Article

Relativism and the Metaphysics of Value: A Comment on Daan Evers

Details

Citation

Wright C (2021) Relativism and the Metaphysics of Value: A Comment on Daan Evers. British Journal of Aesthetics, 61 (1), pp. 87-104. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayaa020

Abstract
Daan Evers argues that relativists about aesthetic and other types of evaluative language face some distinctive and largely overlooked metaphysical difficulties concerning the nature of the states of affairs that such statements are intended to be about. These difficulties, as Evers notes, all rest on the assumption that evaluative language is representational. Evers takes it that it is only on this assumption that evaluative relativism is distinguished from expressivism. I argue that this is incorrect and that, without falling into some form of expressivism, relativists can and must drop the representational assumption, but that the resulting position is one in which relativism no longer offers any distinctive dialectical or theoretical advantage.

Journal
British Journal of Aesthetics: Volume 61, Issue 1

StatusPublished
FundersThe Leverhulme Trust
Publication date31/01/2021
Publication date online30/09/2020
Date accepted by journal01/09/2020
URLhttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/33952
ISSN0007-0904
eISSN1468-2842
Item discussedDaan Evers, Paper presented at 2014 Cambridge conference on ‘Realism and Antirealism in Aesthetics and Metaethics'. ,

People (1)

People

Professor Crispin Wright

Professor Crispin Wright

Professor, Philosophy