Course detail: PHIL540
TOPICS IN PHIL OF LANG
Expressivism: Emotions, Evaluations, and Linguistic Meaning: In this seminar, we will explore the virtues and drawbacks of expressivism, broadly construed. Most contemporary philosophers of language analyze meaning in terms of truth-conditional content: how the world would have to be for an assertion or other speech act to be satisfied. But in many cases, it's unclear just what ontologically rrespectable facts could make our utterances true. Further, much of our communicative activity appears to be aimed at affecting our iinterlocutors' hearts and actions as much as their minds. If some aspects of conventional linguistic meaning involve the expression of evaluative or emotional attitudes rather than (just) truth-conditional content, how should a theory of meaning analyze this? We'll begin with classic discussions of moral emotivism (e.g. Ayer, Hare) and more recent versions of expressivism in ethics (e.g. Gibbard, Blackburn), paying special attention to the Frege-Geach problem. Next, we'll turn to recent discussions of epithets, especially racial slurs, in the philosophy of language (e.g. Williamson, Brandom, Hornsby), tracing out similarities and contrasts with moral expressivism. UNDERGRADUATES NEED PERMISSION