Perspectival representation and fallacies in metaethics

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (3-4):379-404 (2018)
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Abstract

The prevailing theoretical framework for theorising about representation construes all representation as involving objective representational contents. This classic framework has tended to drive philosophers either to claim that evaluative judgements are representations and therefore objective, or else to claim that evaluative judgements are not really representations, because they are not objective. However, a more general, already well-explored framework is available, which will allow theorists to treat evaluative judgements as full-fledged representations while leaving open whether they are objective. Such a more general conception of representational content is exemplified, e.g. by Lewis's ‘centred contents’ and Gibbard's framework of ‘contents of judgement’, thus it is not new. I shall start in §1 by introducing the more general framework of perspectival contents and then illustrate in §2 how awareness of it can help expose the fallaciousness of certain widely used forms of argumentation in metaethics.

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Max Kölbel
University of Vienna

Citations of this work

Objectivity and Perspectival Content.Max Kölbel - 2019 - Erkenntnis 87 (1):137-159.

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References found in this work

Language, truth and logic.Alfred Jules Ayer - 1936 - London,: V. Gollancz.
Truth and Objectivity.Crispin Wright - 1992 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
The Language of Morals.Richard Mervyn Hare - 1952 - Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
The language of morals.Richard Mervyn Hare - 1952 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.

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