(O1) The Frege-Geach problem
We will assess to what extent expressivist solutions to the Frege-Geach problem are successful inasmuch as they allow us to deal not only with the classic problem, but also with the contemporary version of it stated by Schroeder, which involves negation. We will also assess the solution to the Frege-Geach problem that can be derived from Hanks’ approximation to the problem of the unity of the proposition and consider to what extent minimal expressivism allows us to throw new light on the objection. Aim coordinated by Neftalí Villanueva.
(O2) Expressivism and rule-following
We will critically assess the commitment in Gibbard’s, Chrisman’s and Field’s positions to the idea that rule-following can be expressed through factual claims, pace Wittgenstein and Kripke. Aim coordinated by Manuel de Pinedo.
(O3) Belief ascriptions as descriptive claims 1. Self-ascriptions
We will explore to what extent the expressivist distinction between expressing that one is in a mental state and saying that one is in that mental state is compatible with (i) the expressivism about self-ascription of mental states developed by Bar-On and (ii) other possible applications of the expressivist hypothesis to the analysis of self-ascriptions of mental states. We will defend that committing to the idea that we can describe our beliefs goes against some of expressivism’s assumptions. Aim coordinated by Manuel de Pinedo.
(O4) Belief ascriptions as descriptive claims 2
We will defend that belief ascriptions, as knowledge ascriptions or rationality ascriptions, should be treated as normative claims. We will explore the possibility of building an argument to this effect from the identification of not-straightforwardly factual disagreements in contexts in which the question at issue is the possibility of ascribing a particular belief to a subject. Aim coordinated by Neftalí Villanueva.
(O5) Demarcation
We will deal with several conceptual aspects related to the difference between the different varieties of expressivism and other semantic alternatives. In particular:
- O5a. The difference between Gibbard’s expressivism and MacFarlane’s relativism.
- O5b. The difference between different expressivism and different varieties of contextualism that involve the possibility of adding conflicts of attitudes to propositional conflicts.
- O5c. The difference between Yalcin’s and Stalnaker’s compositional expressivism and contextualism. We will explore the possibility that these two alternatives are nothing but notational variants.
- O5d. The difference between Chrisman’s epistemic expressivism and Lewis’ epistemic contextualism.
Aim coordinated by Neftalí Villanueva.
(O6) Aesthetic predicates
As in the case of belief ascriptions, we will argue that the features that characterize not-straightforwardly factual disagreements can often be found in discussions that involve aesthetic predicates. These predicates should thus be analyzed from an expressivist perspective such as the one defended in this project, committing to the idea that they are not used to describe how the things around us are. Aim coordinated by Neftalí Villanueva.
(O7) Not-straightforwardly factual disagreements
We will isolate the notion of not-straightforwardly factual disagreement from several notions of disagreement that can be found in the literature and can seem similar, such as faultless diagreement, reasonable disagreement, peer disagreement, etc. Along with a task of conceptual ordering, we will carry out an empirical task and trace, doing corpus research on the British National Corpus, lexical markers for some of the varieties of disagreements that can be found in the literature. Aim coordinated by Manuel de Pinedo and Neftalí Villanueva.
(O8) Affordances and the non-factual character of dispositional vocabulary
We will critically study the factualist commitments of the enactivist project of naturalization of normativity and develop an alternative, inspired by the notion of affordance and the explicative power of evolutionary theory, that does justice to the necessity of agential and dispositional vocabulary without additional ontological commitments. Aim coordinated by Manuel de Pinedo.
(O9) Fregean, Wittgensteinian and Rylean antecedents to the expressivist proposal
We will develop the hypothesis that the naturalist antidescriptivism that characterizes expressivism played a key role in some crucial stages of analytic philosophy. Aim coordinated by Neftalí Villanueva.
(O10) The interpretation of the expressivist hypothesis by minimal expressivism
We will assess to what extent minimal expressivism can be considered a fruitful interpretation of the expressivist hypothesis that does justice both to the fundamental theoretical assumptions of the different varieties of expressivism and to their explicative power. Aim coordinated by Neftalí Villanueva.