Quasi-Realism - Carrying Out the Project of Vindicating Normativity without Embracing the Mystery

Enjoyment is good; waging a war of conquest is wrong. These claims seem to be true. But how can there be normative truths such as these? What is it to be good? How can we know about wrongness? These are some of the fundamental questions in the field of metaethics, the study of the meaning and nature of normative (e.g., moral) language and reality. Quasi-realism is an exciting research program in metaethics that combines two ideas: (1) that we can explain normative thought and talk simply by the fact that they serve to express our attitudes of support or opposition - without any reference to peculiarly normative features of the world; and that yet (2) we can accept the existence of objective normative (e.g., moral) truths or standards. While it holds promise, quasi-realism is a strikingly incomplete research program. The aim of this project is to help complete the quasi-realist program with tools provided by a new account of the meaning of normative language, relational expressivism.