¹ Wright, Crispin, Saving the Differences (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), viiGoogle Scholar.

² ibid.

³ Dummett, Michael, Truth and Other Enigmas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

⁴ Cf. Benacerraf, Paul, ‘Mathematical truth’, Journal of Philosophy, 70 (1973), 661–679CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Anscombe, Elizabeth, ‘The First Person’, in Guttenplan, Samuel D. (ed.), Mind and Language. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), 45–65Google Scholar.

⁶ Evans, Gareth, Varieties of Reference (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

⁷ Rorty, Richard, ‘Incorrigibility as the Mark of the Mental’, Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970), 399–424CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See Rorty, Richard ‘Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories’, Review of Metaphysics 19 (1965), 24–54Google Scholar.

⁹ Bar-On, Dorit, Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapters 2–3.

¹⁰ Op. cit. note 8. See also e.g. Bar-On, Dorit, ‘First-Person Authority: Dualism, Constitutivism, and Neo-Expressivism’, Erkenntnis 71 (2009), 53–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Externalism and Skepticism: Recognition, Expression, and Self-Knowledge’, in A. Coliva (Ed.) Self-Knowledge and the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 189–211. (And see Bar-On, ‘No “How” Privileged Self-Knowledge’, in progress.)

¹¹ In e.g. op. cit. note 9, 10.

¹² As discussed in op. cit. note 9.

¹³ Linguistic expressions can supplement and supplant non-linguistic ones. When it comes, more specifically, to avowals, it might be argued that they wear the states they express on their linguistic sleeve, as it were. An avowal such as ‘I hope we'll get some rain today’ explicitly names a kind of state of mind (a hope) and articulates its content (that it rain today), as well as attributing it to a certain individual. By contrast, ‘Oh for some rain today!’ expresses one's hopeful state without naming it or attributing it to oneself. The two utterances (which may, of course, be produced in sotto voce, with no audience present) can be used, in context, to (a-)express the same state of mind. Arguably, however, the former, but not the latter also uses a specialized vehicle for expressing a self-belief. This difference may have significant consequences, which I cannot discuss here, for reasons of space. (For discussion, see op.cit., note 10 (in-progress.)

For a full development of the account summarized so far and an explanation of the strong presumption of truth governing avowals, see op. cit. note 9, Chapters 6–8. See also Dorit Bar-On, ‘Expression: Acts, Products, and Meaning’, in S. Gross et al. (eds.), Meaning Without Representation: Essays on Truth, Expression, Normativity, and Naturalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 180–209.

¹⁴ I criticize epistemic and constitutivist approaches in op. cit. note 9, as well as, e.g., ‘Minding the Gap: In Defense of Mind-mind Continuity’, in Kevin M. Cahill and Thomas Raleigh (eds.), Wittgenstein and Naturalism (New York, NY: Taylor and Frances, 2018), 177–203; ‘Belief Self-Knowledge’ (with Kate Nolfi), Oxford Handbook Online (2016); and ‘Epistemological Disjunctivism: Perception, Expression, and Self-Knowledge’ (with Drew Johnson), in Pritchard et al. (eds.), Epistemological Disjunctivism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

¹⁵ See op. cit. note 9, Chapter 9, and Bar-On and Nolfi, op. cit. note 14.

¹⁶ See op.cit., note 10 (in-progress).

¹⁷ See, e.g. Price, Huw, ‘Prospects for Global Expressivism’, in Price, H. et al. (authors) Expressivism, Pragmatism, and Representationalism (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 147–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Several authors have proposed that global expressivism be seen as a metasemantic rather than a semantic view. (See, e.g. Ridge, Michael, Impassioned Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.) I recognize the relevance of this option to the line of thought I develop in this and the following section. However, I think it deserves a separate treatment, which I cannot provide here.

¹⁹ In cases where nonlinguistic vehicles are used, we can think of what is produced as a token of a type – of, e.g. facial contortion, bodily gesture, vocalization, and so on.

²⁰ Bar-On, Dorit and Chrisman, Matthew, ‘Ethical Neo-Expressivism’, in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. V (2009), 132–165Google Scholar. See also Bar-On, Dorit et al. ‘(How) Is Ethical Neo-Expressivism a Hybrid View?’, in Fletcher, G. and Ridge, M. (eds.) Having It Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics (Oxford University Press, 2014), 223–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²¹ This leaves room for the possibility that ethical claims also a-express beliefs – a (hybrid) view defended, in somewhat different terms, by Drew Johnson (dissertation in-progress).

²² See below, Section 5.

It is consistent with the present proposal to maintain that a complete semantic analysis of sentences containing ethical terms such as ‘good’ can go beyond the disquotational pairing up of sentences with propositions. The key point is to deny that such an analysis must provide a paraphrase of some sort, involving lexical decomposition of the relevant terms, or spelling out (nondisquotationally) necessary and sufficient conditions, for example.

²³ Thus, neo-expressivism does not purport to settle the question which psychological states qualify as motivational. Humeans will insist that they must be noncognitive; others may demur. Moreover, even if one sides with the Humeans, and insists that one who makes an ethical claim is a-expressing a noncognitive motivational attitude, it's still possible to allow that one is also a-expressing a belief whose content is given by the proposition that is s-expressed by the sentence used. For some discussion, see Bar-On and Chrisman op. cit. note 22.

²⁴ So doing entails that it is conceptually impossible for someone to issue an ethical claim without being motivated to act (or refrain from acting) in accordance with it. A virtue of ethical neo-expressivism is that it can capture the alleged internal connection to motivation without having this implication. In Bar-On and Chrisman (2009) and in Bar-On et al., it is argued that this provides resources for capturing a fairly strong “internal” connection between ethical claims and action, as well as providing a more nuanced array of diagnoses of different ways the connection between ostensibly making an ethical claim and motivation can be broken.

²⁵ See, e.g., Mark Richard, ‘What Would an Expressivist Semantics Be?’, in Gross et. al. op. cit. note 13, 137–159.

²⁶ If Mark Schroeder is right, this simply cannot be done. See his Being For (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

²⁷ It is helpful to separate, in this connection, various strands in what draws philosophers to expressivism in various domains. In particular, even as regards traditional expressivism, it is perfectly reasonable to separate the positive expressivist strand – i.e., the idea that claims in a given domain function to express a distinctive (noncognitive) type of mental state or attitude – from the negative ontological strand – i.e., the idea that there are no properties for terms in the relevant domain to denote (or facts for claims in the relevant domain to report or describe). For relevant discussion, see Bar-On, Dorit, ‘Expression, Truth, and Reality: Some Variations on Themes from Wright’, in Coliva, A. (ed.) Mind, Meaning, and Knowledge: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 162–194CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bar-On, Dorit and Sias, James, ‘Varieties of Expressivism’, Philosophy Compass 8 (2013), 699–713CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Section 2.

²⁸ So, it is notable that, strictly speaking, even traditional expressivism has always been neutral with respect to the realism/anti-realism debate in ethics (though, of course, nearly all expressivists have also been anti-realists).

²⁹ This section overlaps with parts of Bar-On, Dorit and Simmons, Keith ‘Truth: One or Many or Both?’, in Kellen, N. et al. (eds.), Pluralisms in Truth and Logic (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)Google Scholar.

³⁰ First made in Wright, Crispin, Truth and Objectivity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

³¹ Op. cit., note 29.

³² Lynch, Michael, Truth as One and Many (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³³ Davidson, Donald, ‘Reply to Foster’, reprinted in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 171–180Google Scholar.

³⁴ On some views (though not Davidson's), truth-conditions so understood are what competent speakers have mastered (or internalized) and know, at least implicitly. For relevant discussion and references, see Dorit Bar-On ‘Anti-Realism and Speaker Knowledge’, Synthese 106 (1996), 139–166.

We must here set aside the difficult question whether – and how – a truth theory for a language L can, as Davidson hoped, do all that we may expect of a theory of meaning for L. (For discussion, see LePore, Ernie and Ludwig, Kirk, Donald Davidson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Part I.)

³⁵ Reprinted in op. cit., note 34, 17–36.

³⁶ Op. cit., note 34, 31.

³⁷ ‘s’ for semantic.

³⁸ This, as well as some of the main features below, apply even more clearly in the case of contemporary formal semantic analyses of natural language that make ostensible use of the notion of truth/truth-conditions of the sort offered by, e.g. Heim, Irene and Kratzer, Angelika, Semantics in Generative Grammar (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998)Google Scholar. Thanks to Matthew Chrisman for highlighting this point.

³⁹ As is well known, Davidson himself has argued against deflationism about truth, for reasons we cannot rehearse here.

⁴⁰ A good example is Davidson's own analysis of action sentences. See Davidson, Donald, ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’, reprinted in Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 105–122Google Scholar.

⁴¹ ‘m’ for metaphysical.

⁴² As explained in op. cit., note 30, fn 29, it is a misunderstanding to think that semantic externalism gives the lie to the metaphysical neutrality of semantic analysis just suggested. Briefly, all the externalist semantic theory is in a position to claim is that the meaning of ‘water’ is dependent on the nature of water, whatever that is. If water is in fact identical to the chemical substance H₂O, then being H₂O is constitutive of its metaphysical nature. But there is no expectation that ‘H₂O’ should figure in an externalist semantic account of the term ‘water’.

⁴³ For discussion and references, see Bar-On, Dorit et al. ‘Deflationism and Truth-Condition Theories of Meaning’, reprinted with Postscript in Armour-Garb, B. P. and Beall, JC (eds.), Deflationary Truth (Open Court, 2004), 321–352Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Of course, given the equivalence of <p> and <<p> is true>, one can advert to a ‘formal mode’ and speak of the truth of ‘x is red’ being a different sort of thing from the truth of ‘x is divisible by 2’ – indeed, sometimes putting things in terms of truth may be indispensable. However, the alethic monist objects to the further move to a plurality of truth properties; she denies that that move is forced on us by taking seriously (rather than being quietist about) debates between realists and anti- realists.

⁴⁵ Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a workshop on Expressivisms, Knowledge and Truth, held at University College, London, October 19–20, 2018, and as a keynote address at the Meetings of the Society for Exact Philosophy at York University, Toronto, May 19, 2019. I wish to thank audiences at these meetings – and especially Matthew Chrisman, Maria-Jose Frapolli-Sanz, Robert Myers, Huw Price, and Claudine Verheggen – for helpful comments and discussions.