Expressivism, Normative Uncertainty, and Arguments for Probabilism

Oxford Studies in Epistemology 6 (2019)
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Abstract

I argue that in order to account for normative uncertainty, an expressivist theory of normative language and thought must accomplish two things: Firstly, it needs to find room in its framework for a gradable conative attitude, degrees of which can be interpreted as representing normative uncertainty. Secondly, it needs to defend appropriate rationality constraints pertaining to those graded attitudes. The first task – finding an appropriate graded attitude that can represent uncertainty – is not particularly problematic. I tackle the second task by exploring whether we can devise expressivist versions of the standard arguments used to support rationality constraints on degrees of uncertainty, Dutch book arguments and accuracy-dominance arguments. I show that we can do so, but that the resulting arguments don’t support the same rationality constraints as the original versions of the arguments.

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Julia Staffel
University of Colorado, Boulder

Citations of this work

Attitudinal Ambivalence: Moral Uncertainty for Non-Cognitivists.Nicholas Makins - 2022 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 100 (3):580-594.
Grading Modal Judgement.Nate Charlow - 2020 - Mind 129 (515):769-807.
Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism.Mark van Roojen - 2013 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2013 (1):1-88.
Empirical evidence for moral Bayesianism.Haim Cohen, Ittay Nissan-Rozen & Anat Maril - 2024 - Philosophical Psychology 37 (4):801-830.

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References found in this work

Accuracy and the Laws of Credence.Richard Pettigrew - 2016 - New York, NY.: Oxford University Press UK.
Truth and probability.Frank Ramsey - 2010 - In Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings. New York: Routledge. pp. 52-94.
Wise Choices, Apt Feelings.Alan Gibbard - 1990 - Ethics 102 (2):342-356.
Being for: evaluating the semantic program of expressivism.Mark Schroeder - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Mark Schroeder.
A nonpragmatic vindication of probabilism.James M. Joyce - 1998 - Philosophy of Science 65 (4):575-603.

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