Minimalism, truth-aptitude and belief

Abstract

John Divers and Alex Miller [2] and Paul Horwich [3] agree that, even on a minimalist theory of truth-aptitude, a sentence is to count as truth-apt only if it has the appropriate syntax and only if it can be used to give the content of a belief: specifically, the belief of someone who sincerely utters the sentence. They also agree that if belief and desire are distinct existences if no belief is a desire; or if, as I would prefer to say, there are no 'besires' [1], [9] (from here on, I will put my own terminological preference to one side) then it may be impossible to reconcile the claim that moral sentences are truth-apt with the claim that moral judgement has a necessary connection of sorts with the will. As I see it, this is enough to show that they are wrong when they say that minimalism about truth aptitude immediately precludes the distinctive expressivist claim that moral judgements are not truth-apt. For, in these terms, what the expressivists are saying is just that, even though the sentences we utter when we make moral judgements have the appropriate syntax, they do not express beliefs. Why? Because, by the expressivist's lights, moral judgements have a connection with the will that they could not have if they were expressions of beliefs. Thus, according to these expressivists, moral judgements express our desires and not our beliefs; moral sentences are therefore not truth-apt. As such, expressivism relies on a premiss about the relationship between belief and desire. In short, expressivists think that Hume was right: belief and desire are distinct existences. Anti-Humean theorists of motivation reject this premiss. They argue that human beings are capable of enjoying beliefs-that-are-desires, and, accordingly, they insist that moral judgements express these hybrid psychological states. Since moral judgements therefore do have an appropriate connection with beliefs the anti-Humeans conclude that, notwithstanding the connection between moral judgement and the will, moral sentences are truth-apt after all. Note that as I have so far characterized these two parties to the traditional debate in meta-ethics the expressivists and the anti-Humean theorists of motivation both sides accept the minimalist's theory of truthaptitude. What they disagree about is not this, but rather whether or not moral sentences are truth-apt by the lights of the minimalist's theory. As I see it, this is a disagreement within the minimalist camp as to how to construct a philosophy of mind; a disagreement about whether there are any beliefs-that-are-desires. And this is precisely what John Divers and