Propositional clothing and belief
Moral discourse is propositionally clothed, that is, it exhibits those features – such as the ability of its sentences to intelligibly embed in conditionals and other unasserted contexts – that have been taken by some philosophers to be constitutive of discourses that express propositions. If there...
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| Format: | Article |
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Wiley
2007
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1929/ |
| _version_ | 1848790687160467456 |
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| author | Sinclair, Neil |
| author_facet | Sinclair, Neil |
| author_sort | Sinclair, Neil |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Moral discourse is propositionally clothed, that is, it exhibits those features – such as the ability of its sentences to intelligibly embed in conditionals and other unasserted contexts – that have been taken by some philosophers to be constitutive of discourses that express propositions. If there is nothing more to a mental state being a belief than it being characteristically expressed by sentences that are propositionally clothed then the version of expressivism which accepts that moral discourse is propositionally clothed (‘quasi-realism’) is self-refuting. Fortunately for quasi-realists, this view of belief, which I label ‘minimalism’, is false. I present three arguments against it and dismiss two possible defences (the first drawn from the work of Wright, the second given by Harcourt). The conclusion is that the issue between expressivists and their opponents cannot be settled by the mere fact that moral discourse wears propositional clothing. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T18:16:34Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-1929 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T18:16:34Z |
| publishDate | 2007 |
| publisher | Wiley |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-19292020-05-04T20:28:22Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1929/ Propositional clothing and belief Sinclair, Neil Moral discourse is propositionally clothed, that is, it exhibits those features – such as the ability of its sentences to intelligibly embed in conditionals and other unasserted contexts – that have been taken by some philosophers to be constitutive of discourses that express propositions. If there is nothing more to a mental state being a belief than it being characteristically expressed by sentences that are propositionally clothed then the version of expressivism which accepts that moral discourse is propositionally clothed (‘quasi-realism’) is self-refuting. Fortunately for quasi-realists, this view of belief, which I label ‘minimalism’, is false. I present three arguments against it and dismiss two possible defences (the first drawn from the work of Wright, the second given by Harcourt). The conclusion is that the issue between expressivists and their opponents cannot be settled by the mere fact that moral discourse wears propositional clothing. Wiley 2007-07 Article NonPeerReviewed Sinclair, Neil (2007) Propositional clothing and belief. The Philosophical Quarterly, 57 (228). pp. 342-362. ISSN 1467-9213 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.488.x/abstract doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.488.x doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.488.x |
| spellingShingle | Sinclair, Neil Propositional clothing and belief |
| title | Propositional clothing and belief |
| title_full | Propositional clothing and belief |
| title_fullStr | Propositional clothing and belief |
| title_full_unstemmed | Propositional clothing and belief |
| title_short | Propositional clothing and belief |
| title_sort | propositional clothing and belief |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1929/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1929/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/1929/ |