Folk psychology without metaphysics: An expressivist approach

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a renewed concern about the dangers of eliminative materialism, as well as several attempts to discuss alternative positions such as new versions of interpretivism or fictionalism. Although expressivism has also emerged as a possibility, the problems with hybrid versions of expressivism in applying it to attitude ascriptions have led to a strong rejection of the proposal. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it argues that there are still theoretical tools available to defend an expressivist analysis of mental state ascriptions. Second, the article contends that three of the most influential arguments in expressivism in meta-ethics and meta-epistemology are applicable to the case of mental state ascriptions.