How to Be an Epistemic Expressivist
Arguments from the practicality of moral judgment are typically taken to be among the more powerful arguments for meta-ethical expressivism. However, analogous arguments seem unpromising in meta-epistemology. Morality is obviously practical in a very direct way, whereas epistemic judgments tell one what to believe, not what to do. It is argued in this chapter that what epistemologists call ‘pragmatic encroachment’ provides the best starting point for an argument from practicality in meta-epistemology. However, the best argument drawing on this idea seems compelling only for judgments about what someone has sufficient reason to believe, not judgments about what there is some reason to believe. But a similar dichotomy can be found in the moral context, and seeing why this does not spell doom there helps in the meta-epistemological context too. The chapter concludes by defending a better strategy for defending epistemic expressivism which relies on a specific conception of non-representational ‘direction of fit’.