is involved for a

subject S to think that X is good. It is for S to value it…If you go on to ask…
what it is for something to be good, the response is that this is not the
subject of this theoretical concern—that is, not the subject of concern for
those of us who, while naturalists, want a theory of ethics. Either the
question illegitimately insists that trying to analyse the ethical proposition
is the only possible strategy, which is not true. Or it must be heard in an
ethical tone of voice. (p.170) To answer it would then be to go inside the
domain of ethics, and start expressing our standards.
When I earlier discussed Blackburn’s view, I took these remarks to imply that, if
we asked Blackburn
Q2: What would it be for something to be good?
he would reply that, since he is an Expressivist, he need not answer any such
external, meta-ethical question. If that were true, Blackburn could similarly
reject Q1. He could deny that he needs to explain what it would be, on his view,
for some act to be wrong. I objected that, if Blackburn rejects such meta-ethical
questions, he would have to give up his Quasi-Realist Expressivism, which is a
meta-ethical view.
In his paper ‘All Souls Night’, Blackburn claims that I misunderstood these
remarks. He writes:
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I don’t believe I have ever ‘suggested’ that I need not answer the question:
I have only suggested that the answer that can easily be given is unlikely
to be found interesting.
Blackburn earlier wrote:
the Quasi-Realist…avoids saying what it is for a moral claim to be true,

except in boring homophonic or deflationary terms. The only answer we
should recognize to the question ‘what is it for happiness to be good?’ is
happiness being good.
These remarks suggest that, to answer Q1, Blackburn would say:
Being true is what it is for some claim to be true and being wrong is what
it is for some act to be wrong.
Though Blackburn calls such ‘homophonic’ or repetitive answers boring, he also

writes that these answers ‘ought to be enough’. Such answers might be enough
if we believed that acts can have an ontologically weighty property of being
wrong. As a Quasi-Realist, however, Blackburn denies that we can explain our
moral thinking in this way. Blackburn rejects the label ‘realist’ because he denies
that, in our normative thinking (p.171) we have ‘any kind of awareness of an
area of reality, or a real property of things’. If we are Quasi-Realists, Blackburn
writes,
we end up saying things that sound superficially distinctive of realism, but

the explanation of what we are doing in saying them and how we get to say
them is different.
Though Quasi-Realists may end up justifiably saying that some acts have the
property of being wrong, this use of the word ‘property’ would be thin, since it
would not refer to an ontologically weighty property of the kind that Blackburn
calls ‘real’. Such claims would use the word ‘property’ in the ontologically
neutral, pleonastic sense that merely restates the claim that these acts are
wrong. Given these facts, Quasi-Realists cannot answer Q1 in this homophonic
or repetitive way. For Quasi-Realists to explain and justify their beliefs that
certain acts are wrong, it would not be enough to say that being wrong is what it
is for some act to be wrong. Such direct appeals to the property of being wrong
are just what, in denying that they are Realists, Blackburn and Gibbard reject.
To defend their view, Quasi-Realists should try to give some other explanation of
how, when we make moral claims which express our attitude of being against
certain acts, what we are saying might be true.
Nor would it be enough, as I have said, to appeal to the sense of ‘true’ which
merely repeats some claim. Gibbard writes:
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If I can explain normative language in such a way that a minimal notion of

truth applies to normative claims as I explain them, I can happily call many
such claims true.
To defend an interesting view, Quasi-Realists need to suggest how such claims

can be true in some deeper sense. To illustrate this distinction, we can suppose
that, in
Case One, you and I are both non-fanatical supporters of the English
football team. I say ‘Nothing good happened today.’ You say: ‘Not so. You’re
forgetting that England won its game against Spain, so something good did
happen today.’ I reply ‘That’s true.’
(p.172) When you say that something good happened today, you would be
merely expressing your delight at England’s victory over Spain. When I say
‘That’s true’, this would be merely another way of saying what you said, thereby
expressing my similar attitude. If some Spaniard said that England’s victory was
not good, but bad, I would not believe this Spaniard’s claim to be false. This
Spaniard, I would assume, was merely expressing his disappointment at
England’s victory. As this example suggests, we can use the word ‘true’ in this
merely minimal sense. Suppose next that, in
Case Two, we learn that, after some shipwreck, several people have been
rescued from the icy sea.
If I claimed that this was good news, I would not be merely expressing some
favourable attitude. I would mean that we all had reasons to be glad that these
people’s lives had been saved. If you had the same view, and you called my claim
true, you would be implying that, if anyone claimed that this news was not good,
that claim would be false. For Quasi-Realists to defend a distinctive meta-ethical
view, they should distinguish between these two kinds of case. They should claim
that, though the words ‘good’, ‘wrong’, and ‘true’ can sometimes be used in
these merely expressive and minimal senses, these words can also be used to
express normative beliefs which might be, in some more-than-minimal sense,
true. If Gibbard and Blackburn did not make such claims, their views would not
be Quasi-Realist, but only improved versions of Emotivism. In their accounts of
most other people’s normative beliefs, they might have to be Error Theorists.
When Quasi-Realists defend their view, they face an extra task which
Cognitivists avoid. Normative thinking is best explained, Quasi-Realists believe,
not as involving normative beliefs, which might be either true or false, but as
expressing certain kinds of desire, motivational commitments, intentions, or
other such attitudes. On Blackburn’s view, as he writes:
The smooth clothing of statements proposed as true or denied as false

disguises the living body underneath.
Page 7 of 15
(p.173) This living body is, essentially, people caring about things. Blackburn’s
aim is to transmute ‘the base metal of desire into the gold of values’. In the
passage that I quoted above, Blackburn writes:
Quasi-realism is trying to earn our right to talk of moral truth, while

recognizing fully the subjective sources of our judgments inside our own
attitudes, needs, desires, and nature.
If our judgments merely expressed such attitudes, it would be hard, I wrote, to

defend the claim that these judgments might be either true or false. In some
passages Blackburn claims that
(J) when two value judgments conflict, by being inconsistent, at least one of
these judgments must be false or mistaken.
I objected that, on Blackburn’s view,
value judgments fundamentally express desires…When two desires cannot

both be fulfilled, that does not imply that one of these desires must be in
some way mistaken. We have many rational desires that cannot all be
fulfilled. As Blackburn himself writes, ‘desires can be faultlessly
inconsistent’. Since Blackburn claims that value judgments express
desires, and he believes that desires can be faultlessly inconsistent, it is
hard to see how he can hope to defend (J).
Blackburn replies:
I only said that desires can be faultlessly inconsistent. And I had in mind only
impractical desires—ones at the same end of the spectrum as idle wishes. Here
is the footnote from which Parfit extracts the saying:
One reason why I do not think ‘desire’ is a good response to work with is that
evaluation is an activity that imposes norms of consistency whereas, in their less
practical manifestations, desires can be faultlessly inconsistent. It is only when
we come to do something about them that we have to tidy them up.
I find it almost incomprehensible that Parfit could miss the clear point of this
footnote, much expanded throughout the book. The (p.174) point was that the
attitudes that gain expression in moral and evaluative discussion are typically
more than ‘mere’ desires…This is why I preferred the word ‘concern’.
I did not, I believe, miss the point of Blackburn’s note. In the paragraph that
Blackburn is discussing, I quoted Blackburn’s claim that
the essential phenomenon…is that of people valuing things…we recognize

no interesting split between values and desires…
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If we start with desires that can be faultlessly inconsistent, and our normative
judgments express such desires after we have done what Blackburn calls tidying
them up, that is not enough to explain how, when such judgments are
inconsistent, at least one of these judgments must be false or mistaken. Nor is it
enough to call such tidied-up desires ‘concerns’. This claim might disqualify my
attitude to the victory of the English football team, since this kind of valuing,
Blackburn might say, is too superficial, and is not a genuine concern. But there
is a deeper problem here, which applies to all desires and concerns. Though
both desires and beliefs can be claimed to be inconsistent, or to conflict, these
kinds of inconsistency are very different, in ways that undermine this part of
Blackburn’s defence of his Quasi-Realist Expressivism.
Two beliefs are inconsistent, or conflict, if they could not both be true. It is
irrational to have, at the same time, two obviously inconsistent beliefs, since one
of these beliefs must be false. Two desires can be inconsistent, or conflict, only
in the quite different sense that these desires cannot both be fulfilled. When
such desires are inconsistent, that does not show that one of them must be false,
or in some other way mistaken. It may not be in the slightest irrational to have
such conflicting desires. Suppose that, after some shipwreck, I could save either
of my two children, but not both. Even when I realize this fact, I could rationally
go on wanting to save both my children. If we know that two of our desires
cannot both be fulfilled, that might make it irrational for us to intend to fulfil
both desires. But these desires may still be in themselves rational, and it may
still be rational for us to have them. When we have two such jointly unfulfillable
desires, that may be bad, since our inability to fulfil (p.175) both desires may
be disappointing or, as in this example, tragic. Such facts may sometimes give us
reasons to try to lose one of these desires. But that does not, as Blackburn
suggests, make such desires defective.
When Blackburn considers this objection, he first comments that it depends in

part on
confusing desires with wishes. Inconsistent wishes may not matter…

because there is no connection with action. But…inconsistency in real
desire may matter.
It would indeed matter greatly if I could not fulfil my desires to save each of my
children’s lives. And these desires would not be mere wishes, since I could fulfil
either desire by saving either child. Blackburn continues:
Incompatible and therefore unrealizable goals are bad in a way quite

analogous to that in which inconsistent beliefs are bad.
There is, I believe, no such analogy. When we have beliefs that are inconsistent,
by conflicting, at least one of these beliefs must be false and in that way bad.
When our desires or goals are inconsistent, or incompatible, in the quite
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different sense that they cannot both be fulfilled, that does nothing to show that
these desires or goals are in any way bad. If my desires to save my children
could not both be fulfilled, what would be bad would not be either of these
desires, but the fact that one of my children will die.
Similar remarks apply when different people have incompatible desires or goals.
Blackburn suggests that, when two people make normative judgments that
express such conflicting attitudes, these people cannot both be getting things
right, since at least one of these judgments must be mistaken. On Blackburn’s
assumptions, however, that might not be true. If I am for some policy because it
would achieve my goal, and you are against this policy because it would frustrate
your goal, it may matter that we cannot both achieve our goals. But that doesn’t
show that one of the judgments that express our conflicting attitudes must be
mistaken. If all we know is that two people have concerns that cannot both be
(p.176) satisfied, that leaves it an entirely open question whether, in having
these concerns, either of these people is succeeding or failing to get things right.
150 Earning the Right to Talk of Moral Truth

We can now turn to some wider questions. There are, I have said, several senses
in which we can use the phrase ‘morally wrong’. On what we can call
the expressivist definition, when we claim that some act is wrong, we

express an attitude of being against such acts.
Blackburn describes his view as having
an emotivist starting point: we see the meaning of moral utterances as

essentially exhausted by their role in expressing the speaker’s attitude.
But as Gibbard and Blackburn often admit, most of us believe that some moral
claims are true. We should expect this belief to be part of, or implied by, what we
mean. Quasi-Realists should therefore expand their accounts of what most of us
mean. On what we can call
the expressivist cognitivist definition, when we claim that some act is

wrong, we both express an attitude of being against such acts, and assert
or imply that, in being against such acts, we are getting things right.
Blackburn and Gibbard both come close to giving this definition. Blackburn
writes that, in ‘good ethical thought’, we make claims ‘asserting our concern to
get things right’. As well as asserting that we are trying to get things right, we
could sometimes assert, even if less firmly, that we have succeeded. Gibbard
writes that,
when we claim that some act is wrong, we express our acceptance of the
imperative or norm ‘No one ever act like that!’
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This account of what we mean, Gibbard adds, is incomplete. When someone

makes such a claim, (p.177)
he seems to be doing more than simply expressing his own acceptance of a

system of norms…he claims to recognize and report something that is true
independently of what he himself happens to accept or reject. Perhaps he
is wrong. But that is the claim he is making.…If the person claims objective
backing and the analysis misses the claim, then the analysis is defective.
Such ‘claims to objectivity’, Gibbard writes, ‘are well explained by norm-

expressivism’. These claims are objective, Gibbard suggests, in the sense that,
when we express our acceptance of some norm, we do not regard this norm as
depending on our acceptance of it. As we might say, ‘This norm would be valid
even if I did not accept it.’ There is a simpler way of expressing our belief that
some norm is objectively valid. On the Expressivist Cognitivist account, when we
claim that some act is wrong, we both express the imperative ‘No one ever act
like that!’, and claim or imply that, in accepting this imperative, we are getting
things right. Gibbard and Blackburn could give similar accounts of our other
normative claims, such as our claims about what we have reasons to want, and
to do.
I have just said that
(K) if we claim that, in having some attitude, we are getting things right,
this claim states a belief.
Some Expressivists might reject (K). Such claims, these people might say,
express another, higher-order attitude. On this suggestion,
when we claim that some act is wrong, we are expressing not only an
attitude of being against such acts, but also an attitude of being in favour
of being against such acts.
It would be possible to use the word ‘wrong’ in this more complicated

expressivist sense. Since such claims would merely express another attitude,
they would not imply that we are getting things right. There is a difference here
between beliefs and various other mental states, such as desires, intentions, and
concerns. When we state some belief, we thereby imply that we are getting
something right. As Blackburn writes, the concepts of ‘belief, judgment, or
representation’ are all ‘integrally connected (p.178) with the idea of getting
something right’. No such claim applies to our desires, concerns, and other
motivational attitudes, such as the attitude of being against certain acts. It is not
similarly part of the concepts of such attitudes that, in having them, we assume
that we are getting things right. That is shown by the coherence of the Non-
Cognitivist views from which Quasi-Realist Expressivism derives. As an
Emotivist, Ayer believed that, when he called some act wrong, he was merely
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expressing his disapproval, so that he meant something like ‘Boo to such acts!’.
Ayer would have denied that, in expressing such attitudes, he implied that he
was getting things right.
Return next to the difference between my attitudes to England’s victory in some

football match and to the rescuing of people from the icy sea. When you said
that England’s victory over Spain was good, and I said ‘That’s true’, I would be
merely expressing my delight, without claiming to be getting things right. As an
unfanatical supporter of the English team, I would admit that, if some Spaniard
said that England’s victory was not good but bad, this Spaniard would not be
getting things wrong. But when I claimed it to be good that some people had
been rescued from the icy sea, I would be stating a belief which, like all ordinary
beliefs, involves the assumption that I am getting things right. My claim would
imply that, if anyone denied that the saving of these people’s lives was good, this
person would be getting things wrong.
There is another way in which some Expressivists might say that, if we claimed
to be getting things right, we would not be stating a belief, but would be
expressing another, higher-order attitude. We have been discussing claims about
the wrongness of certain acts, such as the claim that
(L) lying is wrong.
If (L) uses ‘wrong’ in what I have called the expressivist cognitivist sense, this
claim would both express our attitude of being against lying, and assert or imply
that, in having this attitude, we are getting things right. Some of Blackburn’s
remarks suggest that, if we said that some claim like (L) is true, or gets things
right, this might be only another way of endorsing this particular, first-order
normative claim. And this endorsement (p.179) might be explained, not as the
statement of a belief, but in expressivist terms. Expressivists might say that
(M) in claiming that lying is wrong, we both express an attitude of being

against lying, and express a higher-order attitude of being in favour of
being against lying.
Things are different, however, with claims like
(N) some act is wrong just when, in being against such acts, we are getting
things right,
and
(O) some acts are in this sense wrong.
These are not first-order moral claims, since these claims are not about the
wrongness of any particular kinds of act. If we claimed either (N) or (O), we
would not be expressing any attitude of being against some kind of act, or any
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higher-order attitude of being in favour of being against such acts. (N) and (O)
state purely meta-ethical beliefs.
These points show, I believe, that if Quasi-Realists include in their accounts of

normative language what Gibbard calls the claim of objective backing—without
which, as Gibbard rightly adds, such accounts would be defective—Quasi-
Realism becomes a form of Non-Realist Cognitivism.
When I earlier defended this conclusion, I called it part of theQuasi-Realist’s

Dilemma, and I assumed that it provided an objection to Quasi-Realism. That
assumption, I now believe, was a bad mistake. If Quasi-Realists earn their right
to move beyond pure Expressivism and become Expressivist Cognitivists, they
would not have to admit that their meta-ethical theory had failed. On the
contrary, these people could claim that they had kept their most distinctive
meta-ethical beliefs, and had developed their theory in ways that achieved some
of their main aims.
First, though the resulting view is Cognitivist, it is not Realist, since it is neither
a form of Normative Naturalism, nor a form of Metaphysical Non-Naturalism.
This view therefore keeps the Quasi-Realist belief that, though our normative
claims can be true, these claims are not made to (p.180) be true by referring to
ontologically weighty normative properties in ways that describe how things are
in some part of reality. Blackburn calls his view ‘anti-realist’ because he denies
that ‘when we moralize we respond to, and describe, an independent aspect of
reality’. Gibbard rejects what he calls the ‘mysterious’ idea that ‘there is a
normative realm distinct from the natural realm, and that we have ways to
discern how things stand in that realm’.
Second, these Quasi-Realists could still claim that our moral convictions, and our
other normative beliefs, essentially involve certain kinds of attitude. On this
view, when we call some act wrong, we are not only stating a moral belief, but
are also expressing an attitude of being against such acts, and our belief is in
part about this attitude. That is why I call this sense of ‘wrong’ the
expressivistcognitivist sense.
Third, Quasi-Realists hope to defend our ordinary moral thinking, and our other
normative thinking, as well as they can. This aim would be best achieved if
Quasi-Realists can successfully defend some form of Expressivist Cognitivism. It
was not an essential part of these people’s aims that their view should remain
purely Expressivist, by asserting that our normative claims are not even in part
beliefs, but merely express certain kinds of desire, concern, or other similar
attitudes. In their account of our normative thinking, Quasi-Realists took, as
their starting point, the Non-Cognitivist Emotivism of Ayer and others, which
appeals only to the attitudes of being for or against certain acts. But that was
only where these Quasi-Realists began. Their aim was in part to explain how,
Page 13 of 15
from what Gibbard calls ‘these modest starting points’, human beings developed
normative concepts, and came to have normative beliefs. They also hoped to
defend the view that, in our normative thinking, we have earned the right to call
some normative beliefs true. Blackburn writes that he aims to explain
the emergence of full-blown ethics on this austere basis.
If sustained and original work on this Quasi-Realist project takes Gibbard and
Blackburn all the way from Emotivism to the full-blown ethics of some defensible
form of Expressivist Cognitivism, that would be no objection to such views. On
the contrary, it would show how successful (p.181) these Quasi-Realists had
been, since they would have earned the right to call some normative beliefs true.
As Blackburn also writes,
by starting elsewhere, we can see what is right and justified about

finishing saying some of the things Moore did.
Nor were Quasi-Realists committed to defending pure, Non-Cognitivist

Expressivism. When Blackburn announced his Quasi-Realist project, he wrote
that his view was ‘not really another ism’ but an attempt to explore ‘the reality
of the boundaries that these isms demand’ and ‘to chip away venerable
oppositions’.
Blackburn’s own description of his view makes it one version of Non-Realist

Cognitivism. Since Blackburn claims that there are some normative truths, he is
a Normative Cognitivist. Since Blackburn denies that these truths represent how
things are in some part of reality, he is not a Normative Realist. Blackburn’s
claims therefore imply that he is an Expressivist Non-Realist Cognitivist.
Gibbard makes similar claims.
If Quasi-Realists give these wider accounts of the meaning of some of our

normative concepts and claims, these people might be able to answer most of
the objections that I have raised. Quasi-Realists would still need to explain how,
in having various attitudes, we might be getting things right. They would also
need to defend some other claims. To respond to the Argument from
Disagreement, for example, they might need to defend what I called the
Convergence Claim. On this view, we can reasonably hope that, in ideal
conditions, we would nearly all have sufficiently similar normative beliefs. By
defending these further claims Quasi-Realists might be able to defend the view
that, though our normative claims express attitudes, they also state beliefs, some
of which, they could add, are, in a more-than-minimal sense, true.
Notes:
173 …value judgments…it is hard to see how he can hope to defend (J). When I
described this part of Blackburn’s view, I suggested that, on this view, our
desires and other conative attitudes can themselves be true or false, correct or
Page 14 of 15
mistaken. As Blackburn objects, my claim was mistaken. On Blackburn’s view,

what can be true or false are not these attitudes themselves, but only the
normative judgments with which we express these attitudes.
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Quasi-Realist Expressivism

On What Matters: Volume Three

Print publication date: 2017

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: quasi-realism, quasi-realist expressivism, meta-ethical views, expressivism, cognitivism,

149 Desires, Attitudes, and Beliefs

in saying that suffering matters, I am saying to care whether there is

That is enough, Gibbard suggests, to make such claims true. He writes

some moral truths seem so utterly clear as to be pointless to state. It’s

Expressivists, I earlier claimed, cannot answer this question. Blackburn

(E) If someone claims that some act is wrong, thereby expressing an

Cognitivists might object:

These Quasi-Realists might reply that

Though Blackburn sometimes suggests (G), he also claims that

quasi-realism is trying to earn our right to talk of moral truth.

In some passages, Blackburn seems to suggest another way of defending Quasi-

When Blackburn discusses similar questions about what is good or bad, he

the expressivist thinks we can say interestingly what is involved for a

Q2: What would it be for something to be good?

Blackburn earlier wrote:

the Quasi-Realist…avoids saying what it is for a moral claim to be true,

These remarks suggest that, to answer Q1, Blackburn would say:

Though Blackburn calls such ‘homophonic’ or repetitive answers boring, he also

we end up saying things that sound superficially distinctive of realism, but

If I can explain normative language in such a way that a minimal notion of

To defend an interesting view, Quasi-Realists need to suggest how such claims

The smooth clothing of statements proposed as true or denied as false

Quasi-realism is trying to earn our right to talk of moral truth, while

If our judgments merely expressed such attitudes, it would be hard, I wrote, to

I objected that, on Blackburn’s view,

value judgments fundamentally express desires…When two desires cannot

the essential phenomenon…is that of people valuing things…we recognize

When Blackburn considers this objection, he first comments that it depends in

confusing desires with wishes. Inconsistent wishes may not matter…

Incompatible and therefore unrealizable goals are bad in a way quite

150 Earning the Right to Talk of Moral Truth

the expressivist definition, when we claim that some act is wrong, we

Blackburn describes his view as having

an emotivist starting point: we see the meaning of moral utterances as

the expressivist cognitivist definition, when we claim that some act is

This account of what we mean, Gibbard adds, is incomplete. When someone

he seems to be doing more than simply expressing his own acceptance of a

Such ‘claims to objectivity’, Gibbard writes, ‘are well explained by norm-

I have just said that

It would be possible to use the word ‘wrong’ in this more complicated

Return next to the difference between my attitudes to England’s victory in some

(L) lying is wrong.

(M) in claiming that lying is wrong, we both express an attitude of being

Things are different, however, with claims like

(O) some acts are in this sense wrong.

These points show, I believe, that if Quasi-Realists include in their accounts of

When I earlier defended this conclusion, I called it part of theQuasi-Realist’s

the emergence of full-blown ethics on this austere basis.

by starting elsewhere, we can see what is right and justified about

Nor were Quasi-Realists committed to defending pure, Non-Cognitivist

Blackburn’s own description of his view makes it one version of Non-Realist

If Quasi-Realists give these wider accounts of the meaning of some of our

mistaken. As Blackburn objects, my claim was mistaken. On Blackburn’s view,

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