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Practical Expressivism Neil Sinclair
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Practical Expressivism
Practical Expressivism
A Metaethical Theory
NEIL SINCLAIR
1
3
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For Naomi, Alexandra, and Leonora

Preface
I am a pessimist. Although I expect I will never find out why. I am pessimistic

about the existence of conclusive arguments in philosophy, that decisively estab-
lish the truth or falsity of particular theories. I am pessimistic too, about the
existence of perfectly concise and perspicuous formulations of those theories. This
pessimism cuts both ways. This book defends a theory I call ‘practical expressi-
vism’. But ‘defence’ must not be read too strongly. For though I think that there
are no conclusive arguments against practical expressivism, I also think that
there no conclusive arguments in its favour. Thus, while the book spends much
of its time elucidating practical expressivism, the goal is not to show that it is
better than all other contenders, but just to show that it is a contender. If I was
forced under oath to plump for one theory in this area it would have to be
agnosticism—with practical expressivism one among several eligible candidates.
But what is practical expressivism—and this book—about? First and foremost,
they are about moral language. Second (and, as it turns out, also foremost) they
are about the creatures that use that language and the ways in which they use it.
Theories that examine the meaning of moral language, rather than use it to push a
moral stance, are sometimes called ‘metaethical’. So, this book is about metaethics.
It is also constructive, rather than critical. It does not begin with a taxonomy of
existing theories, before listing their strengths and weaknesses and plotting a
course that delivers the maximum net balance of strength over weakness. It
does not dwell on comparisons with alternative formulations. Rather, it begins
with a theory-neutral elucidation of the phenomenon to be explained and defends
desiderata for theories of that phenomenon. It then elucidates the theory of
practical expressivism and argues that it meets these desiderata. The final chapter
argues that, given these earlier elucidations, there are no grounds for an argu-
mentative presumption against practical expressivism, as is often supposed. If
I am right, the conclusion is not that practical expressivism has won the race, but
that it has reached the starting line on equal terms.
Here’s how my defence of practical expressivism proceeds. In chapter one
I elucidate the subject matter of all theories in this area: moral practice. This
practice has moral language at its core, but also involves the way humans use that
language in thought, discussion, and guiding action. This chapter considers the
questions about moral practice that metaethical theories hope to answer and
defends two desiderata on such answers. Regarding the former, I argue that
metaethical theories are best viewed as making metasemantic, rather than seman-
tic, claims. Regarding the desiderata, I argue that a core desideratum is that
viii 
metaethical theories be able to accommodate the forms and assumptions of our

moral practice, as we find them (although within important limits). Our practice
assumes, for example, that moral disagreements are genuine. According to this
desideratum, any theory of moral practice needs to accommodate this assump-
tion, that is, vindicate the phenomenon of moral disagreement. Since the forms
and assumptions of moral practice are legion, accommodating them is an exten-
sive task. Chapters four to eight attempt this task for the practical expressivist.
But before this accommodation project can begin, chapters two and three set
out the commitments of practical expressivism. Chapter two begins to make the
case that expressivism is undersold if it is presented as a narrow linguistic theory
about what goes on when we utter sentences such as ‘Murder is wrong’. The
explanatory power of the theory in fact resides elsewhere, in its account of the
practical purpose of these utterances, and the way they help human beings live
together. According to practical expressivism, these utterances express moral
attitudes (not moral beliefs). But, as expressivists such as Charles Stevenson
have emphasized, this expression is not mere ‘sounding off ’. Rather it is an
essential part of a complex interpersonal coordination device, whereby humans
attempt to line up their reactions, or at least find acceptable tolerances, for mutual
advantage. I argue that the ways in which moral language is used, and the norms
appropriate for that use, cannot be understood in isolation from this wider
coordinating purpose. Practical expressivism is therefore not just a theory of
moral language, but a theory of the role of that language in our wider human
interactions, and, relatedly, a theory of what makes moral attitudes distinctive. It is
partly to emphasize these aspects that I call the theory ‘practical’. One of the aims
of this book is to provide a counterpoint to recent discussions of expressivism that
tend to underplay this aspect of the theory—in my view, much to its detriment.
Chapter three further elucidates practical expressivism by providing a novel
account of a surprisingly neglected issue: the expression relation. The practical
part of the theory again does service here, since—I argue—to express an attitude
type is to push it into a public discursive arena as a candidate for acceptance or
rejection. This expression plays a key role in the way in which human beings
discuss, refine, and regulate their actions and reactions. Subsequently, I outline the
well-known project of ‘quasi-realism’. This is the project—popularized by Simon
Blackburn—of showing how features of moral practice which many suppose can
only be accommodated by realists can, in fact, be accommodated by expressivists.
The project is to ‘go realist’ by accommodating the features but ‘remain quasi’
by being expressivist in the details of this accommodation. This project is meth-
odologically interesting insofar as it puts pressure on the idea that some of
the forms and assumptions of our moral practice are ‘intrinsically’ realist or
‘realist-seeming’. The argument in chapter nine is the culmination of this
project: for if none of the important forms and assumptions of moral practice
 ix
are realist-seeming after all, realists cannot be at a starting advantage in accom-

modating them.
Chapter four begins the project of accommodation for practical expressivism. It
focuses on the phenomena of moral disagreement, reason-giving, and discussion.
It provides the first example of the ‘domesticating’ strategy of quasi-realism. This
is the strategy of showing that notions sometimes felt the sole preserve of realist
accounts can also apply to moral practice understood expressively. The result is a
potential reappraisal of such notions, so that they are no longer understood in
ways that mandate realist foundations. One of the most interesting features of the
quasi-realist project is that it suggests such reappraisals. This chapter and the four
that follow therefore focus not just on understanding moral practice, but on
providing a perfectly general understanding of these notions, consistent with
their application to the moral case understood expressively. Crucially, under-
standing how these phenomena can apply to moral practice requires a wider
appreciation of the practical, coordinating function of that practice, as emphasized
by practical expressivism.
Chapter five takes on the thorny topic of moral logic, otherwise known as the
Frege–Geach problem. One of the most talked-about forms of moral practice is
the ability of moral sentences to sensibly embed in complex sentences, especially
logical sentences such as negations and conditionals. The initial problem is that
such contexts are naturally understood in terms of truth-conditions, but according
to practical expressivism moral utterances are understood not through the truth-
conditions they bring to bear, but through the attitudes expressed. This chapter
develops a quasi-realist response to this problem—a view I label ‘compositional
commitment metasemantics’. This holds that, for example, moral conditionals
express tree-tying commitments that involve the endorsement of certain combin-
ations of more basic attitudes and beliefs. I argue that this account provides an
explanation of logical inconsistency without appealing to truth-conditions. I also
argue that it is constructive, does not simply help itself to notions that it is
required to explain, and provides a genuine alternative to recent expressivist
accounts of moral logic.
Chapter six is a detour inside the moral sentence, suggesting expressivist
explanations of certain subsentential parts—such as predicates, quantifiers, and
tenses—that allow moral sentences to take more complex forms than the simple
‘Murder is wrong’. I show how the practical expressivist treatment of these
expressions is both univocal and domesticating, that is, the same treatment applies
regardless of whether the meaning in question is moral or non-moral, thereby
demonstrating that these subsentential forms are perfectly compatible with an
underlying expressivist metasemantics. In the process I give the practical expres-
sivist account of moral ‘properties’ and demonstrate the consistency between
practical expressivism and ‘truth-conditional semantics’.
x 
Chapter seven builds on the theory outlined in chapters five and six to accom-
modate phenomena concerning moral truth, belief, and fact. It is a potentially
embarrassing observation for expressivists that ordinary engagement in moral
practice seems perfectly comfortable with talk of moral beliefs, moral truth, and
moral facts. These seem to be realist notions par excellence. It therefore seems as if
practical expressivism must turn revisionary at this point, urging that the everyday
propensity to deploy these notions in moral practice is a mistake. But this
revisionary approach would itself be a mistake, I argue, since there are perfectly
serviceable ‘minimalist’ notions of truth and belief that are compatible with
practical expressivism. I argue that this approach does not require that minimal-
ism is the only way of understanding these notions, just that it is sufficient for
understanding the way they are deployed in everyday moral practice.
Chapter eight continues the project of accommodating the forms and assump-
tions of moral practice by considering the phenomena of moral mind-
independence and categorical moral reasons. I argue that both can be accommo-
dated by practical expressivism. Crucial to this accommodation is the place of
moral concepts in the wider coordinating role of moral practice. Hence, once
again, the practical part of practical expressivism is not mere window-dressing,
but a vital part of the explanation of moral language’s core features.
I do not claim that chapters four through eight provide an expressivist accom-
modation of all the forms and assumptions of moral practice (there are holes in
my propositional clothing, so to speak). This is deliberate: I have been exclusive
partly because there are very many features that need accommodating, and partly
because some of the accommodations have been carried out effectively elsewhere.
Instead these chapters focus on the forms and assumptions of moral discourse that
seem either the hardest for expressivists to accommodate (moral logic, moral
truth), the most central to moral practice (moral disagreement, categorical moral
reasons), or that best demonstrate general expressivist strategies for accommoda-
tion (moral mind-independence). By drawing out these strategies, and summar-
izing them at the start of chapter nine, I hope to provide licence for optimism
regarding future expressivist accommodations. Furthermore, the accommoda-
tions that I do cover suffice to demonstrate that moral practice understood
expressively can involve a practically rewarding, complex, nuanced, and argu-
mentatively rich mode of discourse. Practical expressivism does not consign moral
practice to an ‘inert non-cognitive scrapheap’ (as Warren Quinn once suggested).
Chapter nine also considers the impacts of the foregoing on the dialectical land-
scape in metaethics. It is often assumed that even if expressivists could accom-
modate the forms and assumptions of moral practice, their position would still be
at a disadvantage in comparison with realist rivals, because these accommodations
would be unnatural, forced, excessively complex, theoretically disunified, or
otherwise unappealing. This supposed disadvantage has, on occasion, been used
by opponents to duck engagement with the details of expressivist approaches: for
 xi
why deal with details, if the programme is devilish? This chapter resists this
‘presumptive argument’ against expressivism. If the foregoing accommodations
have been successful, there is no reason to consider practical expressivism to be at
an inherent disadvantage in explaining the nature of moral practice.
Finally, the conclusion provides some speculative thoughts about how
metaethics might productively proceed once the possibility of a viable practical
expressivism is recognized. And Appendix A provides a direct comparison
between practical expressivism and two high-profile expressivist alternatives:
Mark Schroeder’s ‘being for’ expressivism and Michael Ridge’s hybrid
expressivism.
Acknowledgements
For those who work in metaethics, my intellectual debts will be obvious. But for
those who do not, and to give thanks, I note them here. The four thinkers whose
views are most contiguous with mine are Stevenson, Blackburn, Allan Gibbard,
and Ridge. Stevenson was a proto-quasi-realist, but it was Blackburn who popu-
larized the project and made clear its ramifications. The name ‘practical expressi-
vism’ is borrowed from Gibbard—another card-carrying quasi-realist—although
the view I develop is most similar to Blackburn’s ‘non-descriptive functionalism’.
Ridge adopts a version of hybrid expressivism that I reject, but his views of
semantics, metasemantics, and expression are similar to those adopted by prac-
tical expressivism.
Two thinkers who adopt views opposed to expressivism, but whose writings
have taught me most about what sort of view practical expressivism needs to be (if
it is to be plausible) are Russ Shafer-Landau and Schroeder. Shafer-Landau is the
foremost defender of moral realism. The systematic and powerful way in which he
defends realism has taught me what the expressivist is up against if they want to
overturn any supposed presumption against their view. Schroeder has shown
expressivists the challenges they face in order to develop a complete and con-
structive account of the meaning of moral language, in particular an account that
can explain inconsistency. Although I reject the version of expressivism which
Schroeder develops (as, ultimately, does he), his rigorous presentation of it has
been invaluable in highlighting the constraints within which a successful expres-
sivist theory must work. So important is Schroeder’s work to contemporary
expressivism, that Appendix A is largely devoted to it.
Finally, the thinker whose honest, insightful style has done more than anyone
to influence the way I approach philosophical questions, is Philippa Foot. One
cannot underestimate how encouraging it is to see one’s elders and betters freely
admit, in print, things such as: ‘I do not understand the idea of a reason for acting,
and I wonder whether anyone else does either’ (1978: 156). Foot’s open-ended and
inquisitive approach to metaethics taught me that one need not propound an
earth-shattering, paradigm-shifting, revolutionary theory in order to have some-
thing worth saying.
I owe a larger number of debts to the friends and colleagues who have
commented on earlier drafts or asked insightful questions when I have presented
papers on these topics at conferences. They include: Zach Hoskins, Chris
Woodard, Stefano Predelli, Stephen Barker, Jon Robson, Harold Noonan,
Penelope Mackie, Uri Leibowitz, James Chamberlain, Andy Fisher, Mark Jago,
xiv 
Stephen Mumford, Greg Currie, Peter Gibson, Mark Dimmock, Luke Taylor,
Kipros Lofitis, David Judd, Jessica Leach, Jimmy Altham, Roger Crisp, David
Liggins, Jamie Dreier, Mark van Roojen, Isabel Gois, Don Loeb, Stephen Finlay,
Debbie Roberts, Bart Streumer, Jonas Olson, Marcus Lee, Alex Gregory, Lee
Walters, James Lenman, Conor McHugh, Ben Curtis, Edward Harcourt, Krister
Bykvist, Alex Miller, Sebastian Köhler, Christine Tiefensee, Simon Kirchin, Teemu
Toppinen, Jane Heal, Rafael D’Aversa, Daniel Elstein, Pekka Väyrynen, Guy
Fletcher, Carrie Jenkins, Jack Woods, Lewis Brooks, Stephen Ingram, Graham
Bex-Priestley, Brad Hooker, Adrian Moore, James Doyle, Justin Clarke-Doane,
Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Vlad Vlaovic, and Ezra MacDonald. This book
would not have been completed without the ongoing support, both intellectual
and moral, of my one-time PhD supervisor, Hallvard Lillehammer. It would not
have been published without the belief, patience, and guidance of Peter
Momtchiloff at Oxford University Press. And it would not have been half as
interesting without the exceptionally detailed and insightful comments provided
by three anonymous referees—you know who you are; you know I’m grateful.
Some of the ideas defended here have appeared in previous papers. Some
elements of chapter five (§§2 and 5.3) appeared as Sinclair 2011. Elements of
chapter seven appeared as Sinclair 2006. Elements of chapter eight appeared as
Sinclair 2008 and 2016a. The later sections of chapter nine are an updated version
of Sinclair 2012a. In all cases my thinking has developed greatly since these earlier
forays.
Contents
1. The Subject Matter of Metaethics 1

2. Practical Expressivism, Morality’s Function, and Moral Attitudes 29
3. Practical Expressivism, Expression, and Quasi-Realism 61
4. Moral Disagreement and Reason-Giving 82
5. The Frege–Geach Problem 106
6. Subsentential Metasemantics 147
7. Truth, Truth-aptness, and Belief 167
8. Mind-Independent Moral Truths and Categorical Moral Reasons 191
9. Practical Expressivist Strategies and Presumptive Arguments for
Realism 218
10. Conclusion 247
Appendix A: Comparison with Other Versions of Expressivism 251
Bibliography 271
Index 293
The proper study of Mankind is Man.

—Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man
1
The Subject Matter of Metaethics
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Morality is a human institution. In one sense, this is purely stipulative—by
‘morality’ I mean that distinctive practice whereby human beings talk, think,
feel, and argue in ways that deploy moral concepts. In another sense, this claim
expresses a substantive truth which it is the purpose of this book to defend: that
this institution can be adequately understood as a naturalistically explicable
coordination device, whereby human beings work towards, sustain, and refine
mutually beneficial patterns of action and reaction. Further, this morality owes
nothing to an ethical reality that exists outside of human inclination: moral
judgements and argument do not (attempt to) discover, describe, or cognize a
robust realm of moral facts or properties. Rather, such judgements express
affective or practical states of mind, similar to preferences, desires, policies, or
plans. The locating of this expression within the wider coordinating practice of
morality provides (I argue) an attractive explanation and partial vindication of the
forms and assumptions of this uniquely human institution.
The thesis I wish to defend is therefore a version of ‘expressivism’, the view that
the semantic function of moral judgements (that is, the function that explains
their distinctive meaning) is not to offer moral descriptions, but to express
practical states of mind for a practical purpose. Hints of expressivism have been
around at least since Berkeley, who noted that:
The communicating of Ideas marked by Words is not the chief and only end of
language. . . . There are other ends, as the raising of some Passion, the exciting to or
deterring from an Action, the putting the Mind in some particular Disposition . . .
(Berkeley 1710 Introduction §20)
The idea that seemingly fact-stating language may have non-descriptive functions
can also be found in the work of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume.¹ Around the turn of
the twentieth century Moore offered hints of expressivism and Wittgenstein
suggested a similar view of some psychological judgements.² Later, Wittgenstein
also expounded an expressivist-friendly theory of meaning, according to which an
adequate understanding of our terms comes not from armchair-based analyses of
¹ Hobbes 1640: ch. 13, 1651: ch. 6, Locke 1689: bk. III, Hume 1777b: §1, and Appendix I.
² Moore 1903: 181, 185–6, and 1922: 297.
Practical Expressivism: A Metaethical Theory. Neil Sinclair, Oxford University Press (2021). © Neil Sinclair.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198866107.003.0001
2  
their content, but from the study of how they are used in linguistic exchange.³ But
the claim that moral language might be used in non-descriptive ways, and that this
is fundamental to explaining its meaning, is most strongly associated with the
twentieth-century work of Ayer, Stevenson, Reichenbach, Urmson, Nowell-Smith,
Hare, Blackburn, and Gibbard, and the twenty-first-century work of Barker,
Schroeder, and Ridge.⁴ Opposed to and historically pre-dating this tradition is
the descriptivist view according to which moral judgements express beliefs about—

and thereby offer descriptions of—a domain of moral entities. Descriptivists
differentiate amongst their own number concerning the nature of this domain,
and, latterly, whether or not it exists.⁵ Roughly, according to descriptivists moral
judgements are maps of moral reality; according to expressivists they are practical
flags of allegiance.
In order to assess these theories and ultimately defend expressivism, we need to
know three things. First, what they are theories of—their subject matter. Second,
what sort of questions about that subject matter they attempt to answer. Third, the
desiderata for successful answers to those questions. This chapter addresses these
tasks. In doing so, it provides the methodological framework by reference to which
I defend my version of expressivism.
1. Moral Practice
Expressivism and descriptivism are theories of moral practice. What is this?

We can start by noticing that most human cultures have a distinctive moral
terminology, which in standard use serves to privilege certain practical options, or
³ Wittgenstein 1973 §§43, 139, 244, 304, and 421. See also Ayer 1973: 50. For the connection
between expressivism and Wittgenstein, see Blackburn 1981, 1998b, Boisvert 2015, and Hudson 1970:
44–54, 107–13.
⁴ Ayer 1936 ch. 6, 1949, Stevenson 1937, 1944, 1963, Reichenbach 1951, Hare 1952, 1963, Nowell-
Smith 1954, Urmson 1968, Blackburn 1984, 1993a, 1998a, Gibbard 1990, 2003, 2011, Barker 2006,
2007, Schroeder 2008b, and Ridge 2014. Between Moore and Ayer, expressivism (as ‘emotivism’) was
discussed at Cambridge by Ogden and Richards 1923, Braithwaite 1927: 137, Broad 1933 (who
attributes it to Austin Duncan-Jones); Barnes 1934, Ross 1934, and Russell 1935: ch. 9. Hudson
(1970: 113–14) provides a history which also includes Stebbing 1965 and Britton 1939.
⁵ Descriptivists who hold that there is a moral domain that some moral judgements correctly
describe include Moore 1903, Lewis 1989, Harman 1977, McDowell 1985, 1987, Jackson 1998,
Sturgeon 1985a, Brink 1989, Boyd 1988, Railton 1986, Shafer-Landau 2003, Cuneo 2007, Wedgwood
2007, Schroeder 2007, and Enoch 2011. Descriptivists who deny the reality of the moral domain include
Mackie 1977, Joyce 2001a, 2006, Streumer 2013, and Olson 2014. Descriptivism is sometimes also
referred to as ‘representationalism’ (e.g. Gross, Tebben, and Williams 2015, Price 2013, Köhler 2017a,
Tormey 1971: 68, and Simpson 2018), which in one sense is more apt since a representational term,
such as ‘Shakespeare’, can refer to an object without describing it. Nevertheless I avoid the term
‘representationalism’ because even expressivists accept that moral judgements are representational in a
‘directive’ sense (see chapter two §2). Similarly, descriptivism is sometimes referred to as ‘cognitivism’
but I avoid this label due to the sense of ‘minimal belief ’ elucidated in chapter seven. In previous
decades the term ‘descriptivism’ was also used to refer to a particular ‘neo-naturalist’ subset of what
I am calling descriptivist views: see Hudson 1970: 249–329.
     3
attitudes, over others.⁶ For example, declaring a military invasion ‘wrong’ marks
out a subset of the total practical options available—namely, those that do not
involve invasion—as the ones to go for, morally speaking. Within the class of
moral terms it is possible to distinguish between practical, deontic, or verdictive
terms—such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’—and evaluative or axiological terms—such as
‘good’ and ‘bad’. The former apply to actions and give an overall assessment of
whether that action is required, prohibited, or optional. The latter can be applied

to a range of objects, characters, events, actions, situations, or facts and their
application gives or suggests a consideration for or against a path of action or
attitude, which may not be definitive and can vary by degree. For example,
sometimes a good action, or an action that produces somewhat good conse-
quences, can be wrong.⁷ Another distinction is between thin and thick moral
terms. The former class includes both deontic terms like ‘right’ and evaluative
terms like ‘good’, whilst the latter includes evaluative terms such as ‘callous’,
‘humane’, ‘merciful’, ‘selfish’, ‘treacherous’, and ‘just’. One way of making this
distinction is that although the use of a thin term like ‘right’ says or implies that
the object being judged has some non-moral properties in virtue of which it is
right, this use does not say or imply anything about what those properties are.
Thin terms are ‘[p]ure in their normativity . . . like those little gold stars you can
stick on anything’.⁸ On the other hand, the use of thick terms seems to both give
an evaluation and say something about the non-moral properties in virtue of
which that evaluation is fitting. So, for example, to label an action callous is not
just to call it bad: it is to say that it involves an indifference to suffering, and that is
why it is bad.⁹ Apart from these distinctions, what moral terms seem to have in
common is that they serve to recommend (to a greater or lesser degree and with
more or less specificity) certain attitudes, policies or paths of action. Moral terms
are thereby ‘fraught with ought’.¹⁰ Further, moral ‘oughts’ are distinct from other
‘oughts’. One common view is that this distinctiveness resides in the recommen-
datory force of a moral ‘ought’ being independent of both the judger and the agent
to whom the ‘ought’ is addressed having any (contingent) desire that would be
served by following it. For example, if invasion is wrong, this is not because
I advise against it, or because those in power want an invasion. If so, Kant’s
remarks about reason seem to apply to moral considerations: they ‘ . . . issue [their]
precepts unremittingly, without thereby promising anything to the inclinations’.¹¹
⁶ Ayer 1949: 241, Boehm 1999, Gibbard 1990: 3, and Stevenson 1963: 16. Though I will sometimes
refer to moral practice as ‘morality’, it must be sharply distinguished from sets of claims about moral
rightness, wrongness, and so on.
⁷ Ross 1968: 37–8, Williams 1985: 143 and Wiggins 1987b: 95. ⁸ Korsgaard 1996: 17.
⁹ Wiggins 1987b: 95.
¹⁰ This phrase, frequently used to characterise ‘the normative’, is often attributed to Sellars, but as
Gibbard (2011) notes, it is hard to find in Sellars’ published works.
¹¹ Kant 1785 §4: 405. See chapter eight §5. Attempts to capture this distinctiveness are legion. See,
for example Finlay 2014: 176–8, Mackie 1977, Foot 1972, Joyce 2000, 2001a: 42, 2006: 62, Hampton
4  
Note that talk of a distinctive moral terminology must be understood as

shorthand for talk of terminology in its distinctively moral uses.¹² Most terms in
English that have moral uses also have non-moral uses (the term ‘immoral’ is
perhaps one exception). For example, there are evaluative but non-moral uses of
the term ‘good’ in which it applies to things believed to measure sufficiently highly
on some contextually salient standard (‘This is good soil’, ‘The kick for an extra
point was good’) or be suitable for some contextually defined purpose (‘Barrett is a

good pinch-hitter’, ‘She had a good look round’).¹³ There are also non-evaluative
uses of ‘good’, as in ‘Annette was a good fifty yards from the scene’. In addition,
sometimes ‘good’ is used as shorthand for ‘what people generally consider to be
good’.¹⁴ Such uses are not the primary concern of this book. I focus on the moral
case, where the notion of desire-independent recommendatory force elucidated
above is the beginning of an account of what makes this usage distinctive.
A second aspect of moral practice is the use of moral terminology in moral
discourse, that is, argument and debate concerning which objects, characters,
events, actions, situations or facts deserve these appellations. This discourse
infuses much public and philosophical debate: What is the appropriate scope of
a federal government? At what stage does abortion become morally wrong? What
value is there in the natural environment? Can the right to privacy be sacrificed in
times of national emergency? Is it permissible to hunt non-human animals for
pleasure? Should wealthy nations provide debt relief to poorer nations (and at
what level)? Under what conditions, if any, can agents be held morally responsible
for their implicit biases? And so on—all questions that keep internet site meters
ticking over. But moral terminology also features in more parochial debates.
Should Charlene tell Darlene that Darren’s been cheating on her with Sharon?
Was Rose right to lie to Jeff, given the lie saved him from anguish? Should I let my
boss know who stole from the petty cash, given his propensity for gross over-
reaction? The soap-operatic hue of these examples demonstrates that morality is
not merely concerned with extreme or large-scale practical problems but pervades
much of our lives.
Third, on an individual level, terms in their moral usage correspond to moral
concepts, and those concepts feature in thought, in particular, in practical delib-
eration. (Whereas terms are linguistic constituents of sentences, concepts are the
psychological constituents of the thoughts such sentences can express.) In weigh-
ing up what to do, moral considerations often figure large. Taking money from the
1998: 105, Olson 2001, 2014: 118, Williams 1981, 1985: 177, Cuneo 2014: 12, Schroeder 2007: 106,
Lillehammer 2003: 568, Mameli 2013: 908–9, Miller 2003: 199, and Machery and Mallon 2010: 20.
¹² Moore 1903: 3–5, Stevenson 1963: 117, 133, Ridge 2014: 18–21, and Tormey 1971: 64–6.
¹³ See Wittgenstein 1965: 5 and Rawls 1971: 350–1. For further discussion of non-moral uses of
‘good’ see Finlay 2014: ch. 2.
¹⁴ Ayer 1936: 108.
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abandoned wallet would ensure a good night out for all, but could you live with
your conscience for doing so? Another bottle of wine would go down well, but on
the other hand is it in my best interest to drink so much? Protecting the
environment for future generations is important, but a newer, bigger, car would
be so much more fun to drive. In favourable circumstances, the moral consider-
ations present in our deliberations may even hold sway. In such cases moral
thinking comes to affect our actions. Naomi may resist the urge to buy a new car

based on a concern for future generations. Her moral deliberation has prompted a
moral action.
Fourth, moral practice includes the phenomenon whereby moral terminology
and concepts, through their deployment in discourse and deliberation, come to
affect the actions of those making moral judgements, and those targeted by them.
Naomi’s moral deliberation affected her actions. Engagement in moral discourse
can be similarly action-guiding. After discussing the ethics of suffering with Peter,
I may come to believe that I ought to give ten per cent of my income to charity and
act accordingly. In both cases moral terminology and concepts serve not merely
theoretical interest. They are deployed when we are deciding what to do and how
to feel, and their deployment often affects (and is expected to affect) how we end
up acting and feeling. We may call this loosely-described phenomenon, ‘moral
action-guidance’.¹⁵
The way in which moral terms and concepts affect action highlights another
feature of moral practice: the having, encouraging, and discouraging of particular
moral emotions, such as guilt, regret, blame, shame, resentment, or pride.¹⁶ Often
when we judge that we have acted wrongly we feel guilty, or judge that guilt would
be appropriate, or both. This guilt is a particular type of negative feeling based on a
perception that one’s actions have transgressed some norm: as Hume noted, it is
an internalization of the moral condemnation of others.¹⁷ Sometimes guilt, or the
desire to avoid it, can help push us towards (what we judge to be) better actions in
the future. Conversely, sometimes when we judge that we have acted rightly (and
sometimes when we do not), we feel proud, or judge that pride would be
appropriate, or both. And sometimes pride, or the thought of it, can help push
us to act in ways we judge to be morally right. These distinctive emotions are one
mechanism whereby moral terms, discourse, and thought influence our actions.
Besides these relatively uncontroversial features there are other disputed phe-
nomena that at various times have been considered part of moral practice. For
example, some take moral practice to include a unified phenomenological ‘feel’,
possessed by all and only moral judgements or experiences.¹⁸ Others have held
¹⁵ Sometimes described as the capacity for normative guidance. See FitzPatrick 2014: §1 and
Machery and Mallon 2010.
¹⁶ Stevenson 1963: 59 and Blackburn 1998a: 14–21. ¹⁷ See Tangney and Fisher 1995.
¹⁸ For discussion see Sinnott-Armstrong 2008, Horgan and Timmons 2005, Kriegel 2008, and Gill
2008.
6  
morality to involve a distinct type of moral perception, understood as direct

cognition of an independent moral reality. Some take this perception to engender
a distinct type of moral motivation, flowing from such perceptions.¹⁹ But though
there are no doubt genuine experiential phenomena in need of explanation here
(for example, the fact that we sometimes experience the world as making categor-
ical demands of us) one must be careful not to describe these phenomena in
controversial ways. In particular, one must not describe them in ways which

prejudge the debate between expressivists and their opponents—as description
in terms of perception of independent moral features seems to do. What is
required, at least initially, is a set of phenomena which all sides can agree stand
in need of explanation.
Another phenomenon excluded from my characterization of moral practice is
the performance of morally right or praiseworthy actions. We must distinguish
between moral behaviour, understood as actions you and I might agree to be
morally commendable (e.g. helping strangers, deferring pleasures) and moralizing
behaviour, understood as engagement in the type of moral talk, thought, and
action-guidance described above.²⁰ To say that someone acted morally is to make
a moral judgement, whereas to say that someone moralized is to make an
interpretative claim about the type of concepts or terminology they deployed.
No doubt there are interesting connections between the two (on many views, for
example, moralizing is a way of promoting moral behaviour) but it is doubtful that
any such connections are necessary: after all, one can imagine a well-brought-up
nihilist who eschews moral judgement while continuing to help others. In what
follows the primary focus is on moralizing, not moral behaviour. Note also that
‘moralizing’ here should not be confused with the derogatory sense which involves
sententiousness, dogmatism, or pomposity.²¹
Moral practice, then, involves the use of a distinctive moral terminology in
discourse, thought, and action-guidance, often via mechanisms involving emo-
tions such as guilt and pride. This is not to give an account of the conceptually
necessary and sufficient conditions for a practice to be moral practice, or to
suggest that these features always occur together. In particular, we should be
open to the possibility that the explicit use of moral terminology is just one
way—perhaps a relatively uncommon way—in which a society can manifest its
morality.²² The present aim is merely to point to an empirically identifiable and
apparently unified human phenomenon in order to provide a provisional subject
matter for inquiry. In other words this characterization of moral practice is not
derived from the armchair of a priori speculation, but from the garden chair of
¹⁹ E.g. McDowell 1985, McNaughton 1988, and Plato Republic 517c.

²⁰ E.g. Hudson 1970: 1 and Joyce 2006: 3. ²¹ E.g. Baier 1958: 3.
²² See Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1991.
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cautious observation of human practices, including—since we ourselves engage in

those practices—our own experiences.²³
Unlike gardening, however, moral practice is not reserved for designated times
and places. It pervades much of our linguistic, deliberative, and active lives.
Nevertheless it can be useful to abstract the phenomenon from its entangled
context, in order to better understand its nature. This is precisely what expressi-
vism and descriptivism hope to do.

2. Metaethical Questions
It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the

difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly
due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions,
without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire
to answer.
G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Preface
The theories of moral practice with which I am concerned are sometimes called
‘metaethical’. Broadly speaking, if moral practice is concerned with what we
morally ought to do or what is morally valuable, metaethics is concerned with
what we are doing when we ask such questions. If everyday moralizers are akin to
football players then metaethicists are the commentators.²⁴
The fundamental question of metaethics is: What is the correct systematic
account of the semantics, metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology of moral
practice?
To elaborate. Moralizing plays, or seems to play, an important part in our
practical and intellectual lives. So one may be inclined to seek a deeper under-
standing of it, perhaps in order to clarify its concepts and methods, so that its
questions might be more easily answered. This is to perform the role of ‘under
labourer’ for ethics, much as Locke sought to fulfil this role for science. How might
such a role be carried out?
2.1. Semantic and Metasemantic Questions
In the first case, one might ask about the distinctive meanings of the terms
involved in the practice. When we describe an act as morally wrong or cruel, a
²³ I take the metaphor of the garden chair from Lillehammer 2016—although put it to different use.
²⁴ Another way of marking this distinction (e.g. Brink 1989: 1 and Timmons 1999: 10–11) is to
distinguish first-order moral questions from second-order discourse about the first-order practice.
8  
state of affairs as abhorrent, or an object as worth promoting, what do we mean?

What do we understand and communicate when we judge an action to be
praiseworthy, or a character depraved? What are the inferential and judgemental
dispositions that constitute competence with, or mastery of, the concept cruelty,
for example?²⁵ What contribution to the meanings of sentences do moral terms
make? How does the meaning of moral terms contrast with that of everyday terms
like ‘pasta’ and scientific terms like ‘proton’? These are semantic questions,

concerned with meaning and linguistic understanding.
This seems simple enough, and for the greater part of the history of metaethics
philosophers sailing these waters have taken their task to be that of giving,
specifying, clarifying, explicating, or explaining the meaning of moral terms and
sentences.²⁶ But these ways of specifying the subject matter of our enquiry are
unfortunately ambiguous between two very different projects, both of which are
sometimes called ‘analysis’ and ‘semantics’.²⁷ Since conflation can breed confu-
sion, it is necessary to dwell on the distinction. The two projects are that of
semantic theory and metasemantics. This book is concerned primarily with the
latter. But what is the distinction?
The task of semantic theory—sometimes called the ‘general theory of content’,
‘first-order semantics’, ‘linguistic semantics’, or ‘semantic analysis’—is the task of
providing, for a given range of expression types of a language, a specification of
their stable content or literal meaning.²⁸ This is sometimes contrasted with
pragmatics, which is the study of how particular uses of language can communi-
cate more than stable meanings, for example by implication.²⁹ (Henceforth I will
refer to ‘stable meanings’ simply as ‘meanings’). A complete semantic theory will
typically pair sentences with their meanings. This, of course, raises questions
about the nature of such ‘meanings’. Are they objects? If so, of what type? If
they are not objects, what are they? But whatever these meanings are they will be
associated with or given by sentences which are equivalent in meaning to, or a
translation of, the target sentences. Hence a semantic theory will generate a set of
claims of the form:
‘S’ means that p.
²⁵ I use bold to refer to concepts.

²⁶ E.g. Moore 1903: §5, Hudson 1970: 19, Frankena 1963: 78–79, Stevenson 1963: 10–11, 114,
Timmons 1999: 11, Gibbard 2003: 7, Schroeder 2008b, Sinnott-Armstrong 2000: 678 and 693, and
Wedgwood 2007: 1.
²⁷ E.g. Gibbard 1990: 30–1, Finlay 2014: 6, and Kemp 2013: xix.
²⁸ Alwood 2016, Davidson 1967, Lewis 1970: 19; 308, McDowell 1981b, Price 1987, Speaks 2019: §1,
Ridge 2014: 102, and Skorupski 1993: 212. The term ‘linguistic semantics’ comes from Block 1998, see
Enoch 2011: 177. For exposition, I follow Davidson (1977) in taking sentences to be the primary focus
of semantic theory.
²⁹ See Grice 1989. Stable meaning is sometimes called ‘sentence’ or ‘word’ meaning, in contrast with
‘speaker’ or ‘utterance’ meaning (Grice 1957).
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Where S is one of the sentences we are looking to understand and p is a sentence

already understood. Such semantic theorizing could be attempted for any possible
language, but the usual focus is understandably on actual languages. Grasping a
complete semantic theory for a language will suffice for understanding it.³⁰
In contrast, the task of metasemantics—sometimes called ‘the foundational
theory of meaning’, ‘pre-semantics’, ‘metaphysical semantics’, or ‘second-order
semantics’—is the task of providing, for a given range of expressions as used by a

group of people, those facts in virtue of which those expressions have their
meaning.³¹ ‘ . . . in virtue of . . . ’ here is taken to imply conditions that are both
necessary and sufficient for this type of meaning. So metasemantics is concerned
with facts that explain why expressions have the meaning they do insofar as they
are facts that constitute expressions having those meanings—one might say that
they tell us what it is for an expression to have a such meaning. Hence a
metasemantic theory will provide an account of the facts (historical, psychological,
sociological, conventional, as they may be) that in this way explain why a set of
expressions, as used by a particular group, have the meaning that they do.
Relatedly such a theory will specify those facts in virtue of which the individual
members of that group count as understanding, as competent with, or as possessing
mastery of, those expressions. Metasemantics therefore involves explicating the
way in which a set of sentences or expressions are used or understood, in particular
the ways in which they are used or understood that contribute to this type of
explanation of their meaning.
Some examples may help illustrate the difference. Suppose that someone asks
what ‘Schnee ist weiß’ in German means, or what ‘selest’ in (Old) English means.
We might say: ‘Schnee ist weiß’ means that snow is white, and ‘selest’ means ‘best’.
In one sense, this is to provide a perfectly good account of the meaning of these
expressions: to grasp these potted theories suffices for understanding. Such a task
could, with some effort, be completed for the whole of German or (Old) English.
But none of this tells us why any of these expressions, in the mouths of German or
English speakers, have the meanings that they do, or what it is to understand or
correctly use those sentences. It does not tell us about the facts in virtue of which
³⁰ See Ayer 1936: 51 and Davidson 1967: 310. For scepticism about semantic theory, see Quine 1960:
ch. 2. Note already that providing a semantic theory is more complex than this brief description lets on,
for at least two reasons. First, some sentences, such as imperatives and optatives are not meaning-
equivalent to sentences of the form ‘that p’. Second, some sentences, such as those involving indexicals
and demonstratives shift meaning depending on their context of utterance. To accommodate these
complexities, semantic theories need to give accounts of how such sentences relate to stable semantic
contents of the form ‘that p’. In the first case this can be done by adding a theory of force alongside a
theory of content. In the second case this can be done by describing the stable ‘character’ which
indexicals and demonstratives contribute to sentences to generate, in conjunction with their context of
utterance, semantic contents. For these complexities see Kaplan 1989a.
³¹ Alston 2000: 4, Blackburn 1984: 10–18, 261–73, Lewis 1970: 19, Speaks 2019: §1, Ridge 2014: 103,
and Alwood 2016. The term ‘metaphysical semantics’ comes from Block 1998, see Enoch 2011: 177.
10  
German use of the expression ‘Schnee ist weiß’ means that snow is white or about
the way that ‘selest’ is used that makes it mean ‘best’. It does not tell us how (or
even if) German speakers come to refer to the stuff, snow, by their use of the word
‘Schnee’ or how (or if) use of the English term ‘snow’ does the same (and it does
not tell us, of course, what sort of stuff snow is). What we have here are partial
semantic theories but nothing in the way of metasemantics.
Questions of the form ‘What is the meaning of such-and-such expression?’ are

unfortunately ambiguous between semantic theory and metasemantics. Such
questions might be answered by giving the meaning. This is semantic theory. Or
they might be answered by specifying those facts in virtue of which this expression
means what it does in the mouths of those who use it. This is metasemantics. And
these are distinct tasks, as is shown by the fact that it is possible to give the
meaning of a particular expression without in any way explaining why that
expression, or its synonym, has the meaning that it does. Where questions of
this form are asked about moral expressions they are, I suggest below, best
interpreted as metasemantic questions.
One potential complication (and source of confusion) concerning the relation
between semantics and metasemantics arises when we consider in detail the
connection between the meaning of sentences and the meaning of their constitu-
ent terms. Many actual languages—including German and English—are astound-
ingly productive insofar as they are capable of generating infinite numbers of
meaningful sentences through the combination and re-combination of their
meaningful parts—parts which thereby possess many ‘compositional possibilities’
(and here ‘parts’ are understood broadly to include both terms and the manner of
their combination).³² No reader of this book will have previously seen the
sentence ‘Wapiti grudgingly endure flashmobs’, but we can understand its mean-
ing by understanding its constituent expressions and their mode of combination.
This elasticity of semantic understanding shapes the form of successful semantic
theory. Suppose we wanted to provide a semantic theory for an elastic language
like English. Given an infinite number of meaningful English sentences, we cannot
present this theory as a list of claims of the form: ‘S’ means that p. What would be
useful, instead, would be a set of rules (or ‘sub-theory’) which help us generate, for
any potential sentence of English, a claim of this form. This set of rules needs to be
recursive, allowing for the production of infinite meaningful sentences, but also
compact in the sense that it must be graspable by people like us (as English is). The
rules will also show how the meaning of sentences is built up from the contribu-
tions of their constituent parts, plus their mode of combination.³³ Such rules,
³² Davidson 1967: 304 and Blackburn 1984: 10.

³³ See Davidson 1967: 304, Frege 1891: 31, and Heim and Kratzer 1998: 1–3.
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together with a set of clauses specifying the contributions to sentence meaning

made by particular terms, constitute a compositional semantic theory for a
language like English.
To see such a theory in action, it is helpful to move away from a known
language to an artificial one, whose sentences we do not (yet) understand.
Imagine a simple language with 100 subject terms—from ‘1’ to ‘100’ in Arabic
numerals—and 100 predicate terms—from ‘I’ to ‘C’ in Roman numerals—where

each predicate can be meaningfully applied to each subject, in the form ‘<Roman
numeral><Arabic numeral>’. So for example ‘XX34’ and ‘IC99’ are both mean-
ingful sentences. There are 10,000 meaningful sentences of this form. One way of
understanding this language would be to list all these sentences paired with an
understood sentence, for example: ‘I1’ means that grass is green, ‘II2’ means that
snow is white, and so on. But if our ultimate aim is to study natural languages this
approach is defective, for at least three reasons. First, such a list cannot be the way
users of natural language understand their sentences, since they will typically not
have been exposed to anything like a full list of paired meanings. Second, such lists
fail to reflect the way in which the meanings of natural language sentences are
built up from the meanings of their constituent parts. Third, the task of compiling
such lists is impossible in cases of productive languages, such as English. To see
this last problem, suppose we make our toy language productive by adding a
recursive clause, such as one allowing for conjunctions of any two meaningful
sentences. Since any conjunction can be conjoined with another the toy language
now has an infinite number of possible meaningful sentences (‘I1’, ‘I1&I1’,
‘I1&I1&I1’, etc), ruling out the list approach.
For these reasons it would be useful to have a general framework for under-
standing sentences in our toy language; a framework that can, in theory, produce
an infinite number of pairings between mysterious and understood sentences.
Such a framework might involve, first, a lexicon pairing toy-language expressions
with English ones, such as:
‘1’ denotes grass

‘2’ denotes snow
‘3’ denotes fire
‘4’ denotes trees
‘5’ denotes tigers
Etc.
‘I’ applies to the set of green things
‘II’ applies to the set of white things
‘III’ applies to the set of soft things
‘IV’ applies to the set of hard things
‘V’ applies to the set of hot things
Etc.
12  
Next, our semantic theory needs to provide an account of how Roman and Arabic
numerals come together to create meaningful sentences. Something like:
GC: A sentence of the form ‘RA’ means that the object denoted by ‘A’ (Arabic
numeral) satisfies the predicate ‘R’ (Roman numeral).
Finally, our theory would need a recursive rule stating that the meaning of a

sentence featuring meaningful sentences flanking an ‘&’ sign is the conjunction of
the meanings of the flanking sentences.
With such a theory in hand, we can generate, for every possible meaningful
sentence of our toy language, a meaning-equivalent English sentence. So, for
example, we can know that:
‘IV4’ means that trees are hard.

‘III5’ means that tigers are soft.
‘II2 & V3’ means that snow is white and fire is hot.
Etc.
Being compact, compositional, and recursive such a theory overcomes the prob-
lems inherent in a list-based approach.
Compositional semantic theories are important insofar as they provide a way of
capturing the elasticity of certain natural languages, thereby promising to expose
the structure of our linguistic understanding. But for present purposes the crucial
point is that compositional semantic theories are still just a type of semantic
theory. A semantic theory is one that gives the meaning of a set of target sentences.
A compositional semantic theory is one that gives the meaning of a set of target
sentences by showing how these meanings are built up from the systematic
contribution of sentence parts, thus laying bare the internal structure of the
language. In this way compositional semantic theories are really no more and
no less than weapons of mass disquotation: ways of systematically taking us
from sentences appearing in quote marks on the one hand to understood
sentences appearing without quotes on the other—from sentences mentioned to
sentences used.³⁴
There are, however, many questions that compositional semantic theories do
not answer.³⁵ They do not tell us in virtue of what a given expression has the
(contribution to) meaning that it does, or what it is to have a linguistic under-
standing of that expression. They do not tell us what makes it the case that a given
³⁴ See Price 1987: 207–12, 215. See Köhler 2017b for an account of the particular type of use
involved here.
³⁵ Blackburn 1984: 13–14, 264–73 and Ridge 2014: 103.
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group of people are using a given expression with a given meaning. Although a
theory like the one given for the toy language above does tells us that subject terms
like ‘1’ contribute ‘objects’ (such as grass) to meanings, and that predicate terms
like ‘III’ contribute sets of ‘objects’ (such as the set of soft things), the theory does
not tell us anything about the nature of these ‘objects’, how subject terms get to
contribute the objects that they do, or how predicates get to contribute the sets of
objects that they do. Here ‘objects’ simply means whatever meaning is contributed

by subject terms such as ‘grass’. When it comes to predicate terms, the above
theory could equally have been expressed in terms of predicates like ‘III’ ‘being
satisfied by’ sets of objects, or ‘denoting’, ‘referring to’, or ‘expressing properties
possessed by’ sets of objects. For the purposes of semantic theory it simply does
not matter how the set of ‘objects’ is contributed, so long as it is. Hence terms like
‘denote’, ‘object’, ‘satisfaction’, and ‘properties’ tell us very little here. They are
merely placeholders to help elaborate compositional structure—moving parts of a
system whose goal is mass disquotation.
This last point is crucial for metaethics. According to the compositional
semantic theory above, predicates function to contribute sets of ‘objects’ to
sentences, such that a resulting sentence says that the ‘object’ picked out by the
subject term is a member of the set of objects contributed by the predicate. But this
theory is resolutely neutral on the question of how a given predicate contributes
the set of ‘objects’ it does or, what it is to understand that predicate, or what makes
it the case that a given population uses a given term to contribute in these ways. It
does not tell us, for example, whether a given predicate, like ‘good’ contributes a
set of ‘objects’ by referring to an ontologically robust property which is (taken
to be) possessed by each member of that set or by being associated with an attitude
which is directed at members of that set.³⁶ Since this is precisely one of the issues
at stake in the debate between expressivists and their opponents, this part of
compositional semantic theory is simply deaf to important metaethical issues.
This is one reason for thinking that the questions of metaethics are, at least in part,
metasemantic.
This is not to say that there are no questions of semantic theory in metaethics.
Many well-employed metaethicists are interested in questions concerning the
correct semantic analyses of ethical terms, for example with the question of
whether thick terms can be analysed into thin. But the foregoing does indicate
that at least some of the important debates in metaethics—including the debate
between expressivists and descriptivists—concern metasemantic, rather than
semantic, questions.
³⁶ ‘[A] theory of the kind proposed leaves the whole matter of what individual words mean exactly
where it is’ Davidson 1967: 318. See also Wittgenstein 1973; §13.
14  
In fact, this idea has been recently popular.³⁷ And it can be further supported.
For as I explained briefly above (and will explain in more detail in chapter two) the
core claim of expressivism is that the distinctive semantic function of moral
judgements is to express practical states of mind for a practical purpose. And
this is best construed as a piece of metasemantics rather than semantics.
Stevenson, for example, expresses his version of expressivism as the view that
ethical terms have a distinctive emotive meaning, where the emotive meaning of a

term is explained in terms of its relatively fixed, agreed, and context-independent
tendency to express attitudes and invoke the same attitudes in others.³⁸ This is
clearly a specification of the supposed social, conventional, and psychological facts
in virtue of which ethical terms have the meaning they do. The same applies for
other expressivists.³⁹ Conversely, one of the core claims of descriptivism is that
moral judgements offer putative descriptions of moral states of affairs in part by
expressing beliefs about such states of affairs.⁴⁰ Again, these are claims about the
facts in virtue of which moral judgements come to have the meaning they do (that
is, metasemantic claims), rather than claims which give those meanings (that is,
semantic claims).
Unfortunately, in metaethics the distinction between semantic and metaseman-
tics is sometimes obscured, for a number of reasons. First, descriptivism can be
stated as the view that moral predicates like ‘good’ refer to worldly properties such
as goodness, and this can make it seem akin to a compositional semantic theory,
which can talk of predicates ‘denoting’ or ‘expressing’ properties. But in fact these
are distinct notions. In compositional semantic theory talk of a predicate ‘denot-
ing a property possessed by objects’ is simply a way of systematizing, through a
system of mass disquotation, its contribution to the meaning of the sentences in
which it appears (and not even in a compulsory way, since talk of a predicate being
‘satisfied by a group of objects’ will do). In descriptivism to say that a predicate has
a reference is to say much more: it is to say that the predicate somehow latches
onto (or attempts to latch onto) an ontologically genuine part of the world called a
‘property’, and that paradigm assertoric use of that predicate functions to describe
a subject as instantiating that property. This is an explanatory—metasemantic—
claim. A second reason why descriptivism is often mistaken for semantic theory is
that some (now unpopular) versions of descriptivism directly entail claims in
semantic theory. Consider, for example, the view that moral judgements have the
meaning they do in virtue of offering descriptions of moral states of affairs, where
³⁷ E.g. Charlow 2014, Chrisman 2012, 2013, 2015: ch. 6, Joyce 2001a: 10–11, Köhler 2017b, Sepielli
2012, Silk 2013, Tiefensee 2018: 58, van Roojen 2018, and Ridge 2014: 8–9, 102–7. See also Dummett
1975, Kaplan 1989b, and Stalnaker 1997. Compare Sinnott-Armstrong 2000, Schroeder 2008b, 2010:
16–30, and Alwood 2015: 8.
³⁸ Stevenson 1937, 1948b.
³⁹ Ayer 1936: 111, Blackburn 1984: 39–40, 169, 210–17, 1998a: 50, Gibbard 1990: 30–35, 2003: 63,
76, 194, Hare 1952, 1970, and Ridge 2014. See also Wedgwood 2007: 4, 35, and Woods 2018: 230.
⁴⁰ Brink 1989 and Shafer-Landau 2003.
     15
the descriptions offered are synonymous with certain non-moral descriptions.

One might hold, for example, that judgements of the form ‘Φ is right’ offer a
description of Φ as possessing the property of rightness and that the description
offered is the same as the description offered by the judgement that Φ is generally
approved of. This is clearly a metasemantic theory—a version of descriptivism—
but it is a theory which also entails a semantic view: that ‘rightness’ means
‘generally approved of ’. Focusing on the latter we might be misled into thinking

that this theory is purely semantic. But this would be a mistake, for the important
claim here is not how ‘right’ describes, but that it functions to describe at all. The
latter is metasemantic.⁴¹
For these reasons the type of metaethics which concerns me in this book is
primarily concerned with metasemantic, rather than semantic, questions. The
primary meaning-based question I seek to address is this: What are the facts in
virtue of which our moral terms mean what they do? Equivalently: What is it for
our moral terms to have the meanings that they do? Importantly this is distinct
from the semantic question: What are the meanings of our moral terms? One
consequence of all this, and my primary reason for belabouring the distinction, is
that understanding metaethics in this way is one crucial step in understanding
how expressivism can deal with complex sentences, such as conditionals (see
chapter five).
Having isolated the metasemantic question to which my version of expressi-
vism is addressed, three caveats remain.
First, we should not expect answers to metasemantic questions to be transpar-
ent to speakers. The facts in virtue of which a set of terms, as used by a group of
agents, have the meaning that they do may be embedded in the behaviours,
responses, and conventions of that group without being immediately obvious to
them. As Smith notes, it might take time and careful reflection to elucidate the
know-how involved in competently using a set of terms.⁴²
Second, although the tasks of semantics and metasemantics are distinct, this is
not to say that issues in semantics cannot affect the plausibility of metasemantic
theories and vice versa.⁴³ For example, a semantic theory, if complete, will cover
all compositional possibilities, that is, give the meaning of an expression in all
contexts in which it can intelligibly appear. A metasemantic theory that cannot
explain why a term or sentence has the meaning it does in all those contexts will to
that extent be defective. To put the point in other terms, such a metasemantic
theory will not be able to give a plausible interpretation of a complete compos-
itional semantics. And, in fact, whether particular theories can satisfy this
⁴¹ Smith (1994c: 29–35) spells out a more complex instance of the same move.
⁴² Smith 1994c: 38. ⁴³ Blackburn 1984: 16–17 and Woods 2018: 230.
16  
constraint is one of the prime sources of metaethical controversy. In the case

of expressivism, two key issues are whether the theory can adequately explain
the meanings of moral terms as they appear in complex contexts (such as
conditionals) and contexts involving the predicate ‘true’. I tackle both problems
in chapters five to seven.
Third and finally, it may be unreasonable to demand that expressivism and its
rivals give a complete answer to the metasemantic question. For the primary task

of metaethics has historically been to show how moral terms differ in meaning
from non-moral terms.⁴⁴ For this task it may be acceptable to assume some
general facts about how terms acquire meaning (e.g. through public linguistic
conventions) in order to complete the more specific task of explaining how moral
terms acquire their distinctive meaning (e.g. by expressing attitudes). Of course, it
will be a tricky issue to decide which general facts about meaning are genuine
common ground between oneself and one’s interlocutors—the point is just that if
there is any such common ground, a complete elucidation of it is not required for
an adequate answer to the metasemantic question. Hence a satisfactory answer to
that question may not be a complete theory of metasemantics, but it must involve
enough metasemantic detail to explain why moral terms differ in meaning from
others.
2.2. Psychological Questions
I said that the fundamental question of metaethics is: What is the correct system-
atic account of the semantics, metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology of
moral practice? Having dealt with the (meta)semantic part of this question,
I can now say something about the others.
Consider, then, the psychology of moral practice. What sort of mental state is
involved in thinking that murder is wrong, or charity a virtue? How, if at all, are
moral features represented in our direct experiences? What sort of mental state is
expressed in moral utterances? Are such states a recognizable type of state
orientated towards a special content, or are they a special type of state? How are
these states contrasted with other mental states, such as prosaic factual and
scientific beliefs? What are the underlying causal and psychological mechanisms
that give rise to these states? And how do they relate to agents’ emotions,
motivations, intentions, and actions?
These questions—sometimes called questions of ‘moral psychology’—concern
where to locate the states of mind involved in moral practice with respect to our
wider psychological understanding. Psychological questions may also arise in
⁴⁴ Stevenson 1963: ix and Wedgwood 2007: 20.

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addressing the metasemantic question, insofar as the facts in virtue of which our
moral terms have the meaning that they do are likely to include psychological facts.
2.3. Metaphysical Questions
The third type of question is metaphysical. We might ask: Is there a type of moral

entity or world-bit—moral facts, states of affairs, properties, or events—to which
moral expressions refer? If so, what is the nature of this moral stuff and how does
it relate to other parts of the world? If these terms do not refer to aspects of moral
reality, what other ontological commitments does our use of them entail or
suggest? These issues boil down to questions about the existence and nature of
moral reality, of whether values are part of the ‘fabric of the world’.⁴⁵
2.4. Epistemological Questions
No understanding of the internal workings of a discursive practice would be

complete without consideration of the standards governing when its claims are
justified and when its arguments legitimate. Here the questions relating to moral
practice include: What sort of considerations can be brought in favour of moral
claims, and what is the mistake of the agent who denies them? How are we to
understand the phenomenon of moral disagreement? What makes for a good
ethical argument? When, if at all, does one possess moral knowledge? These are
questions of the epistemology of moral practice.
2.5. Summary
Metaethical theories, then, hope to answer metasemantic, metaphysical, epistemo-

logical, and psychological questions about moral practice and in so doing define
its distinctive content, methods, and boundaries. Metaethics is thus a necessary
precursor to any precise understanding of the sociological and historical roles this
practice has filled. Insofar as questions of metasemantics, metaphysics, epistem-
ology, and psychology are typically philosopher’s concerns, metaethical theories
are philosophical theories. But we should not take this to entail that metaethics
involves a peculiarly a priori methodology. It is the study of empirically identifi-
able human institution—moral practice—and attempts to describe the general
principles that give that institution its import. Insofar as we are all participants in
⁴⁵ Mackie 1977: 15.

18  
that institution, deploying its concepts, part of this study might involve introspec-
tion concerning the nature of its concepts. But we should not expect introspection
to reveal all the ways in which these concepts are used in our thoughts and
exchanges with others. As Hume put it:
We must . . . glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation

of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world,

by men’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures.
(Treatise Introduction)
This is the position of the garden chair, not the philosopher’s armchair.
Should any one type of question be given priority in formulating metaethical
theories? Though the fundamental question itself does not determine priority, the
nature of the issues may do so. Metaphysical questions are a poor place to start,
because not all metaethical theories accept that there is a distinctively moral
reality, so phrasing the guiding question in terms of the nature of this reality is
likely to unfairly preclude such theories.⁴⁶ Likewise, questions of epistemology are
a poor starting place, since it is difficult to discern the methods of ethical argument
without understanding the contents of the claims being disputed. For these
reasons, most metaethical theories begin with an account of the metasemantics
or psychology of moral practice.⁴⁷ It is important to note, however, that these
topics cannot be the whole story. Providing an account of the metasemantics and
psychology of discourse about witches, for example, would miss interesting
complexities (namely, the fact that nothing in the world answers to the term
‘witch’). So though there may be good reason to start with metasemantics and
psychology, there is no reason to end there. A complete metaethical theory should
have something to say about all four issues.
3. Desiderata on Metaethical Theories
We now have a subject matter and some questions about it. But how are answers
to those questions—metaethical theories—to be judged? I accept the following two
desiderata:
D1. A metaethical theory should be able to accommodate the (experiential,

linguistic, and discursive) forms of ordinary moral practice and the deeply
embedded assumptions of those who engage in it.
⁴⁶ Contrast Schroeder 2010: 2–9. ⁴⁷ Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton 1992: 7.

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D2. A metaethical theory should conform to one’s wider views about the topics
it makes claims about.⁴⁸
In the next two subsections, I elucidate these desiderata.
3.1. Accommodation

Take first D1. Actual moralizing takes various determinate forms, and agents who
engage in moralizing make certain assumptions when doing so. For example,
moral judgements often come to us ‘unbidden’, immediately on confrontation
with a situation (‘That’s just wrong,’ we think). This is an experiential form of
moral practice. In addition, moral claims are often expressed in indicative sen-
tences which can appear in the antecedents and consequents of conditionals.
These are linguistic forms of moral practice—they include the compositional
possibilities mentioned above (§2.1). Further, these forms characteristically fea-
ture in linguistic exchanges between agents—discussions and arguments—which
have characteristic effects. For example, agents offer reasons in support of their
moral judgements and in so doing sometimes resolve moral disagreements. These
are discursive forms of moral practice. Finally, agents who engage in moral practice
often make certain assumptions whilst doing so. For example, they assume that
some actions are right, others wrong; that there is such a thing as disagreement
concerning moral matters, that merely accepting a moral claim does not make it
true, and so on. (Such assumptions are not always explicit, of course, but revealed
in behaviour.) Since metaethical theories are intended to be theories of actual moral
practice, they will only be plausible to the extent that the account they give is
compatible with, and goes some way to explaining, these forms and assumptions.
For example, a metaethical theory that held that moral opinions are expressed in
imperatives and that no such imperative is any more justifiable than another would
to a great extent fail to be an adequate account of actual moral practice.
There follows a longer list of these forms and assumptions—what I collectively
label the ‘features of moral practice’.⁴⁹ (A note to the reader: this list is long but not
intended to be digested all at once—I will not be offended if you skip to the end!
Each item on it is given more detailed consideration in later chapters.)
1. Genuine moral agreement and disagreement is possible.

2. Moral judgements can be supported by reasons.
⁴⁸ Adapted from Timmons 1999: 12, but see also Blackburn 1984: 39, Cuneo 2014: 4, 123, and
Horgan and Timmons 2006a: 223.
⁴⁹ The list is partly indebted to those given by Glassen (1959), Timmons (1999), Joyce (2001a: 13),
and Horgan and Timmons (2006a).
20  
3. Moral discussion is (sometimes) a fruitful way of resolving moral

disagreement.
4. It is impossible for two objects of evaluation to differ in their moral
features, without differing in some non-moral way.
5. Moral judgements, especially judgements of wrongness, are typically made
only with respect to avoidable acts, that is, acts which the agent could have
refrained from performing if they had chosen to.

6. Indicative moral sentences are capable of intelligible embedding in logical
constructions such as negations (‘It is not the case that murder is wrong’),
conditionals (‘If murder is wrong, then incitement to murder is also
wrong’), and disjunctions (‘Either murder is not wrong, or incitement to
murder is wrong’).
7. Indicative moral sentences are capable of intelligible embedding within
reporting constructions, such as ‘John thinks that murder is wrong’ and
‘ “Mord ist falsch” means that murder is wrong’.
explanatory contexts, such as ‘Murder is wrong because it ruins lives’, ‘Bob
is in jail because murder is wrong’, and ‘Murder is wrong because pain is
bad’.
9. Moral claims can appear as premises and conclusions in logically valid
(and invalid) arguments.
10. Moral sentences are capable of intelligible embedding within non-
assertoric contexts, such as questions (‘Is murder wrong?’), optatives
(‘Would that murder were not wrong!’), and commands (‘Be a good boy,
Thomas!’).
11. Some sets of moral claims are consistent and some inconsistent. For
example, ‘Murder is wrong’ is consistent with ‘Pain is bad’, but inconsistent
with ‘Murder is not wrong’.
12. Many moral sentences have subject-predicate (indicative) form, with
moral terms that function as predicates. For example, in the sentence
‘Murder is wrong’ the subject is ‘murder’ and the predicate is ‘wrong’.
13. There are moral properties. For example (according to me at least) the
property of wrongness is a property shared by murder and vivisection, but
not shared with taxation or homosexuality.
14. Moral sentences can sensibly involve quantification (‘All murders are
wrong’) and tense modifiers (‘Murder was wrong in the past and will still
be wrong in the future’).
modal constructions such as ‘Murder is necessarily wrong’ and ‘It’s pos-
sible that murder is wrong’.
constructions that relate to truth, falsity, and fact-hood, such as ‘It’s true
     21
that murder is wrong’, ‘It’s false that murder is wrong’, and ‘It’s a fact that
murder is wrong’.
17. Some substantive moral claims are true and others false. For example
(according to me) it’s true that murder is wrong, and false that genocide
is ever permissible.⁵⁰
18. Moral claims are the sorts of things that can be true and false (i.e. they are
truth-apt).

19. Moral claims can be the objects of belief and utterance of moral sentences
typically express such beliefs. For example, Jon believes that murder is
wrong, and expresses the belief that murder is wrong by saying ‘Murder is
wrong’.
20. True moral claims describe, represent, state, or correspond to the moral
facts.
21. Moral claims ascribe moral properties to objects.
22. The moral status (e.g. rightness, badness) of things (e.g. actions, objects,
characters) is independent of our immediate judgements of their moral
status, and of our interests and responses more generally.
23. Moral opinions, including our own, can be better or worse, more or less
appropriate, correct or mistaken.
24. When a person has a moral reason to perform some action, that reason is
independent of their desires.
25. Moral claims are typically assertions. For example, to sincerely utter
‘Murder is wrong’ is to make an assertion to the effect that murder is
wrong.
26. Moral claims express moral propositions—propositions about the moral
state of the world.
27. Moral judgements are practical and action-guiding, insofar as they typic-
ally affect and are expected to affect motivation and action.
28. Some moral claims can be known.
29. Moral truths are not discoverable solely by settling matters of non-
moral fact.
30. Agents can be more or less certain of their moral opinions.
31. Moral claims reflect issues that are incredibly important to many people
(as opposed, for example, to mere tastes or preferences).
These claims form a diverse bunch, but what unifies them is that each describes a
form or assumption of moral practice. Some describe bare linguistic or discursive
forms. Others describe the apparent assumptions of agents who engage in moral
⁵⁰ By ‘substantive’ I mean ‘non-analytic’. I take ‘murder’ to mean ‘unlawful killing’ and therefore
consider ‘Murder is wrong’ to be non-analytic.
22  
practice, revealed in the form of that engagement. Others involve both form and
animating assumption. For example, it is a linguistic fact that moralizers often use
the words ‘believed’, ‘known’, and ‘true’ with respect to moral claims and the
animating assumption of such use is that it makes sense, that is, that moral claims
are sometimes believed, known, and true. Others features involve more
interpretatively-loaded claims about the nature of moral practice, but once their
terms are elucidated—for example, assertion is taken to be the putting forward of a

claim, distinguished from questioning it or pretending it to be true—they too seem
to describe assumptions underlying our engagement with moral practice.
Collectively these features map the contours of our moral practice: they define
the moves we make within it. A metaethical theory must accommodate these
features in order to be a plausible account of actual moralizing (and not some
other practice). According to D1, metaethical theories are to be judged by such
success or failure.
There are reasons, however, to think that no metaethical theory will be, or need
be, wholly successful in this task.⁵¹ To accommodate a feature is, at least, to
explain it, that is, to provide some sort of explanation as to why a practice with
that feature has arisen. But accommodation also suggests more: to accommodate
is to learn to live with, to co-habit. To accommodate a feature of a practice in this
further sense is to provide a particular type of explanation: a teleological explan-
ation that explains how that feature helps the practice fulfil a particular purpose.
To accommodate the features of moral practice in this sense requires both the
postulation of a purpose (or set of purposes) which moral practice fulfils and an
explanation of why one might expect a practice that plays that role to have the
features that it does.⁵² (In the case of assumptions and experiences, note that it
does not follow that an accommodated feature is thereby shown to be true or
veridical, since making false assumptions and having non-veridical experiences
can help fulfil purposes.⁵³) It is in this stronger, vindicatory, sense of ‘accommo-
dation’ that there is no reason to think that every feature of moral practice requires
accommodation. For though there are good reasons to think that moral practice as
a whole fulfils some purpose in human life (for example, the near-ubiquity of such
practice) there is no reason to think every one of its features is part of a
teleologically unified whole—the messy, contingent ways in which human insti-
tutions evolve are seldom rationally optimal like this.⁵⁴ Further, it is quite possible
that false metatheory has infected the practice, so that more reflective moralizers
⁵¹ What follows is an abbreviated version of Sinclair 2012a: 161–6.

⁵² As Loeb (2007: 475) notes, many discussions conflate these two senses of accommodation.
⁵³ My sense of ‘accommodation’ therefore differs from that suggested by Horgan and Timmons
(2019). For my objection to such views see Sinclair 2012a: 165.
⁵⁴ For ubiquity, see Gibbard 1990: 3 and Joyce 2006: 134–5.
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engage in it with (false) understanding of their activities built-in.⁵⁵ For these

reasons, it is likely that any metaethical theory will be to some extent revisionary,
that is, propose that certain features of the practice cannot be accommodated and
should be abandoned, perhaps to be replaced with less theoretically problematic
surrogates.
How then, are we to judge competing revisionary theories according to D1?
The answer is that each feature that is revised carries an explanatory cost, but

that this cost can be met so long as the resulting metaethical theory can show
how all the important things we want to say and do using moral practice, and
all those substantial debates moral practice involves, are preserved under the
recommended revised practice.⁵⁶ For example, it will be no good recommending
that we replace moral practice with a system of communal chanting, if by doing
so we lose an important aspect of the way we interact with each other and the
world. What these important respects are will, of course, be a metaethical
issue. Thus in order to be plausible a metaethical theory must first defend an
account of the way in which moral practice helps us relate in worthwhile ways to
the world and to each other and then show how, given this purpose (or set of
purposes), some (if not all) of the features of moral practice are to be expected. It is
for this reason that I defined the key task of metaethics to be to provide a
systematic account of the metasemantics, metaphysics, epistemology, and psych-
ology of moral practice. I take this to mean that metaethical theories should
provide an account of a generally teleologically unified and coherent practice. It
is, of course, possible that there is no sort of interesting purpose or unified set of
purposes that moral practice fulfils or did fulfil. But such views should seem to be a
last resort given the apparent ubiquity and usefulness of the practice. And as
Stevenson notes, we cannot be sure whether such purposes exist unless we first
look for them.⁵⁷
⁵⁵ Blackburn 1984: 157–8, Gibbard 1990: 154, Ridge 2009: 184, 187, and Taylor 2017: 210. E.g.
Anscombe 1958 suggests that (false) belief in a divine law-giver is necessary in order to conduct ethics
in a deontological idiom.
⁵⁶ Ayer 1949: 231–3, Stevenson 1942: 117–18, 1944: 34–6, 1948a: 11, Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton
1992: 8, Gibbard 1990: 32, 1992b: 974, Blackburn 1993a: 151, 1998a: 121, Joyce 2001a: 98; 2006: 201–2,
and Taylor 2017: 201.
⁵⁷ Stevenson 1942: 118–19. The method here is similar to that of ‘practical explication’, where: ‘We
take some prima facie plausible hypothesis about what the concept . . . does for us, and then ask what a
concept having that role would be like, what conditions would govern its application. Such an
investigation would still have an anchorage point in the everyday concept. . . . For it is not the idea to
construct an imaginary concept, but to illuminate the one we actually have, though it may be vague or
even inconsistent; and to illuminate it by showing that a concept with the hypothesised role would have
characteristics closely resembling those that it exhibits itself ’—Craig 1990: 2. There are also more
distant similarities with Haslanger’s (2006) notion of an ‘ameliorative project’, Burgess and Plunkett’s
(2013) ‘conceptual ethics’, and Carnap’s notion of ‘explication’ (see Beaney 2004). All these projects
permit a degree of revisionism within constraints provided by the usefulness of the revised concept or
practice. For recent developments see Cappelen, Plunkett, and Burgess 2020.
24  
3.2. Naturalism
Science is the measure of all things, of what it is that it is, and of what
is not that it is not.
Wilfred Sellars, ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind’
The second desideratum of metaethical theories—D2—concerns the boundaries

of a successful account of moral practice. A successful accommodation of the
features of moral practice must cohere both with the ontology and the methods of
our wider theorizing about the world, including theorizing about the types of
meaning the world permits, the ways mental states acquire their content, and the
sorts of justification that are possible. For example, a metaethical theory which
postulated a unique and mysterious type of meaning possessed by all and only
moral terms would fail to meet this desideratum. D2, in other words, captures the
thought that we should be able to ‘place’ our understanding of moral practice
within a wider understanding of ourselves, our expressions, the world, and the
relations between them. Hence the philosopher here is akin to the anthropologist,
hoping to explain and understand the workings of moral practice from a detached
perspective.⁵⁸
For the remainder of this book I shall assume a naturalistic understanding to be
the wider worldview against the background of which metaethical theories are to
be judged. That is, I shall assume that unless a metaethical theory is compatible
with a naturalistic understanding of meaning, mental states, entities, and justifi-
cation, it fails to meet D2 and should be rejected. To emphasize, naturalism is the
way in which I interpret D2, not the only way in which it can be understood. I note
that my interpretation is not idiosyncratic: it is shared by many descriptivists and
expressivists alike.⁵⁹ Still, since the issue of naturalism is controversial, I need to
say a few words by means of explication and defence.
Traditionally, naturalism is taken to involve the ontological view that the
fundamental constituents of the world are those countenanced by the empirical
sciences, such as psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics (of which physics is,
perhaps, most fundamental). Latter-day naturalists also accept an explanatory
thesis to the effect that all human activities, including moral practice, are explic-
able within the framework provided by our scientific understanding of the world.
A naturalistic understanding of moral practice, therefore, involves seeing it as a
⁵⁸ The term ‘placing’ comes from Blackburn 1985a, see also Blackburn 1984: 39 and Darwall,
Gibbard and Railton 1992. Both Blackburn (2010c) and Taylor (2017) use the anthropologist meta-
phor. Note that the desideratum is not purely metaphysical: our metaethical theories should be
consistent not just with our wider ontology, but with all our views about the sorts of things metaethical
theories make claims about.
⁵⁹ E.g. Mackie 1977, Boyd 1988, Brink 1989, Schroeder 2007, Railton 1986, 1989, Sturgeon 1985a,
Timmons 1999, Gibbard 1990: 30–5, Blackburn 1998a, Ridge 2014, Mameli 2013: 905, and Taylor 2017.
     25
practice manifested in the behaviour of naturally evolved bipedal organisms, ‘frail

complexes of perishable tissue’.⁶⁰ Naturalism also involves a view about method in
philosophy.⁶¹ According to this methodological naturalism, philosophy possesses
no distinctive, a priori, method for discovering worldly truths. Rather the goals
and methods of philosophy are continuous with those of science, namely ‘to
establish synthetic knowledge about the natural world, in particular knowledge
of laws and causal mechanisms, and to achieve this by comparing synthetic

theories with empirical data’.⁶² In common with many philosophers, I take this
method to deal with data both from the garden chair of everyday experience and
from the experimenter’s bench of formal empirical studies—the methods of the
latter being simply a more rigorous continuation of the methods of the former.⁶³
On this view, the difference between philosophy and other empirical disciplines is
merely a matter of degree. For example, in comparison with scientific theories, the
subject matter of philosophical theories is usually more general, abstract, and
liable to engender conceptual tangles in interpretation.⁶⁴ Philosophers are also
more often concerned with establishing the possibility or broad plausibility of a
particular theory of a certain phenomenon, with a view to guiding subsequent
empirical testing and refinement. In sum, to assume the truth of naturalism is not
just to assume something about the raw materials available for a philosophical
account of moral practice, it is to assume an account of what philosophical
inquiry—including metaethical inquiry—may do with those materials.
Why suppose that naturalism provides the wider ontological and methodo-
logical framework within which we are to test metaethical theories? (I note that
what follows is not intended to provide a complete defence of naturalism, only to
show that as an assumption it is not obviously misguided.)
First, one can mount a plausible case for naturalism. Ellis gives the following
argument:
[T]here is no other body of knowledge which is as well supported or attested, as

thoroughly checked, as precise and detailed in its predictions, as comprehensive
and systematic in its explanations, or as satisfying intellectually. Moreover, the
practice of science, and the body of knowledge it has yielded, are the products of a
long history of inquiry by many thousands of dedicated men and women,
operating with a code of honesty and objectivity, or reporting designed precisely
to yield objective knowledge of the world, i.e. knowledge which is independent of
⁶⁰ Blackburn 1998a: 48 and 361. See also Gibbard 1990: 35, Timmons 1999: 13–14, and
Kornblith 1994.
⁶¹ Or at least, about methods in metasemantics, metaphysics, epistemology, and moral psychology.
The methods of (first-order) ethics create a problem for unrestricted methodological naturalism (see
Papineau 2020: §2.5).
⁶² Papineau 2007: §2.1. See also Railton 1989: 155–6 and Ridge 2014: 3–4.
⁶³ See, for example, Mameli 2013. ⁶⁴ Papineau 2007: §2.1 and Ridge 2014: 1–4.
26  
creed, political interest and authority. One would have to have very good reasons
indeed, or be very arrogant, not to accept the scientific viewpoint on questions of
ontology as the best there is. (Ellis 1990: 19, quoted in Timmons 1999: 13)
Second, it is worth noting that even if this argument fails, to suppose a naturalistic
understanding of moral practice provides a test for an adequate metaethical theory
is not to suppose that naturalism is true. The issue of how we are to understand

moral practice from the broad perspective of natural science arises even if one
does not accept that science to provide the best or most complete ontological and
explanatory idiom. This is because scientific discourse (unlike, for example, moral
discourse) has universal explanatory ambitions: science hopes to understand every
facet of human beings and their behaviour, and since moral practice is by
definition something that human beings do, science hopes to understand it. To
deny that a naturalistic understanding is relevant to our understanding of moral
practice, therefore, is to deny the universal explanatory ambitions of science.⁶⁵
Thus even if the ontic thesis of naturalism is false, there remains a naturalistic
constraint on plausible metaethical theories.
Third, it is only by considering a naturalistic understanding of moral discourse
that we can ask the most general questions about why we make moral judgements
at all, and about the proper scope of moral inquiry. An understanding of moral
practice couched solely in moral terms, for example, will not help to explain why
we—naturally evolved bipeds—have developed such a practice, nor will it allow us
to discern when practical issues cease to become moral.⁶⁶ Unless one wishes to
dismiss such questions, therefore, questions of the naturalistic ‘placing’ of moral
practice will arise.
Finally, there can be no a priori reason to think that an explanation of moral
practice in terms of our broadly naturalistic understanding of the world will fail.
Such explanations must first be tried on for size. If it should happen that there is
simply no way to accommodate moral practice into our naturalistic perspective,
then we might want to dismiss moral practice as irrevocably confused, or perhaps
rethink our commitment to naturalism. But it is premature to dismiss these issues
before such explanations have been attempted. The approach here, then, treats
naturalism as a working hypothesis. We are to see how far a naturalistic under-
standing of moral practice can get us, without prematurely drawing any conclu-
sions about what happens if it cannot take us all the way.⁶⁷ Nor can such a working
assumption be accused of unfairly biasing the issue, since a wide range of
⁶⁵ Even McDowell, a famous non-naturalist in this area, admits that there are legitimate questions
about ‘how ethics . . . relate[s] to the scientifically useful truth about the world and our dealings with it’
(1987: 222).
⁶⁶ Blackburn 1993b: 163.
⁶⁷ See Railton 1989. As Railton (1989: 159–60) notes, so construing naturalism avoids the charge of
scientism or begging the question, levelled for example by Nagel (1987: 144).
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that the treaty had been endorsed by a practically unanimous vote; while the
‘Argus,’ more specific, reported that among the seventy present, ten had
opposed the treaty, and that these ten ‘own more tonnage than the other
sixty put together.’[1036] The minority of ten publicly denounced the
majority as ‘either inimical to this country in the late war, or have
immigrated to this country since that period.’ Having made the charge, they
entered into details. Of the sixty merchants favoring the treaty, only
eighteen had been outside the British lines in the Revolution, eight had
actually joined the British, six came to the country from England during the
war and located in sections held by the British army, and ten entered the
country after the war.[1037] At any rate, there were seven thousand people in
the mass meeting and but seventy in the meeting of the merchants.
The ferocity of the protest had a depressing effect on Hamilton, who
could imagine nothing less than ‘Jacobins meditating serious mischief’ to
‘certain individuals.’ Instinctively he thought of mobs, and meditated on
soldiers to put them down. He was afraid the New York militia was
sympathetic toward the mob. Time would be required for the Federalists to
‘organize a competent armed substitute.’ He had thought of the ‘military
now in the forts,’ but understood they were ‘under marching orders.’ Would
not Wolcott confer confidentially with the Secretary of War and ‘engage
him to suspend the march?’[1038] The majority were against the treaty—
time to summon the soldiers. Nor was Hamilton alone in this thought of
force. Ames could see no other way and was ready to ‘join the issue
tendered.’ The moment was favorable for the Government to show its
strength. Then action—‘Washington at the head, Pittsburg at its feet,
pockets full of money, prosperity shining like the sun on its path.’[1039]
Within two weeks Hamilton, in the Assembly Room on William Street was
denouncing the rabble, declaring the situation meant a foreign or civil war,
and expressing his preference for the latter. Meanwhile he was proposing a
house-to-house canvass through the wards for the treaty.[1040]
If Hamilton was alarmed in New York, and Pickering chagrined in
Philadelphia, the Federalist leaders in Massachusetts were stunned by the
intensity of the feeling of the mob. A protest meeting was held at Faneuil
Hall, with the venerable Samuel Adams participating with spirit. Without a
dissenting vote resolutions were passed denouncing the treaty and praising
Senator Mason for ‘his patriotism in publishing.’[1041] The aristocratic
leaders of the Federalists in Boston knew the futility of challenging the
throng. Declining the issue, they busied themselves with the merchants and
wrote explanatory letters to their friends. ‘Men of reputation would not
attend the meeting,’ Stephen Higginson, the merchant-politician, wrote
Pickering, ‘being opposed to the town’s taking up the subject. They were
left wholly to themselves; no attempt was made to counteract them, though
nine merchants out of ten reprobated the procedure.’ The people, to be sure,
were excited, for had not Bache been to Boston ‘with a large collection of
lies of riots in Philadelphia and New York to create a flame here.’[1042]
Cabot, more truthful, was lamenting about the same time that ‘some of our
most respectable men have on this occasion joined the Jacobins and very
many of them acquiesced in their proceedings.’[1043] Ames could not
restrain his disgust because many of the rich had participated. Even so,
these clever, tireless Massachusetts leaders were not inactive. After all,
what were the farmers, artisans, and lawyers compared with the merchants?
One merchant was more influential with them than a thousand tillers of the
soil. Thus, they summoned the Chambers of Commerce to action, and
resolutions were passed endorsing the treaty. ‘The proceedings are to be
transmitted to the President,’ wrote the complacent Cabot to Wolcott.[1044]
But that did not end the treaty fight in Boston, for throughout the
summer the indignation of the people simmered and occasionally boiled
over. The ‘rabble’ had to have its fling. On the walls enclosing the home of
Robert Treat Paine were chalked the words: ‘Damn John Jay! Damn every
one who won’t damn John Jay! Damn every one who won’t put lights in his
windows and sit up all night damning John Jay!’[1045] Then, early in
September, a great crowd marched through the crooked, narrow streets with
a figure representing Jay; and the next day it reappeared with another effigy
of Jay with a watermelon head, and marched noisily through the principal
streets to the home of Samuel Adams who appeared and smiled approvingly
upon the scene. A few days later, Jay was burned in effigy at Oliver’s
Wharf, and the home of the editor of the ‘Federal Orrery’ was attacked with
bricks and stones.[1046] The non-participants observed that the Federalist
leaders were more outraged at the burning of the effigy than over the action
of a British man-of-war that sailed into the harbor and helped itself to
anything it wanted.[1047]
Fisher Ames ascribed the mob spirit to ‘a few young men who have lost
property by British captures.’ Just a few, he said—mostly boys with fifes
and drums. ‘The anti-treaty men were ashamed of the business.’[1048] The
Boston Federalists preferred to fight the mob with merchants’ resolutions
and their barbed wit. ‘The reason given by the Jacobins for not reading the
treaty,’ wrote Russell in the ‘Centinel,’ ‘is that no person ought to read what
he knows to be bad.’[1049] Meanwhile, the leaders were busy as swarming
bees all over Massachusetts, drumming up the merchants, soliciting
resolutions, exerting influence to prevent town meetings. ‘At Salem the
respectable people are all acquiescent; and many of them approve but think
it inadvisable to act,’ wrote Cabot to Wolcott. ‘At Newburyport, the
principal merchants are also well satisfied; and some steps have been taken
to bring them to express their opinions.’[1050] With the merchants
acquiescent, and the principal merchants satisfied, need any one worry over
the marching multitudes?
But alas, in commercial Charleston, home of the Pinckneys and William
Smith—there, too, the marching mobs, and mingling with them some of the
rich and aristocratic. Here was the most bitter disappointment of all. It
began in the Senate when the patrician South Carolina Senator Pierce
Butler, cousin of the Duke of Ormond, refused to vote for ratification.
Nothing of the rabble about him or his charming wife. When the treaty
reached Charleston, the flags of the city were lowered to half-mast. The
treaty was burned ‘amidst shouts of abhorrence’—nor was there anything
clandestine about the burning. It was duly advertised in advance. ‘This
evening at 8 o’clock,’ read the notice, ‘will be burned by the public
executioner near the old Market in Broad street, the treaty proposed to be
established between Great Britain and America to show the disapproval of
the citizens of Charleston. Also an effigy of Jay will be burned.’ Taking
cognizance of rumors of possible interference, the ‘satellites of anarchy,’
were promised ‘tar and feathers.’ These took the hint and both the treaty
and Jay crackled in the flames.
Then followed a formal meeting of protest in the Exchange—a great
crowd—many veterans of the Revolution—an adjournment to Saint
Michael’s Church to accommodate the throng. Then rose a figure familiar
to the generation of the Revolution, and then Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States, John Rutledge. An able man was Rutledge, with
a luminous career. Speaking with vigorous eloquence, analyzing the treaty
as he proceeded, he denounced it as a betrayal of American interests and an
insult to American manhood.[1051] At a subsequent meeting condemnatory
resolutions were adopted, Butler was lauded, and Senator Read, who had
voted to ratify, was denounced as ‘unworthy of any further public
trust.’[1052] In the midst of this meeting there was a stir of anticipation
when the popular orator Charles Pinckney, just arrived from his country
place and covered with dust, strode into the room and claimed recognition.
His was one of the fiercest excoriations of the year, and a few days later this
speech, revised, appeared in the ‘City Gazette,’ to be copied by all the
papers inimical to the treaty in the country. A master of the philippic, he
poured oil upon the flames.[1053] In parish after parish, meetings were
called and the treaty denounced. The Federalists were appalled at the action
of Rutledge, and he who had been numbered among ‘the wise and the good’
became a symbol of unspeakable depravity over night. It was suddenly
discovered that he whom Washington had deliberately chosen for Chief
Justice was ‘insane.’[1054] In the ‘Centinel’ of Boston appeared an open
letter to him declaring him unfit to sit upon the Bench—because of his
hostility to the document of Jay.[1055] The private correspondence of the
Federalist leaders bristled with abuse, and plans were immediately made to
reject his nomination in the Senate.
In North Carolina the opposition was even more bitter, partly because of
the absurd surrender in Article XII, and partly because of the provision
which threw the property rights of Americans into jeopardy.[1056] This one
provision was said to affect half the lands in the State, and there was wild
talk of resisting it by force.[1057] Even Senator Johnson, Federalist, was
shocked and disgusted. ‘A hasty performance’ at best, and one which
greatly lowered his opinion of Jay’s ability.[1058] William R. Davie,
however, was outraged at the opposition and thought the treatment of Jay
measured ‘the baseness of human nature.’[1059]
In Virginia the people were infuriated. They, too, were affected by
Article IX, and on the day the treaty was signed, Grenville presented Jay
with papers which began the long litigation over the Fairfax estate; and
more than any other State she was a sufferer from the loss of negroes
carried away by the British troops. In 1791, Cornwallis had taken thirty
thousand slaves, of whom all but three thousand had died of smallpox and
fever. When a mass meeting was convened at Richmond, the Federalist
leaders had another shock when the celebrated Chancellor Wythe, a
powerful figure at the American Bar, took the chair—‘a circumstance,’
wrote Madison to Jefferson, ‘which will not be without its weight,
especially as he presided at the former meeting in favor of the
Proclamation.’[1060] Here the treaty was denounced as ‘insulting to the
dignity, injurious to the interests, dangerous to the security, and repugnant
to the Constitution, of the United States.’[1061] Patrick Henry thought it ‘a
very bad one indeed.’[1062] And so thought the Virginians generally. At
Petersburg a tribute was paid Senator Mason and Jay was burned in effigy.
[1063]
Still another blow fell to the Federalists when Senator John Langdon of
New Hampshire, who had supported Hamilton’s financial policies, deserted
on the treaty. The merchants of Portsmouth—a sacred class with the
Hamiltonians—shared in the general protest. A mass meeting was called at
the State House. ‘Your only hope is in the President,’ ran the handbills.
‘Assemble, then, to a man; shut up your shops; repair to the State House;
remonstrate.’[1064] And never had Portsmouth seen so great a throng. The
treaty was denounced, Langdon approved, Mason praised for giving out the
document ‘unduly withheld by the Senate from the people.’ When Langdon
returned, he was given a public dinner at the Assembly Room with
practically every merchant and tradesman gathered about the board.
Stinging toasts, patriotic songs, a stirring speech from Langdon—who at
this time aligned himself with the Jeffersonians and became their leader in
New Hampshire.[1065]
Even so, the Federalists held the line fairly well in New England. In
Vermont, where the treaty was the sole topic of conversation, there were no
public meetings. The Democratic Societies of the State had fallen under the
frown of Washington, and rough-and-ready Matthew Lyon had not assumed
the leadership. As late as September, ‘Vermont Farmer,’ complaining of
non-action, urged that meetings be called in every town and county—but
nothing was done.[1066] In Connecticut, where the preachers, professors,
and politicians had the people cowed, there was scarcely a whimper. ‘I have
heard little said by our people about the treaty,’ wrote Governor Wolcott to
his son. ‘Our people are calm and hard at work.’[1067] In New Jersey a mass
meeting was held at Trenton in the State House and the treaty denounced—
with numerous township meetings following in its wake.[1068] The
sentiment generally was hostile. Another meeting at Newport, Rhode
Island, and another sweeping denunciation.[1069] In Delaware the
opposition was overwhelming, even the Cincinnati at its Fourth of July
dinner at Newcastle drinking heartily to the toast: ‘John Jay, may he enjoy
all the benefits of purgatory,’[1070] while the diners at a more popular
dinner drank, ‘His Excellency, John Jay ... may he and his treason be
forever politically damned.’[1071] In August the people of Wilmington
crowded the Upper Market House in protest, with men like Cæsar Rodney
and John Dickinson participating.[1072]
In Georgia, where the popular sense had been betrayed by the ratification
vote of Senator Gunn, the bitterness was sizzling. One day the people
gathered about a poster in the Market at Savannah inviting them to meet the
next day at the Court-House and join in the burning of John Jay in effigy.
Most of the town responded. There they found the effigies of Jay and Gunn
on a cart. Forming in procession, with the cart in front, they paraded
through the numerous streets, along the Bay and back to the Court-House,
and thence to the South Common where the gallows stood. Halters were put
about the necks of Jay and the offending Senator, solemnly the accusation
of treason was read to them, and they were given to the flames.[1073]
In Maryland the Federalists whistled hard to sustain their courage, and
made a brave effort to close their eyes to the situation. Representative
Murray wrote encouragingly to Wolcott that among the men gathered for
the General Court ‘nine tenths ... from all the counties approved the
treaty.’[1074] In Baltimore the merchants rallied and sought to intimidate
Sam Smith, their Representative, by the circulation of a paper of
instructions. He hastened home to suppress it, and failing, had a set of
counter-instructions started. But there was no magic in pretense, and soon
Murray, himself intimidated, was writing of his decision to retire with the
admission that on the Eastern Shore there ‘had been more agitation than I
had imagined.’[1075]
IV
These marching mobs, mass meetings, resolutions and petitions, and

burning effigies give no conception of the popular ferment. Never had the
people been more agitated or outraged. Whenever two men met, whether
bankers or bakers, the treaty was the topic of their talk. In taverns, where
travelers were promiscuously packed like sardines in a box, the quarreling
made night hideous and sleep impossible. In the bar-rooms, men, in their
cups, disputed and fought. The stage-coaches were a forum, the crossroads
store a battle-ground. An English tourist, finding himself in a wayside
tavern, was driven to distraction by the noise of combat. The farmers were
against the treaty, the lawyers for it, and they debated with passion, with
more heat than light. Assigned to a room with five or six beds, the forlorn
foreigner was forced to listen to the continuance of the struggle until at
length ‘sleep closed their eyes and happily their mouths at the same
time.’[1076] The Duc de la Liancourt, journeying through upper New York,
was swept into the maelstrom of controversy and had to record his own
opinions in his ‘Travels.’[1077] When the messenger from the Boston mass
meeting reached New York, hurrying to Philadelphia, Greenleaf stopped his
press to print the story of the incident.[1078] Soon the anti-treaty press was
publishing statistics on public sentiment—the mass meetings against the
select gatherings of the merchants. Fifteen thousand people had met and
denounced the treaty, and seven hundred had approved it, according to the
‘Independent Chronicle.’[1079]
Meanwhile, Washington was causing the Federalists some uneasiness.
As late as July 31st, he had written Pickering evincing a desire to know
public sentiment. Had the Jacobins captured Washington? Wolcott was
painfully depressed lest America lose the respect of England. What would
she think with their ‘Minister’s house insulted by a mob, their flag dragged
through the streets as in Charleston ... a driveler and a fool appointed Chief
Justice’ by Washington?[1080] Only the day before, Washington was writing
of his alarm lest France resent a treaty she had some right to resent.[1081]
Clearly Washington required some attention.
The President held the treaty seven weeks before signing, and this put
the Federalist leaders to the torture. Among themselves they made no
concealment of their chagrin and indignation. Cabot, writing to King,
confessed that the President’s hesitation ‘renews my anxiety for the welfare
of the country.’ He would suggest to the Boston merchants that they make
‘a manly declaration of their sentiments’ to Washington. He had ‘too much
respect for the character of the President to believe that he can be deterred
from his duty by the clamor or menaces of these city mobs,’ but he realized
that something should be done to counteract their influence.[1082] If Cabot
kept a rein on his patience, it was not true of all. In a great house known as
‘Elmwood’ at Windsor, Connecticut, surrounded by elm trees and filled
with books and religion, a stern and forceful master was literally walking
the floor, and tossing restlessly on a sleepless bed, for Oliver Ellsworth was
doubting Washington’s firmness and courage. In bitterness he was writing
that ‘if the President decides right or wrong or does not decide soon his
good fortune will forsake him.’[1083] In commercial circles in New York
many were already turning upon the man they made a virtue of pretending
to worship. About the middle of July, Washington and his family left
Philadelphia for Mount Vernon, he in a two-horse phaëton for one, his
family in a coach with four horses and two servants, another servant leading
a saddle horse—and without giving the slightest intimation of his intention.
[1084]
Then came the scandal involving Randolph and the French Minister
Faucet. There was infinite joy in the Federalist camp. Pickering and
Randolph hastened a summons to Washington to return. There was a
dramatic scene, in which Washington is described as winking at Pickering,
and setting a trap for his Secretary of State, who was the sole member of his
original Cabinet chosen by the President to please himself. Randolph was
dismissed—and Washington signed the treaty. The merits of the treaty were
in no wise affected by anything Randolph may have done, and it is fair to
assume that there was no connection between the disgracing of the
Secretary and the signing.[1085] The strategy of the Federalist now outlined
itself, and Washington became the treaty and the treaty became Washington,
and to oppose the treaty was to insult Washington. The popular President
was literally pushed to the front line in the fight. Pickering was writing Jay
suggesting that Washington be persuaded to issue ‘a solemn public
declaration ... of the principles of his Administration,’ appealing to the
record of his life ‘for the purity and patriotism of his conduct’;[1086] and Jay
was replying that while ‘in many respects useful,’ he doubted the wisdom.
[1087] Christopher Gore was writing King inquiring if it were not ‘possible
for Col. Hamilton and yourself to induce the President to adopt some
measures that would decidedly express his sentiments in favor of the
treaty.’ He was positive that ‘in New England the word of the President
would save the Government.’[1088]
This plan of using the prestige of Washington for a party measure was
not made for this particular occasion. Pickering and Gore wrote on the same
day,[1089] one from Philadelphia, and the other from Boston. It had long
been a favorite feature in the party strategy. Ellsworth regained his
composure and wrote Wolcott that ‘the current I believe is turning in
Massachusetts, though you may perhaps hear of some obscure town
meetings.’[1090] Senator James Ross, writing to Pickering from Pittsburgh,
thought that after all it was well that Washington had taken his time. ‘His
sanction after hearing all the objections will quiet the minds of the
thoughtful.’[1091]
All that was required to make Washington the issue in the treaty fight
was a stupid attack upon him from the Democratic press, and that was
instantly forthcoming. When Fenno’s paper announced that the treaty had
been signed, Bache wrote that since ‘no information has been filed for a
libel on the Executive ... it may be fairly presumed, the character of the
President for patriotism and republicanism notwithstanding, that the
assertion is well founded.’[1092] And when a great crowd attended the next
presidential levee, Bache capped the climax of asininity with the comment
that ‘it was certainly necessary to let the public know that the just
resentment of an injured and insulted people had not reached the purview of
Saint Washington.’[1093] These bitter expressions convinced the Federalists
that the fight was not yet over. The public had too bitterly and generally
resented the treaty to be so quickly won. Instinctively the friends of the
treaty thought of Hamilton and the prowess of his pen. ‘Mr. Hamilton might
do great good,’ wrote Murray of Maryland to Wolcott, ‘by giving the public
his luminous pen.’[1094] Even as Murray wrote, Hamilton sat in his office
writing ‘Camillus’ for Noah Webster’s paper. His health was failing at the
time, but King and Jay had promised to assist. For weeks and months the
papers appeared, thirty-eight in all, in the most effective argumentative
style, covering every possible phase. ‘It is to pass for Hamilton’s,’ wrote
John Adams to his wife, ‘but all three consulted together upon most.’[1095]
Two months after the series began, the enemies of the treaty were
circulating the story that Hamilton and Webster had quarreled because of
the latter’s decision to limit the number of papers. ‘More than a hundred
columns have already been run, to the exclusion of news, and the people are
tired, no doubt,’ suggested an editor.[1096]
Unhappily, while Hamilton wrote, England was up to her old tricks upon
the sea again. Scarcely had the treaty been ratified, when Pickering was
officially protesting against an outrage on the United States by the British
ship of the line Africa, and by the British Vice-Consul in Rhode Island,
[1097] and was writing complainingly to John Quincy Adams in London that
‘if Britain studied to keep up the irritation in the minds of Americans ...
some of her naval commanders appear perfectly qualified for the
object.’[1098]
The enemies of the treaty made the most of these affronts. ‘A Loyalist of
‘75’ was urging Hamilton to ‘discontinue his laborious work of defending
the treaty’ to give some attention to the justification of Captain Home of the
Africa, and to the defense of the other sea captain who stole a peep ‘at Mr.
Monroe’s despatches.’ ‘Camillus’ could resume on the treaty after quieting
‘the minds of the swinish multitude’ on these later outrages.[1099] Thus
Hamilton’s efforts were being constantly neutralized in effect by the
conduct of the English, and the ‘swinish multitude’ chortled not a little over
the doggerel:
‘Sure George the Third will find employ
For one so wise and wary,
He’ll call “Camillus” home with joy,
And make him Secretary.’[1100]
In truth, even as he wrote, Hamilton was raging not a little over these stupid
insults to America, and was writing Wolcott proposing that the exchange of
ratifications be refused until the order to seize our vessels with provisions be
rescinded.[1101]
Far away on his hilltop, Jefferson was observing Hamilton’s literary
efforts with real concern, if the rank and file of his party were not.
‘Hamilton is really a colossus to the anti-republican party,’ he wrote
Madison, apropos of the defense of the treaty. ‘Without numbers, he is a
host within himself. They have got themselves into a defile where they can
be finished; but too much security on the republican part will give time to
his talent ... to extricate them.... When he comes forward there is no one but
yourself who can meet him. For God’s sake take up your pen and give a
fundamental reply to Curtius and Camillus.’[1102] But neither ‘for God’s
sake,’ nor for Jefferson’s, did Madison comply. He was enjoying his
vacation with Dolly. Even so, the Federalists were still in the woods on the
treaty—and there was yet a memorable fight ahead.
CHAPTER XIII
THE DRAMA OF ‘96
E XUBERANT over their success in capitalizing Washington’s consent to

the treaty, the Federalists returned to Philadelphia in an ugly mood. With
celerity and éclat, the Senate threw down the gauntlet with the rejection
of the nomination of John Rutledge because of his hostility to the treaty. The
motive was unescapable. He was an able jurist, an erudite lawyer, a pure
patriot with a superb record of high public services—but he had denounced
the Federalist treaty. That was enough. The leaders were delighted with their
action, Senator Johnson thinking it would have been unfortunate to have
permitted Rutledge to remain upon the Bench ‘after what had appeared.’ Of
course, the opposition would ‘endeavor to impress it upon the minds of the
people that the majority were influenced by improper motives,’ but that was
unavoidable.[1103] Jefferson viewed the incident from his hilltop with the
vision of a prophet. ‘A bold thing,’ he thought, ‘because they cannot pretend
any objection to him but his disapprobation of the treaty.’ It meant that the
Federalists ‘would receive none but Tories hereafter into any department of
the government,’ and it would not be surprising were Monroe recalled from
Paris because ‘of his being of the partisans of France.’ Monticello was
remote, but its master could see a long way.[1104]
The Senate still seemed safe to the Federalists on their return, but there
were grave misgivings as to the House. Young Livingston had caused
trouble enough and he was back to give more than Ames ‘the hypo,’ but
more ominous was the appearance there for the first time of Albert Gallatin.
He had been thrown out of the Senate as speedily as possible, but not before
he had given proof of his financial genius. There, the Jeffersonians had been
weak in leadership. It was characteristic of the inner circle of the Federalists
to hate any opponent they could not despise—and they dare not despise this
young man from Geneva. Even in private life he had been denounced and
damned in the spirit of the pothouse, and Hamilton had ardently hoped for
his indictment in connection with the Whiskey Insurrection. When his
election had seemed probable, an effort had actually been made to
disfranchise his district as a region of sedition—but here was Gallatin. A
duel between Gallatin’s father-in-law, Admiral Nicholson, and Hamilton had
been narrowly averted in the autumn; but Gallatin, rising serenely above his
detractors, had refused to be ruffled, and had advised his wife not to express
her sentiments on the treatment accorded him too hotly lest it ‘lead to
consequences you would forever regret.’[1105] Since these two brilliant,
bitterly hated, and violently abused men, Livingston and Gallatin, were to
play conspicuous parts in the drama of the House, it is worth while to pause
for a more intimate impression of them.
II
‘Edward Livingston now lives here in the style of a nabob,’ wrote

Wolcott during this session.[1106] It was a style to which he had been
accustomed from birth, for he was of the baronial aristocracy of New York.
He was but thirty-two at the time, tall, handsome, dashing and daring, witty
and eloquent, and with a luminous background of wealth, culture, tradition,
and personal achievement. Even the most inveterate snob among his
political opponents must have envied him his advantages. Born in the
mansion of the Livingstons at ‘Clermont,’ on the Hudson, he had passed his
winters in the town house in New York, which swarmed with slave servants.
From boyhood, his society had been eagerly sought. With his fleeing mother
he had witnessed from a hilltop his loved home given to the flames by
British soldiers; and to his dying day he carried a poignant memory of the
parting of his sister with her hero husband, Richard Montgomery, when he
set forth for his final fight. Lafayette had been so captivated by the
charming youth while visiting his home that he had vainly importuned his
mother for permission to take him to France; and when the young man
attended the Marquis a way on the Boston road, so romantic was the
attachment that the latter had urged the youth to make the journey,
nevertheless, with the promise to conciliate the family. His was a unique
charm, a fascinating personality.
Graduating from Princeton, in the class with Giles, he had his choice
between a life of laborious accomplishment and one of leisurely elegance.
Society, the gayest, giddiest, most entrancing, held forth its arms to him. His
mother’s drawing-room was always crowded with brilliant and beautiful
women and clever men, attracted partly by the exquisite charms of the
widow of Montgomery. He had an income, a town and country house, slaves
to do his bidding, and he turned from the enticing prospect to bury himself
in the assiduous study of the law. Now and then he laid his books aside to
flirt with Theodosia Burr, to dance with the pretty belles, to play for stakes
with women at the gambling-table inseparable from the more fashionable
houses—but only as a diversion.
Scarcely had he begun the practice of his profession when he took a
commanding position. Hard work, a noble ambition, and native talent made
him a success. But he could not have been a Livingston and indifferent to
politics. Very early his capacity and popularity swept him into the fight.
Strangely enough, he immediately became the idol of the masses. This
aristocrat was a democrat who was able to move in the crowd with a
distinction that commanded respect while compelling affection. Perhaps the
artisans, the clerks, the lowly were flattered by his smile and condescension,
perhaps captivated by his fighting mettle—whatever the cause, they loved
him, gathered about and sustained him. The Tammany of his time marshaled
its forces for him, and all the wit and wiles of Hamilton could not harm him.
But the Federalists hated him. What moral right had a man of wealth and
intellectual distinction and social prestige to affiliate with the ‘mob’? They
hated him as deserters are hated—he was an American Égalité to Mrs.
Bingham’s drawing-room, and Wolcott hated him less because he ‘lived like
a nabob’ than because he fought like the devil.[1107]
III
Quite a different type was Albert Gallatin—and yet both were born
aristocrats. From the beginning of the republic at Geneva in the sixteenth
century, his family had been second to none in prestige and power. The
governmental system was aristocratic; his people were uncompromising
aristocrats, and five Gallatins had been, at one time or another, head of the
State. Into this reactionary atmosphere he was born, and in it he passed his
youth. At the home of his grandmother, a domineering but clever old
autocrat, who believed in the divine right of the aristocracy to rule, he often
met Voltaire. Strange couple, that old woman worshiping tradition, and that
cynical old philosopher sneering it away. And yet in his family Gallatin was
an exotic. Instinctively he despised the system his people thought sacred.
Rousseau may have influenced him, but he was probably born with
democracy in his blood. When his grandmother arranged to get him a
commission in the mercenary army of her friend the Landgrave of Hess, and
he scornfully refused on the ground that he would ‘never serve a tyrant,’ the
old woman boxed his ears—but without jarring his principles.[1108] He was
a grave disappointment in the family circle. It is a notable coincidence that
like Hamilton he was remarkably precocious. He graduated from the
Academy of Geneva in his seventeenth year, first in his class in
mathematics, natural philosophy, and Latin translation. There, too, he had
studied history under Müller, the eminent historian, and in the facts and
philosophy of world history he was to have no equal in American public
life. Nothing contributed more to his desertion of his country than his hatred
of its petty aristocracy, its autocratic rule.
He was a dreamer in his youth. Was it Rousseau who planted in him a
dislike of cities and a passion for the wilderness? Secretly he left Geneva
and came to America, landing in Boston. He carried a letter of introduction
from Benjamin Franklin to his son-in-law, the father of the editor of ‘The
Aurora’ at Philadelphia. A few dreary months in Boston, a happier winter in
a cabin in the wilderness of northern Maine, a year at Harvard as a teacher
of French, a short time in Philadelphia in a boarding-house with Pelatiah
Webster, the political philosopher, and the lure of land speculation led him
to Virginia. There, in Richmond, some of his happiest days were passed.
Society was courteous, kindly, and there he came in contact with great
minds. John Marshall invited him into his office with the prediction that he
would distinguish himself at the Bar, and Patrick Henry advised him to go
West, with the observation that he was intended for statesmanship. At this
time he was a youth of twenty-one with a pronounced foreign accent.
Washington met him, and, impressed with his keenness, offered to make
him his land agent—an honor happily declined. Then into the wilderness of
Pennsylvania; a house on a hilltop which he called ‘Friendship Hill’; a
domestic tragedy—the death of his young wife; and soon the Whiskey
Boys, keen of vision as Marshall, Henry, or Washington, literally swept him
into public life.
He was primarily a democrat and an opponent of strong government.
Fascinated by the work of the Constitutional Convention, he thought the
Executive had been given too much power. But he was opposed to tinkering
with constitutions once adopted.[1109] As a member of the convention to
revise the Constitution of Pennsylvania, he worked as earnestly as had
Madison in the greater convention, fighting with moderation, but
persistence for a popular government, for the freedom of the press, and
popular suffrage. It is significant that when the subject of courts was
reached he sought the advice of John Marshall—and received it.[1110] His
views on the French Revolution were those of Jefferson. He recognized the
many excesses, the greed of demagogues for power, and he did not expect ‘a
very good government within a short time,’ but he knew ‘their cause to be
that of mankind against tyranny’ and that ‘no foreign nation has the right to
dictate a government to them.’[1111] One glance at Genêt revealed to him
the naked man—‘totally unfit for the place he fills,’ his abilities
‘slender.’[1112] Yet, like Jefferson, despite the massacres in Paris and the
Genêt excesses in Philadelphia, he clung to France because, ‘if France is
annihilated, as seems to be the desire of the combined powers, sad indeed
will the consequences be for America.’[1113] If he opposed the Excise Law,
as was his right, he had a reason, and it was sane.[1114] The charge the
Federalists were to make, that he had incited the hard-pressed pioneers to
violations of the law, was maliciously false. Throughout that insurrection,
his part was hard, and he met it with sanity and courage.
This was the background of this remarkable man when, at the age of
thirty-five, he stepped forward with the confidence of a veteran to assume
the intellectual leadership of the Jeffersonians in the House. A shy man in
social relations, he was utterly fearless in debate. There was no mind in that
body so well stocked with facts, and none with a broader vision or deeper
penetration. There was no one more masterful in logic, more clear,
downright, incisive in statement, and none more impervious to abuse. His
was the dignity of a superior mentality. If his foreign accent was still
pronounced, and members, priding themselves on their refinement and taste,
sneered openly, he remained the perfect gentleman, indifferent to such jeers.
In the midst of excitement, he was calm. When others were demoralized, he
kept his head. No greater figure ever stood upon the floor of an American
Congress than when Albert Gallatin appeared, to force notable reforms in
the fiscal system, and to challenge the Federalists to an intellectual combat
that would call forth their extreme exertions.
IV
One of the most important and brilliant debates in American history,
surpassing that on the Foote Resolutions, was precipitated early in March
when Edward Livingston threw a bomb into the complacent camp of the
Federalists with resolutions calling upon the President to lay before the
House the instructions and papers pertaining to the Jay Treaty. There was
some maneuvering in the beginning to feel out the position of the enemy,
and then the members settled down to a month of memorable debating. On
the whole, the discussion was pitched upon a high plane, for the question
was one of constitutional interpretation. Throughout, there was scarcely a
touch of personalities, albeit Tracy, described by his admirers as the ‘Burke
of Connecticut,’ and by his enemies as the ‘Burke of Connecticut without
his intelligence,’ could not restrain a stupid sneer at the accent of Gallatin
who led for the enemies of the treaty. A Pennsylvania member denounced
Tracy’s vulgar conduct as ‘intolerable,’ and there were many cries of
‘order.’ With the brazen effrontery of his school, Tracy asked Speaker
Dayton to decide, and that rather disreputable speculator, if not peculator,
held it in order to insult Gallatin with impunity.[1115] But this incident was
happily unique.
The Livingston Resolutions were based upon the theory that the House
was a party to the treaty in that it would be asked to make appropriations to
carry it into effect, and that the facts were necessary to the determination of
its course. This was in perfect accord with the position of Jefferson.[1116]
The Federalists contended that the President and Senate alone were
officially concerned, and that the House was obligated to carry out any
financial arrangements entered into in a treaty. Did not the Constitution
specifically say that the treaty-making power was lodged in the President
and the Senate? Conceded, replied the opposition, but the Constitution also
said that money bills must originate in the House, and in making
appropriations for any purpose the popular branch of Congress is
constitutionally bound to use its own discretion. Both sides could, and did,
appeal to the Constitution. There was nothing merely factious or obstructive
in the fight of the opposition, and it is impossible to peruse the seven
hundred and nine pages of the debates without a realization of the complete
sincerity of the participants. Into the debate dashed all the leaders of the first
order. The galleries were packed. The discussion was the sole
conversational topic in streets and coffee-houses. The newspapers printed
the leading speeches in full. Even the Federal courts injected themselves
into the controversy, and one jurist introduced a denunciation of the enemies
of the treaty into his charge to the grand jury.[1117] Fenno stupidly stumbled
into the blunder of proving the opponents of the treaty a ‘Robespierre
faction’ by quoting the London ‘Morning Chronicle,’[1118] and Cobbett, the
Englishman and Federalist pamphleteer, selected this particular time to
outrage the Philadelphia ‘rabble’ by filling his windows with pictures of
kings, queens, princes, dukes, Pitt, Grenville, and George III. With studied
insolence, he added some portraits of American Revolutionary heroes, and
‘found out fit companions for them.’ Thus he ‘coupled Franklin with Marat’
and ‘M’Kean and Ankerstrom.’[1119]
The burden of the debate was borne by Gallatin, Madison, Livingston,
and Giles for the Resolutions, and by Sedgwick and Griswold against them.
Livingston spoke with spirited eloquence and with that power of reasoning
which was afterward to compel his recognition as one of the foremost
political thinkers of his time.[1120] Giles sustained his reputation as a fluent,
forceful, slashing debater. Madison spoke with moderation; but the honors
of primacy fell to Gallatin. He was a revelation, and the Federalists were
beside themselves with rage. Tall, and above medium size, his fine face
aglow with intelligence, his black eyes burning with earnestness, his profile
resembling in its sharp outlines that of a Frenchman, his accent foreign, his
delivery slow and a little embarrassed, he spoke with a clarity and force that
made the Federalists wince. Livingston was more showy, Giles more
boisterous, Madison more academic. This new man was another Madison
with greater punch.[1121] He did not wander a moment from his argument—
the constitutional rights of the House in the case of treaties involving
appropriations.
‘The House has a right to ask for papers,’ he said, ‘because their
coöperation and sanction is necessary to carry the Treaty into full effect, to
render it a binding instrument, and to make it, properly speaking, a law of
the land; because they have a full discretion to either give or refuse that
coöperation; because they must be guided in the exercise of that discretion
by the merits and expediency of the Treaty itself, and therefore they have a
right to ask for every information which can assist them in deciding that
question.’ Whence led the argument of the foes of the Resolutions? ‘The
Constitution says that no money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in
consequence of appropriations made by law. But treaties, whatever
provisions they may contain, are law; appropriations may therefore be made
by treaties. Then the shortest way to carry this treaty into effect would have
been to add another article appropriating the money.’ Turning to the power
of the House of Commons in the case of treaties involving an appropriation,
he found an analogy to the constitutional power of the President and the
Senate, in the power of the King to make treaties. But no one in England
challenged the right of the Commons to appropriate or not in putting the
provisions of a treaty into effect—and the speaker cited instances where the
Commons had rejected treaties by refusing appropriations. ‘Are we in a
worse situation than Great Britain?’ he asked. ‘Is the House of
Representatives ... the immediate representatives of the American people
ranked below the British House of Commons? Shall the Legislative power
be swallowed up by the Treaty-making power as contended for here, though
never claimed even in Great Britain?’ The issue raised by the opposition to
the Resolutions was clear, and their rejection would be ‘tantamount to
saying that the House abandons their share in legislation, and consents that
the whole power shall be centered in the other branches.’
Such, in general, was the tenor of the argument for the Resolutions;
while the Federalists insisted that the House possessed no power to refuse
any appropriation called for by a treaty—and thus the discussion went round
and round like a wagon wheel in motion. Sedgwick, in justifying the
Senate’s power, made a blunder on which the supporters of the Resolutions
seized and with which they played throughout the discussion. The Senators
were safer than the Representatives, he thought, because the former were
not chosen by ‘an ignorant herd, who could be cajoled, flattered, and
deceived.’
At length the vote was taken, and the Resolutions adopted by 61 to 38.
Gallatin and Livingston, chosen by the House, personally presented the call
for the papers to Washington, who promised an answer after consideration.
An answer, sneered Bache, which sounds like that which the King of France
used to give to his subjects.[1122]
When Livingston introduced his Resolutions, Hamilton, in New York,

was momentarily at sea. His first impression was that they were ‘of doubtful
propriety.’[1123] Within a few days, after discussions with ‘those who think,’
he was persuaded that the papers should be refused—possibly on the ground
that no purpose could be served unless impeachment proceedings against
Washington were in contemplation.[1124] Here we have, in a flash, the
political strategy outlined—to convince the people that the Jeffersonians
were planning the expulsion of Washington from office. Again the
Federalist war-cry—‘Stand by the President!’ But a week later, Hamilton
wrote King that the papers should be refused on the ground that the House
had nothing to do with treaties, and that they were laws of the land to which
the House had to conform.[1125] Learning of the adoption of the
Resolutions, Hamilton wrote Washington to refuse compliance and to await
suggestions that would be sent the next day.[1126] Two days later, he was
mortified at his inability to send the promised papers, but he was at work
upon them. Meanwhile, the papers should not be sent because the
instructions to Jay would ‘do no credit to the Administration.’ Some would
disappoint and inflame the people.[1127] Two days after this, Washington
sent his reply to the House, following Hamilton’s instructions and using
some of his phraseology, even to the convenient suggestion of an
impeachment.[1128] The House, with equal firmness and with a dignified
moderation, responded with resolutions reaffirming its right—and the issue
was made.[1129] Almost immediately the introduction of a resolution
providing the appropriation threw the House into another month’s battle, on
the treaty itself.
VI
Up to this time the congressional struggle had caused little excitement

among the people. Now the idea that the Union itself was at stake was
assiduously put out by the Federalist leaders. The Senate practically ceased
to function. When Senator Tazewell called attention to the accumulation of
business and urged action, King bluntly told him it was purposely held back,
and that if the House failed to appropriate for the treaty, the Senate would
consider all legislation at an end, and he would assume the Union dissolved.
The next day Cabot expressed something of the same sentiment. In
important commercial circles there was much loose talk of the dissolution of
the Union.
The action of Washington, on the other hand, had aroused resentment and
disgust. Jefferson, with his usual prescience, had foreseen it while hoping

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For Naomi, Alexandra, and Leonora

I am a pessimist. Although I expect I will never ﬁnd out why. I am pessimistic

metaethical theories be able to accommodate the forms and assumptions of our

are realist-seeming after all, realists cannot be at a starting advantage in accom-

1. The Subject Matter of Metaethics 1

Appendix A: Comparison with Other Versions of Expressivism 251

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

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Expressivism and descriptivism are theories of moral practice. What is this?

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Note that talk of a distinctive moral terminology must be understood as

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morality to involve a distinct type of moral perception, understood as direct

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¹⁹ E.g. McDowell 1985, McNaughton 1988, and Plato Republic 517c.

cautious observation of human practices, including—since we ourselves engage in

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It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the

2.1. Semantic and Metasemantic Questions

state of affairs as abhorrent, or an object as worth promoting, what do we mean?

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‘S’ means that p.

²⁵ I use bold to refer to concepts.

Where S is one of the sentences we are looking to understand and p is a sentence

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³² Davidson 1967: 304 and Blackburn 1984: 10.

together with a set of clauses specifying the contributions to sentence meaning

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‘1’ denotes grass

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‘IV4’ means that trees are hard.

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the descriptions offered are synonymous with certain non-moral descriptions.

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constraint is one of the prime sources of metaethical controversy. In the case

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2.2. Psychological Questions

⁴⁴ Stevenson 1963: ix and Wedgwood 2007: 20.

2.3. Metaphysical Questions

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2.4. Epistemological Questions

No understanding of the internal workings of a discursive practice would be

Metaethical theories, then, hope to answer metasemantic, metaphysical, epistemo-

⁴⁵ Mackie 1977: 15.

We must . . . glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation

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3. Desiderata on Metaethical Theories

D1. A metaethical theory should be able to accommodate the (experiential,

⁴⁶ Contrast Schroeder 2010: 2–9. ⁴⁷ Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton 1992: 7.

In the next two subsections, I elucidate these desiderata.

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1. Genuine moral agreement and disagreement is possible.

3. Moral discussion is (sometimes) a fruitful way of resolving moral

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⁵¹ What follows is an abbreviated version of Sinclair 2012a: 161–6.