Meaning and Normativity

Allan Gibbard integrates his theory of expressivism for normative language--which holds, roughly, that normative statements express states of planning--with a theory of how the meaning of meaning could be normative. He expands metaethics to address key topics in philosophy of language, and argues that while expressivism and nonnaturalism may converge in all their theses, they differ in their explanations of normativity. Nonnaturalists' explanations mystify,whereas expressivists render normative thinking intelligible as something to expect from beings like us, complexly social products of natural selection who talk with each other.

Allan Gibbard is Richard B. Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Reconciling our Aims: In Search of Bases for Ethics (OUP, 2008), Thinking How to Life (Harvard, 2003), and Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Harvard/OUP, 1990).