THE MEANING OF 'OUGHT' by Matthew Chrisman ( 9780199363001 ) - Books & Audio Books at Pickabook.co.uk

Item Details

Title:

THE MEANING OF 'OUGHT'
BEYOND DESCRIPTIVISM AND EXPRESSIVISM IN METAETHICS

By:

Matthew Chrisman

Format:

Hardback

List price:

£82.00

Our price:

£71.75

Discount:

12.5% off

You save:

£10.25

ISBN 10:

0199363005

ISBN 13:

9780199363001

Availability:

Usually dispatched within 1-3 weeks.

Delivery rates

Stock:

Currently 0 available

Publisher:

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS INC

Pub. date:

1 October, 2015

Series:

Oxford Moral Theory

Pages:

280

Description:

Building on a careful truth-conditionalist semantics for 'ought' considered as a modal word, Chrisman argues that ought-sentences mean what they do neither because of how they describe reality nor because of the noncognitive attitudes they express, but because of their inferential role.

Synopsis:

The word 'ought' is one of the core normative terms, but it is also a modal word. In this book Matthew Chrisman develops a careful account of the semantics of 'ought' as a modal operator, and uses this to motivate a novel inferentialist account of why ought-sentences have the meaning that they have. This is a metanormative account that agrees with traditional descriptivist theories in metaethics that specifying the truth-conditions of normative sentences is a central part of the explanation of their meaning. But Chrisman argues that this leaves important metasemantic questions about what it is in virtue of which ought-sentences have the meanings that they have unanswered. His appeal to inferentialism aims to provide a viable anti-descriptivist but also anti-expressivist answer to these questions.

Publication:

Imprint:

Oxford University Press Inc

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

BELIEF, AGENCY, AND KNOWLEDGE (HB)

DEONTIC MODALITY (HB)

PHILOSOPHY FOR EVERYONE