Essays in Quasi-realism - Simon Blackburn, Simon W.
The quasi-realist challenge, developed by Blackburn in this volume, is that we can have those attachments without any metaphysic that deserves to be called realism, so that the metaphysical picture that goes with our practices is quite idle. The cases treated here include the theories of value and knowledge, modality, probability, causation.Quasi-realism denies that there are objective (not mind-dependent) moral properties (and thus facts) in the world. In fact, Blackburn gives an argument against moral realism on the basis that it is metaphysically extravagant. But if quasi-realism is anti-realist then how can moral statements even have the surface cognitive feature of truth.This volume collects some influential essays in which Simon Blackburn, one of our leading philosophers, explores one of the most profound and fertile of philosophical problems: the way in which our judgments relate to the world. This debate has centered on realism, or the view that what we say is validated by the way things stand in the world, and a variety of oppositions to it.
The central advantage of expressivism is that it easily explains the motivational force of moral conviction. Its chief problem is it has difficulty explaining the “realist surface” of moralizing. Quasi-realism is a strategy for explaining the realist surface without abandoning the underlying ideas of expressivism. It aims to explain moral.Thanks for your reply. The thing is, those points 1. and 2. sound like projectivism in general, rather than quasi-realism specifically. Blackburn's theory is a much deeper account of point 2., explaining just how he thinks ethical sentences are working under the surface, and that's the bit that's very confusing!
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