Why Plan-Expressivists Can't Pick Up the Moral Slack

Oxford Studies in Metaethics (forthcoming)
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Abstract

This paper raises two problems for plan-expressivism concerning normative judgments about non-corealizable actions: actions which cannot both be performed. First, plan-expressivists associate normative judgment with an attitude which satisfies a corealizability constraint, but this constraint is (in the interpersonal case) unwarranted, and (in the intrapersonal case) warranted only at the price of a contentious normative premise. Ayars (2022) holds that the pair of judgments ‘A should φ’ and ‘B should ψ’ is coherent only if one believes that A can φ while B ψ’s. But this is false. Both Gibbard (2003) and Ayars hold that the pair of judgments ‘A should φ’ and ‘A should ψ’ is coherent only if one believes that A can φ and ψ. But this assumes possibilism. Second, the paper demonstrates, cases involving interpersonal non-corealizability prompt judgments about what multiple agents should do which – contra Gibbard – are not plausibly associated with any planning subject.

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Margaret Shea
Princeton University

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References found in this work

Being for: evaluating the semantic program of expressivism.Mark Andrew Schroeder - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Mark Schroeder.
Thinking How to Live.Allan Gibbard - 2004 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 66 (2):381-381.
Thinking How to Live.Allan Gibbard - 2003 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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