Vindication and Debunking

I explained above that expressivists are aware that certain judgements which they put forward are moral. Their endorsement of (at least certain) theses about morality’s objectivity and the positive evaluation of moral practices are two of the clearest examples thereof. That is, expressivists explicitly contrast themselves with moral nihilists, who argue that we would all be better off without morality, and error-theorists, who declare that all moral verdicts are false. This opposition to moral nihilism and error-theories must clearly be grounded on moral considerations, as should be clear from my previous explanations. Firstly, any dismissal of moral nihilism boils down to an explicit endorse-ment of morality—someone who rebuffs the view that moral practices are bad, or that we would be better off without them or that they are worthless, attributes positive moral value to them. Second-ly, any rejection of a classic error-theory which proclaims that moral judgements are truth-apt but false must be advanced on moral grounds—casting aside the claim that moral judgements are false amounts to agreeing that at least some of our moral judgements are true which, as has been ex-plained on several occasions above, is itself a moral judgement. Expressivists are fully aware of this.

Blackburn (1998a: 14-21) explicitly makes the point that all evaluations of morality—no matter whether positive or negative—are moves within morality. Gibbard (2003a: 14) rejects moral scepti-cism because he does indeed think that there are correct and knowable answers to moral questions, whilst both fully accept and welcome the anti-Archimedean insight that all these theses about mo-rality’s objectivity, many of which expressivists happily embrace, must be established on moral grounds. The expressivist opposition to moral nihilism and moral error-theories is, accordingly, clearly built on a moral basis. As such, it must be located on the second, morally infused tier of expressivism.

Yet, expressivists normally make a further commitment which is slightly trickier and is more dangerously exposed to anti-Archimedean attacks. That is, expressivists do not normally limit them-selves to the rejection of moral nihilism and error-theories; they do not intend simply to plunge into moral debate by subscribing to those particular moral verdicts which endorse moral thinking and

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objectivity. Instead, their aim is to show that expressivism vindicates moral practices, that it does not undermine or debunk them (Blackburn 2009: 209; Gibbard 2003a: 195). Since this additional claim can now quite easily be heard in a moral key, it is worthwhile looking at it in greater detail.

To start with, vindication can be understood in one of two ways. The first reading—vindication1— is based on the illumination requirement and the weak version of the internal adequacy constraint introduced above. According to this understanding, to vindicate1 moral practice is to assign a pur-pose to it which, firstly, explains why we employ moral concepts and, secondly, is compatible with the features which our moral activities possess. In this sense, expressivism is thought to be vindicato-ry1 in that it accounts for the employment of moral concepts in a way which also accounts for talk about moral truths, facts, determinate correctness, etc. Yet, although expressivism is compatible with these features, it does not take an engaged stance on them. More precisely, expressivism when combined with minimalism explains what it is to call a moral verdict true, yet does not proclaim that there are moral truths; it incorporates an account of what it is to call moral truths mind-independent, but does not declare that moral truths are mind-independent and so on. In other words, it limits itself to explanations of what it is to make first-order, substantive moral verdicts, but avoids any substantive moral commitments itself. Vindication1, then, makes us understand why we employ moral talk and why moral activities are shaped the way they are. The second reading of vindication—vindication2— is more demanding and based on the stronger form of the internal adequacy constraint. According to this understanding, to vindicate2 moral practice is to show why we are correct in thinking that there are moral truths and facts, why we are not mistaken in believ-ing that the authority of morality lies somehow ‘outside’ of our practices, why we rightly hold that our moral verdicts are fallible, etc. Hence, if expressivism vindicated2 moral practice in this way, it would not only explain why we talk in terms of moral truth, but also why we correctly hold that moral statements are true. Vindication2, then, is more or less the opposite of debunking; it makes us understand why we are right to think that there are moral truths, facts, determinately correct an-swers to moral questions, etc.

At this point, we need to address two questions. Firstly, which status do these two interpreta-tions of vindication have? Secondly, which reading shall we assign to expressivism? I take it that the moral status of vindication2 is obvious. To say that we are correct in thinking that there are moral truths is to endorse the existence of moral truths, which amounts to the endorsement of substantive moral verdicts. Similarly, the claim that expressivism does not debunk moral practices must be mor-al: It declares that expressivist explanations neither entail that there are no moral truths nor under-mine trust in our moral practices and the existence of moral truths. Given my explanations about moral scepticism above, it is easy to see the moral nature of this additional step. That is, just as any inference which entails moral scepticism must be a moral argument, any inference which entails the rejection of moral scepticism must also be moral. Envisaging how one could possibly rebut expres-sivists’ non-debunking thesis helps to bring home this point. For example, assume that I hold that if expressivism was true, moral scepticism would ensue because the existence of moral truths presup-poses the existence of God, which expressivists adamantly deny. Hence, I could take the rather radi-cal stance that if we adopted expressivism, nothing would ever be right or wrong since it would not be backed by God’s will. Expressivism would thus impact on the (non-)existence of moral truths exactly because it rejects what I regard as the grounding of all moral truths, namely God’s will. Ac-cordingly, if expressivists want to argue against my position, they must enter a moral debate with

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me and field arguments which show that my moral reflections are misguided. For instance, they could declare that rightness and wrongness are not grounded in God’s will, but in the correct prin-ciples of morality which hold independently of both God’s existence and, indeed, also the availabil-ity of expressivist explanations. As this example shows, if expressivists want to convince us that their account does not debunk ethics, they must thus win us over on moral grounds. Similarly, if we want to reject this claim, we must launch our challenge from a moral platform. Vindication2 is, therefore, moral through and through.

What about vindication1, though? Something normative is clearly also going here. For, making us understand why we talk in moral terms by pointing out the purpose that this practice serves can be reformulated as saying why it makes sense or is rational for beings like us to employ moral con-cepts. Yet, ‘making sense’ and ‘being rational’ are clearly covered in normative dust. The most im-portant question for us now is whether or not this dust is also moral. Maybe, we can cut a long story short by appealing once more to the analogy of minimalism about truth. For, minimalism too can be regarded as explaining why it makes sense for us or why we have reasons to use the truth-predicate by unearthing the need it serves; this is how it vindicates1 talk in terms of truth. Again, certain norms of instrumental rationality are certainly in play here. At the same time, this kind of

‘making sense’ seems to be detachable from moral evaluations: I can agree that for beings with a certain need, it makes sense or is rational to engage in certain activities, without thereby being committed to holding that these activities are desirable or worthwhile. Hence, despite its reliance on instrumental rationality, we do not normally classify minimalism as a moral doctrine. I suggest that the same stance should be adopted when understanding expressivism along the lines of vindication1. It clearly identifies certain needs and relies on the explicit assumption that it makes sense for beings who possess these needs to use moral concepts. Yet, it is not incoherent to accept that it makes sense or is rational for beings like us to embark on moral practices, but to deny that these practices bear any moral value. In sum, I cannot see why vindication1 should lead to the moral interpretation of expressivism, whilst no such moral interpretation follows for other theories which share the very same vindicatory1 assumptions. In contrast to vindication2, vindication1, then, does not appear to be moral.

Which vindicatory aim are we to assign to expressivists? It is clear that vindicating1 moral vo-cabulary by appealing to its practical purpose is an essential feature of expressivism. After all, this is what drives the motivation to develop expressivism in the first place. Since vindication1 is non-moral, this commitment poses no threat to the non-moral interpretation of expressivism. Do ex-pressivist purpose-attributions also straightforwardly vindicate2 moral practices? If they did, it would be clear that their non-moral status would be endangered. For, if vindication2 could be derived straightforwardly from purpose-attributions, the Moral Doctrine Test would lock into place and declare that since moral conclusions follow from expressivist attributions, these purpose-attributions must themselves be moral. However, I do not believe that vindication2 can be so de-rived. As I explained at the beginning of chapter 5, it is certainly true that expressivists do assign positive moral value to the purpose-attribution and appeal to it when giving certain moral justifica-tions, about for instance the authority of morality. Yet, I also emphasised that this is an additional moral layer which is in principle detachable from the purpose-attribution itself. Hence, in order to vindicate2 moral practices, purpose-attributions must be supplemented by further, independent mor-al assumptions put forward on the second tier, such as those fielded against opponents which argue

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that expressivism debunks ethics. As long as these positive moral evaluations take place on the sec-ond tier but do not infiltrate the first tier, commitment to vindication2 does not appear to support the claim that purpose-attributions to morality tout court must be moral. Instead, expressivists can hold on to expressivism’s self-reflexive characteristic in that commitments about vindication2 and moral objectivity can be analysed in expressivist terms. For instance, when disagreeing with their adversary about the non-debunking nature of expressivism, expressivists can elucidate that they are disagreeing in plan or attitudes; when putting forward the view that some things would still be right and others wrong if expressivism was true, they can still maintain that they are expressing a certain practical attitude of theirs. Hence, the distinctively expressivist work would still be done on the first tier and remain non-moral; the moral commitments which expressivists might share with other metaethicists (e.g., the commitment to moral objectivity which is shared by moral realists and ex-pressivists) remain on the second tier. Consequently, whilst vindication1 need not worry expressiv-ists because it is non-moral, vindication2 need not worry expressivists as long as the two tiers can be kept apart. Since up to this point, we have not as yet heard any arguments which would support direct links between the two tiers and disprove the expressivist claim that the moral layer is detacha-ble from the distinctively expressivist, non-moral layer, more work must be done to show that key expressivist theses are moral in nature. This will be the focus of the next chapter.

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