Researchers have long suspected that grapheme-color synaesthesia is useful, but research on its utility has so far focused primarily on episodic memory and perceptual discrimination. Here we ask whether it can be harnessed during rule-based Category learning. Participants learned through trial and error to classify grapheme pairs that were organized into categories on the basis of their associated synaesthetic colors. The performance of synaesthetes was similar to non-synaesthetes viewing graphemes that were physically colored in the same way. Specifically, synaesthetes learned (...) to categorize stimuli effectively, they were able to transfer this learning to novel stimuli, and they falsely recognized grapheme-pair foils, all like non-synaesthetes viewing colored graphemes. These findings demonstrate that synaesthesia can be exploited when learning the kind of material taught in many classroom settings. (shrink)

Many theories of complex cognitive-motor skill learning are built on the notion that basic cognitive processes group actions into easy-to-perform sequences. The present work examines predictions derived from laboratory-based studies of motor chunking and motor preparation using data collected from the real-time strategy video game StarCraft 2. We examined 996,163 action sequences in the telemetry data of 3,317 players across seven levels of skill. As predicted, the latency to the first action is delayed relative to the other actions in the (...) group. Other predictions, inspired by the memory drum theory of Henry and Rogers, received only weak support. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Elisabeth Blair 173 How it feels is a series of questions Are you home now, or in the body of a bird? Do you drown, or do you sit calm in the watery air? And the fire—did you light it yourself, or did someone you know, or someone you have yet to meet? Can you sit quiet by it or is (...) it bridging the wet and dry with its feet, consuming your shoes first, then your eyes, skipping the topography in between in fickle pecking like chicken for grain? Is the shower water or is it fire? What if you want to feel something? Are you tired of time, to be so locked into now in this way, in the shower, and later in the circle, where they’ll say, We saw your scars, we know you were abused— it’s OK—we were too— —? But you had only scratched your back in the shower (accidentally) that day. Elisabeth Blair 174 Elisabeth Blair What is the fire that is the fire of drowning and what is the urgency that is the command of fog, saying you’d better sit down? You’d better stand up. Wood. Upholstery. Snow. Mud. These are real, while you are sinister, not believed. There were welts on your back; now they’ve gone. You try to explain: You had a belly once. You had a body. This place stores you in the leg of a bird, and not an invested one but a chicken, pecking, running lines in the ground. Most of the time is gone. You’re a stream down which a foundling comes. You’re a paramecium—all the hints and holds of life are here in you, but you are just a little one. You’re a mouth. You use yourself to laugh, to clutch your chin with one hand, rest the other on your knee. You use yourself to say no, I do not have scars—to clarify. You use yourself like the chicken in the yard uses itself to get by. Elisabeth Blair 175 Listen. I haven’t hit you. I’ve only used your body to demonstrate the richness of your feeling and the piracy inherent in your unwillingness to brave the feeling. I’ve only pulled you up. I’ve only sheltered you with a slap. I’ve dipped into your orange blood with my finger and felt relief—I know how to help. You listen to me— your blood will redden, then your face. You’ll get better. 176 Elisabeth Blair The English boy dwells in any of many neurodivergent states, no doubt undiagnosed. You only speak when spoken to by the staff, but he will and does speak—and laugh. He pulls his pants down and shits in the mess tent. You look at the grain in the rough wooden bench. He kicks as they tackle him to the ground, and all the while—as they swear and shout and he fights—comes that laughter, making ripples on your eyes. They put him in a sleeping bag, wrap a tarp around it, tie it with rope, then leave him on the ground for days, on display, in March, in the mountains, in many feet of snow. They call it a burrito. Let him laugh, they say, let him wiggle and roll.  [we were not killed]  [I am not ungrateful  I am not ungrateful] Elisabeth Blair 177 Age 16 A few years before, your horns newly removed, there had come a drought. Once you felt it, and felt yourself not just alone but marked— once on the forehead and once on either side where you had been but now were not— you developed doubts. You had intended to be reasonable, to talk. But the melting ice: there was no container. The evaporating water: there was no shade. No room to meet in. No family to group. No wits to gather or weave, nothing to save. Your hands became a precipice attached to a belief. The belief was mismanaged, had a bad day. Stuff clattered onto you. You lay there in the stuff and knew you had broken hearts. People... (shrink)

I propose to examine the possible relevance of phenomenological method to the consideration of another approach to philosophy which is usually thought of as the descendant of a tradition of thought quite alien to it. This second approach I shall call “the anti-linguistic method.” The name constitutes a terminological safeguard against the dangerous step of ascribing a definite methodological view to the Wittgenstein of the Investigations, although the anti-linguistic method seems to me to be close to what Wittgenstein’s method would (...) have been, had he allowed himself to talk of a method instead of employing the elaborate philosophical conceit of “therapy.” By the method of phenomenology I understand Husserl’s method of “reduction,” which I shall summarize later. Initially I must characterize the method which I shall take to be the distinctive mark of anti-linguistic philosophy. (shrink)

Book Review Reason in the Balance by Sharon Bailin and Mark Battersby Whitby, ON: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2010. Pp. xiv, 1-349. Softcover ISBN-13: 978-007-007341-8, ISBN-10: 007007341-4 CDN$ 97.95.

Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was a British essayist, journalist, and novelist. Orwell is most famous for his dystopian works of fiction, but many of his essays and other books have remained popular as well. His body of work provides one of the twentieth century’s most trenchant and widely recognized critiques of totalitarianism. This article focuses on philosophical topics and questions in political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of language, and aesthetics that Orwell dealt with in (...) his writing. Continue reading Orwell, George →. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Following recent scholarship, this article investigates the relationship among Adam Smith's lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres, his Wealth of Nations, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and his lectures on jurisprudence. According to Smith, the rhetorical theory regarding genre and style improves practical judgment that is central to both economic and legal affairs. Though Smith's lectures on rhetoric feature no overt mention of these legal or commercial applications, when we read these lectures alongside his lectures and writings on jurisprudence (...) and economics, we see that Smith had developed numerous applications for the practical judgment that he taught his students when, under his guidance, they analyzed literary texts. Noting the interrelation among Smith's work on rhetoric, law, and economics allows us to see that others in the Scottish Enlightenment, such as Hugh Blair and Henry Home Lord Kames, similarly found connections among jurisprudence, political economy, and rhetorical theory. (shrink)

Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy is one of the last great works of English prose to have remained unedited. The present volume inaugurates an authoritative edition of the work, which is being prepared by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. It will be followed by two further volumes of text with textual apparatus, and two volumes of commentary. Burton concentrated a lifetime of inquiry into the Anatomy, describing and analysing melancholy and its causes - devoting especial attention to (...) love and religion - and recording possible cures. Primarily a scholarly study of morbid psychology, it is also a compendium of curious facts and anecdotes, and combines seriousness of purpose with a marked satirical vein. First published in 1621, it was a great success: four more editions were published in Burton's lifetime, in each of which new material was added, and a sixth, containing his final revisions, was published in in 1651, eleven years after his death. The textual complexity and Burton's extraordinary range of reference have hitherto deterred editors: this is the first scholarly edition to appear. The text is based on a complete collation of all six authoritative editions. (shrink)

Macmurray provides a conceptual and personal reference point around which we can locate a tradition of social humanism that unfolds from the British idealists to the communitarians. Some communitarian themes appear in the thought of the idealists: these include a vitalist analysis of behaviour, a 'thick' view of the person, and a positive concept of freedom defined in relation to others. Macmurray developed these themes and introduced others largely as a result of reworking idealism so as to come to terms (...) with the crisis of reason associated with the First World War. He rejected objective idealism with its concept of absolute mind for a personal idealism that incorporated an action-based metaphysics. Doing so prompted him to adopt other communitarian themes: these include an appeal to friendship and love, a contrast between society and community, and an appeal to religion to transcend the limits of justice. While contemporary communitarians have inherited much from philosophers such as Macmurray, they have also developed the tradition of social humanism. Philosophers such as Sandel, Taylor and Walzer have done so through grappling with the implications of multiculturalism for the idea of a cosmopolitan community. Ethical socialists like Tony Blair and Raymond Plant have done so through grappling with issues such as a decline in solidarity as it influences the welfare state. (shrink)

Let us begin with the simple observation that applied mathematics can be very tough! It is a common occurrence that basic physical principle instructs us to construct some syntactically simple set of differential equations, but it then proves almost impossible to extract salient information from them. As Charles Peirce once remarked, you can’t get a set of such equations to divulge their secrets by simply tilting at them like Don Quixote. As a consequence, applied mathematicians are often forced to pursue (...) roundabout and shakily rationalized expedients if any useful progress is to be made. Often these provisional and quasi-empirical procedures within applied mathematics loom large in motivating the “anti-realist” or “anti-unificationist” conclusions of Nancy Cartwright and allied authors. (shrink)

This paper surveys interdisciplinary research on gratitude that has been conducted since the review paper translated into German in this issue ‘Recent work on the concept of gratitude in philosophy and psychology’, was published in the Journal of Value Inquiry in 2013. We share progress on our subsequent research, and report on key developments in the field. We revisit familiar themes regarding conditions placed on gratitude, the structure and moral value of gratitude, and the pedagogical implications of research on gratitude, (...) addressing the issue of how the virtue of gratitude should be promoted and taught. As befits a collection dedicated to exploring gratitude’s potential ‘shadow’, we consider again the valence of gratitude and whether it is as quintessentially positive as many have assumed. (shrink)

This target article considers the relation of fluid cognitive functioning to general intelligence. A neurobiological model differentiating working memory/executive function cognitive processes of the prefrontal cortex from aspects of psychometrically defined general intelligence is presented. Work examining the rise in mean intelligence-test performance between normative cohorts, the neuropsychology and neuroscience of cognitive function in typically and atypically developing human populations, and stress, brain development, and corticolimbic connectivity in human and nonhuman animal models is reviewed and found to provide evidence of (...) mechanisms through which early experience affects the development of an aspect of cognition closely related to, but distinct from, general intelligence. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of emotion in fluid cognition and on research indicating fluid cognitive deficits associated with early hippocampal pathology and with dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis stress-response system. Findings are seen to be consistent with the idea of an independent fluid cognitive construct and to assist with the interpretation of findings from the study of early compensatory education for children facing psychosocial adversity and from behavior genetic research on intelligence. It is concluded that ongoing development of neurobiologically grounded measures of fluid cognitive skills appropriate for young children will play a key role in understanding early mental development and the adaptive success to which it is related, particularly for young children facing social and economic disadvantage. Specifically, in the evaluation of the efficacy of compensatory education efforts such as Head Start and the readiness for school of children from diverse backgrounds, it is important to distinguish fluid cognition from psychometrically defined general intelligence. (Published Online April 5 2006) Key Words: cognition; cognition-emotion reciprocity; developmental disorders; emotion; fluid cognition; Flynn effect; general intelligence; limbic system; neuroscience; phenylketonuria; prefrontal cortex; psychometrics; schizophrenia. (shrink)

Evidence shows that changes in the architecture, design, and decor of health care facilities can improve patient care and in the long run reduce expenses. These essays detail the state of the research, look inside two hospitals that put some of these innovations into practice, and consider how design fits into the moral mission ofhealth care.

On the basis of careful textual exegesis and philosophical analysis, and contrary to the received view, Mark R. Wheeler demonstrates that Aristotle presents and systematically explicates his definition of the essence of the truth in the Metaphysics. Aristotle states the nominal definitions of the terms "truth" and "falsehood" as part of his arguments in defense of the logical axioms. These nominal definitions express conceptions of truth and falsehood his philosophical opponents would have recognized and accepted in the context of (...) dialectical argument. On the basis of these nominal definitions, Aristotle develops his definitions of the essences of truth and falsehood--his "real" definitions of truth and falsehood. Aristotle's methodical exposition of his essential definitions of truth and falsehood in the Metaphysics serves as a well-developed example of how his philosophical inquiry starts with nominal definitions and ends with real definitions. Wheeler also argues for the novel claim that Aristotle defines the most fundamental kind of truth in terms of accurate measurement. Aristotle's metrical conception of truth serves as the theoretical basis for specifying the truth conditions of various assertions, for identifying the sorts of beings implicated in these truth conditions, and for explaining the nature of approximate truth and falsehood. Far from offering us a minimal account of truth, Wheeler shows how Aristotle offers us a sophisticated and metrical theory of truth. (shrink)

While 90 percent of participants in a 2005 Gallup poll indicated that they would donate an organ if asked, only 40 percent of Americans have registered to do so, according to 2012 data from Donate Life America; likely even fewer have shared their donation wishes with loved ones. Undoubtedly, the single biggest reason for the discrepancy between the number of potential transplants and the number actually performed is our failure to talk with loved ones about our wishes regarding organ donation. (...) Although many resources already exist to hold these conversations, we can do more, and the emergence of social media provides an intriguing new opportunity. Two years ago, Organize.org set out to create the first nationwide organ donation registry in the United States. (shrink)

The ability to engage in reflexive thought—in thought about thought or about other mental states more generally—is regarded as a complex intellectual achievement that is beyond the capacities of most nonhuman animals. To the extent that reflexive thought capacities are believed necessary for the possession of many other psychological states or capacities, including consciousness, belief, emotion, and empathy, the inability of animals to engage in reflexive thought calls into question their other psychological abilities. This chapter attacks the idea that reflexive (...) thought is required in this pervasive way and holds that supposing that it is derives from a tendency among philosophers and scientists toward overcomplication. Against this tendency, it recommends an aponoian framework, from apó, “away from” and noûs, “intelligence” or “thought,” arguing that seemingly complex psychological abilities are often not as complex as they seem, and do not require the ability to engage in reflexive thought. (shrink)

Philosophers have come to distinguish between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reasons for belief, intention, and other attitudes. Several theories about the nature of this distinction have been offered, by far the most prevalent of which is the idea that it is, at bottom, the distinction between what are known as ‘object-given’ and ‘state-given’ reasons. This paper argues that the object-given/state-given theory vastly overgeneralizes on a small set of data points, and in particular that any adequate account of the distinction (...) between the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reason must allow state-given reasons to be of the right kind. The paper has three main goals, corresponding to its three main parts. In part 1 I set up the problem by introducing the right-kind/wrong-kind distinction, the object-given/state-given distinction, and the object-given/state-given theory, according to which the former distinction simply amounts to the latter. Part 2 presents the main argument of the paper: I argue against the object-given/state-given theory by showing that all of the earmarks of the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ kinds of reason apply to reasons not to intend and not to believe, but that these cases can’t be captured by the object-given/state-given theory. Finally, in part 3 I use these arguments to motivate and explore a more general hypothesis about the rightkind/wrong-kind distinction, and explore some of the consequences of rejecting the object-given/stategiven theory. (shrink)

Several authors have recently endorsed the thesis that there is what has been called pragmatic encroachment on knowledge—in other words, that two people who are in the same situation with respect to truth-related factors may differ in whether they know something, due to a difference in their practical circumstances. This paper aims not to defend this thesis, but to explore how it could be true. What I aim to do, is to show how practical factors could play a role in (...) defeating knowledge by defeating epistemic rationality—the very kind of rationality that is entailed by knowledge, and in which Pascalian considerations do not play any role—even though epistemic rationality consists in having adequate evidence. (shrink)

Akira Kurosawa is arguably known as the director who opened up Japanese film to Western audiences and following his death in 1998, a process of reflection has begun about his life's work as whole and its legacy to the cinema and its global audiences. Rashomon has arguably become the best known Japanese film, ever. After this, his twelfth film, Kurosawa's reputation was firmly established in international cinema, and Rashomon continues to be discussed and imitated more than sixty years after its (...) first screening. This volume addresses issues beyond the realm of Rashomon within film studies, and to do with the Rashomon effect which itself has become a widely recognized English term referring to significantly different perspectives and interpretations of different eyewitnesses to the same dramatic event. The dual figures of ripples and circles comprise the organizing image and principle of this book as each chapter addresses either the movement of ripples, representing the continuing and vibrant influence of Rashomon effects into the twenty-first century, or of circles, representing specific events, such as the publication of a new script, a particular production, or a remake. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

Intentions matter. They have some kind of normative impact on our agency. Something goes wrong when an agent intends some end and fails to carry out the means she believes to be necessary for it, and something goes right when, intending the end, she adopts the means she thinks are required. This has even been claimed to be one of the only uncontroversial truths in ethical theory. But not only is there widespread disagreement about why this is so, there is (...) widespread disagreement about in what sense it is so. In this paper I explore an underdeveloped answer to the question of in what sense it is so, and argue that resolving an apparent difficulty with this view leads to an attractive picture about why it is so. (shrink)

This is one of those cases to which Dr. 8 oodhouse's remark applies with all its force, that a method which leads to true results must have its logic — H.S Smith (" On Some of the Methods at Present in Use in Pure Geometry," p. 6) A goodly amount of modern metaphysics has concerned itself, in one form or another, with the question: what attitude should we take in regard to a language whose semantic underpinnings seem less than certain? (...) Since much of standard English is surely of this type, many philosophers have felt driven to extreme and unpalatable resolutions — wholesale rejection of attractive logical rules, radical "antirealism", "minimalism" about truth, and so forth, Scientists, however, have long dealt with analogous foundational insecurities and, under the duress of practicality, have framed a set of shifting attitudes towards language and reasoning that seem far more commonsensical than the extreme positions to which pure philosophy has often been led. Following this lead, this essay will recommend a more nuanced approach to linguistic insecurity that is neither naively optimistic nor mired in the gloomy sloughs of antirealism. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the gendered insecurities informing some of the livelihood practices of Zimbabwean migrants in northern South Africa from 2004-2011, the period in which I carried out almost annual ethnographic research in this region. Situating these practices within wider policy shifts and changing migration patterns at the national and local scales, this paper shows the importance of attending to gendered dependencies and insecurities when analysing migrant livelihoods in southern Africa. These include those found within humanitarian organizations targeting (...) Zimbabwean migrants in their programs and policies in the border area. These gendered insecurities, which are woven into the fabric of travel, work and accommodation for these migrant Zimbabwean women in northern South Africa, should be examined in struggles for social justice. By drawing on the lens of social critique to engender a wider sense of the social justice needs for Zimbabwean women migrants in South Africa, this essay aims to broaden the focus of activism on women migrants to also attend to gendered insecurities in their everyday economic and shelter-seeking activities. (shrink)

Fifty years ago this summer, the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act was adopted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and approved by the American Bar Association. The UAGA has provided a sound and stable legal platform on which to base an effective nationwide organ donation system. The cardinal principles of altruism, autonomy, and public trust are still important. At a time when confidence and trust in our government and many private institutions has declined, maintaining trust and confidence (...) in our health care system and its commitment to “first, do no harm” has never been more important. Any policies that override these core ethical principles could cause irreparable damage to the public's faith in our transplant system. While progress has been made to increase organ registration and the number of organs transplanted, much more must be done to realize the potential of life‐saving therapy without jeopardizing ethical principles. (shrink)

Ten years ago, when I was president and chief executive officer of Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego, if you had asked me about our commitment to environmental sustainability or about the hospital's carbon footprint, I would have given you a blank look. The issues were simply not on my radar screen. And that was true of most health care leaders.The good news? Environmental sustainability is becoming a health care priority, and exciting progress is occurring. In Greening Health Care: How (...) Hospitals Can Heal the Planet, Kathy Gerwig eloquently relates how one leading large health care system, Kaiser Permanente, achieved remarkable results in responding to the environmental health challenge over the past several years. (shrink)

In the 1960s, Peter Geach and John Searle independently posed an important objection to the wide class of 'noncognitivist' metaethical views that had at that time been dominant and widely defended for a quarter of a century. The problems raised by that objection have come to be known in the literature as the Frege-Geach Problem, because of Geach's attribution of the objection to Frege's distinction between content and assertoric force, and the problem has since occupied a great deal of the (...) attention both of defenders of broadly noncognitivist views, and of their critics. In this article I explain Geach and Searle's historical objections, and put the subsequent discussion into dialectical context, paying some attention to the developments along the way and how they have enhanced our overall understanding of the problem. The article covers a lot of territory, so we will only be able to see the highlights, along the way. For further reading, see the Works Cited. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of recent ‘hybrid’ approaches to metaethics, according to which moral sentences, in some sense or other, express both beliefs and desires. I try to show what kinds of theoretical issues come up at the different choice points we encounter in developing such a view, to raise some problems and explain where they come from, and to begin to get a sense for what the payoff of such views can be, and what they will need to (...) do in order to earn that payoff. (shrink)

Allow me to rehearse a familiar scenario. We all know that which ends you have has something to do with what you ought to do. If Ronnie is keen on dancing but Bradley can’t stand it, then the fact that there will be dancing at the party tonight affects what Ronnie and Bradley ought to do in different ways. In short, (HI) you ought, if you have the end, to take the means. But now trouble looms: what if you have (...) dreadful, murderous ends? Ought you to take the means to them? Seemingly not. But fortunately, an assumption made by deontic logics1 comes to the rescue. Since ‘‘ought’’, according to this assumption, is a sentential operator, HI must really be ambiguous. It could be read either as (Narrow) You have the end ! O(you take the means) or as (Wide) O(you have the end ! you take the means). Now if Narrow is true, then you really ought to take the means to your murderous ends. But this doesn’t follow from Wide. All that follows from Wide is that you ought to either take the means to these ends or else give them up. Conclusions: (1) Since HI is on some reading true, but Narrow isn’t, Wide is true. (2) Wide accounts for the relationship between your ends and what you ought to do. This elegant scenario repeats itself in many other domains in which it seems like something can have a bearing on what some particular agent ought to do. Does what you know affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs about what you ought to do affect what you ought to do? Do your promises affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs affect what you ought to believe? On each of these counts, the intuitive answer is ‘‘yes’’. And so each of these questions leaves something for the moral philosopher or the epistemologist to investigate. On each count, it seems that what we all know, is that (Account) you ought, if p, to do A. But on each count, the Narrow-scope reading of the ‘‘ought’’ in this claim yields unintuitive consequences. So since Account is true, it must be true on the Wide-scope reading.. (shrink)

It is now generally understood that constraints play an important role in commonsense moral thinking and generally accepted that they cannot be accommodated by ordinary, traditional consequentialism. Some have seen this as the most conclusive evidence that consequentialism is hopelessly wrong,1 while others have seen it as the most conclusive evidence that moral common sense is hopelessly paradoxical.2 Fortunately, or so it is widely thought, in the last twenty-five years a new research program, that of Agent-Relative Teleology, has come to (...) the rescue on all sides. While consequentialism says that every agent ought always to do that action that will bring about the most good, according to Agent- Relative Teleology. (shrink)

Particularists in ethics emphasize that the normative is holistic, and invite us to infer with them that it therefore defies generalization. This has been supposed to present an obstacle to traditional moral theorizing, to have striking implications for moral epistemology and moral deliberation, and to rule out reductive theories of the normative, making it a bold and important thesis across the areas of normative theory, moral epistemology, moral psychology, and normative metaphysics. Though particularists emphasize the importance of the holism of (...) the normative, however, it is not something that they have been able to explain. In this paper I’ll show how to use a small number of simple and, I’ll argue, independently compelling assumptions in order to both predict and explain the holistic features of the normative with respect to the non-normative. The basic idea of the paper is simple. It is that normative claims are holistic because they are general, rather than because they defy generalization. (shrink)

Expressivists have a problem with negation. The problem is that they have not, to date, been able to explain why ‘murdering is wrong’ and ‘murdering is not wrong’ are inconsistent sentences. In this paper, I explain the nature of the problem, and why the best efforts of Gibbard, Dreier, and Horgan and Timmons don’t solve it. Then I show how to diagnose where the problem comes from, and consequently how it is possible for expressivists to solve it. Expressivists should accept (...) this solution, I argue, because it is demonstrably the only way of avoiding the problem, and because it generalizes. Once we see how to solve the negation problem, I show, it becomes easy to state a constructive, compositional expressivist semantics for a purely normative language with the expressive power of propositional logic, in which we can for the first time give explanatory, formally adequate expressivist accounts of logical inconsistency, logical entailment, and logical validity. As a corollary, I give what I take to be the first real expressivist explanation of why Geach’s original moral modus ponens argument is genuinely logically valid. This proves that the problem with expressivism cannot be that it can’t account for the logical properties of complex normative sentences. But it does not show that the same solution can work for a language with both normative and descriptive predicates, let alone that expressivists are able to deal with more complex linguistic constructions like tense, modals, or even quantifiers. In the final section, I show what kind of constraints the solution offered here would place expressivists under, in answering these further questions. (shrink)