Abstract

This chapter distinguishes two sorts of things we can say about objects, something descriptive, and evaluative. Both, Hare notes, have descriptive function in that they can be used to convey factual information. Value‐words, however, also have prescriptive meaning, and this meaning is primary to their descriptive meaning, because in contrast to its descriptive meaning, it remains constant in all uses and can also be employed to change the descriptive meaning of a class of objects. Finally, Hare notes that value‐words can be used with no commendatory meaning at all: the inverted commas use and the conventional use.