Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

Resisting the New Contextualist Orthodoxy in Metaethics

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

Abstract

According to metaethical contextualism, normative sentence types do not express complete truth-evaluable contents, but rather only a sentence-token as uttered in a context does so. This is because, on their view, the context is required to supplement the missing elements of the sentence type meaning to complete the content. After explaining this currently popular view, this chapter makes three objections to it. It argues that metaethical contextualism seems incompatible with the intuitive felicity conditions of normative utterances, threatens to lead to regresses of analysis, and fails to fit the modular explanations of our linguistic abilities. This paper then concludes by outlining a minimalist alternative and several strategies for how semantic minimalists can accommodate many of the central motivations for metaethical contextualism.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOxford Studies in Metaethics
Subtitle of host publicationVolume 21
EditorsRuss Shafer-Landau
Place of PublicationOxford
PublisherOxford University Press
Chapter10
Pages218-242
Number of pages25
ISBN (Electronic)9780197903612
ISBN (Print)9780197903599
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Apr 2026

Publication series

NameOxford Studies in Metaethics
PublisherOxford University Press
Volume21

Keywords

  • Contextualism
  • Invariantism
  • Metaethical Semantics
  • Minimalism
  • Normative Language

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Resisting the New Contextualist Orthodoxy in Metaethics'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this