A Problem for Expressivism

Language, Truth and Logic added expressivism to the inventory of substantive positions in meta-ethics, and the recent defences of versions of it by Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard have enhanced its status as a major position.1 Ayer presented the doctrine as an improvement on subjectivism-that is, on the doctrine that ethical sentences serve to report attitudes of approval and disapproval-and it is widely supposed to be an internally coherent and interesting position. We argue, however, that there is a serious problem that expressivists, unlike subjectivists, have to face which has not been adequately addressed in the development of the doctrine.