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Creeping Minimalism and Subject Matter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2020

Matthew Simpson Open the ORCID record for Matthew Simpson [Opens in a new window]
Matthew Simpson*
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University College London, UK
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Email: matthew.simpson@cantab.net
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Abstract

The problem of creeping minimalism concerns how to tell the difference between metaethical expressivism and its rivals given contemporary expressivists’ acceptance of minimalism about truth and related concepts. Explanationism finds the difference in what expressivists use to explain why ethical language and thought has the content it does. I argue that two recent versions of explanationism are unsatisfactory and offer a third version, subject matter explanationism. This view, I argue, captures the advantages of previous views without their disadvantages and gives us a principled and general characterisation of non-representational views about all kinds of language and thought.

Keywords

Creeping minimalismexpressivismminimalismsubject matterexplanationismnon-representationalism
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 50 , Issue 6 , August 2020 , pp. 750 - 766
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Canadian Journal of Philosophy

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