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How to Have Your Quasi-Cake and Quasi-Eat It Too

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2021

Sebastian Köhler Open the ORCID record for Sebastian Köhler [Opens in a new window]
Sebastian Köhler*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy & Law, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Frankfurt, Germany
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Quasi-realism prominently figures in the expressivist research program. However, many complain that it has become increasingly unclear what exactly quasi-realism involves. This paper offers clarification. It argues that we need to distinguish two distinctive views that might be and have been pursued under the label “quasi-realism”: conciliatory expressivism and quasi-realism properly so-called. Of these, only conciliatory expressivism is a genuinely meta-ethical project, while quasi-realism is a first-order normative view. This paper demonstrates the fruitfulness of these clarifications by using them to address Terence Cuneo’s recent challenge that quasi-realist expressivists lack the resources to plausibly accommodate certain sorts of data points.

Keywords

Meta-ethical expressivismquasi-realism
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , April 2021 , pp. 204 - 220
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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