The Problem of Ethical Vagueness for Expressivism

Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implication...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Baima, Nicholas (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2014
In: Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2014, Volume: 17, Issue: 4, Pages: 593-605
Further subjects:B Ethics
B Uncertainty
B Meta-ethics
B Non-cognitivism
B Expressivism
B Vagueness
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Summary:Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism. Because the relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism. Ultimately, I shall argue that expressivism does not have the resources to adequately account for ethical vagueness, while cognitivism does. This demonstrates an advantage that cognitivism holds over expressivism.
ISSN:1572-8447
Contains:Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10677-014-9493-0