Response-Dependence and Quasi-Realism

Positions that locate the objectivity of value in idealized human responses, or that earn realist-sounding moral talk from antirealist foundations.

Definition

Response-dependence holds that moral properties are constituted by the responses idealized agents would have to objects or actions; quasi-realism is the project of explaining and justifying the apparently realist features of moral language from a projectivist, expressivist starting point.

Scope

This topic groups two related middle-ground projects. Response-dependence (sensibility theory) models moral properties on secondary qualities like colour — real but constitutively tied to the responses of suitable observers. Quasi-realism, Simon Blackburn's program, starts from projectivist expressivism and tries to vindicate the realist surface of moral discourse — talk of truth, facts, knowledge, and mind-independence — without conceding mind-independent moral facts.

Core questions

• Can moral properties be objective while being constituted by human responses?
• Is the analogy between moral qualities and secondary qualities like colour sound?
• Can an expressivist legitimately help themselves to talk of moral truth and moral facts?
• Does quasi-realism collapse into realism, or remain a genuine antirealism?

Key concepts

• secondary qualities
• projectivism
• response-dependence
• the Frege-Geach problem
• earning realist talk

Key theories

Sensibility theory

Moral properties are like secondary qualities: they are genuine features of the world but their identity is fixed by the responses of a suitably sensitive observer, dissolving the dichotomy between objective and subjective.

Quasi-realism

Beginning from projectivism — the idea that we project evaluative attitudes onto the world — Blackburn argues we can earn the right to realist-sounding moral discourse without positing independent moral facts.

History

Response-dependent approaches drew on the Humean idea of projection and on McDowell's and Wiggins's 1980s revival of the secondary-quality analogy. Blackburn, in Spreading the Word (1984) and Essays in Quasi-Realism (1993), developed quasi-realism as a way for the projectivist to mimic the realist's commitments, framing one of the most influential antirealist research programs of the era.

Debates

The Frege-Geach problem

If moral sentences express attitudes rather than state facts, it is unclear how they keep a constant meaning in unasserted contexts such as the antecedents of conditionals; quasi-realism's success is judged largely by its answer.

Whether quasi-realism is stable

Critics argue that once the quasi-realist has earned all the realist's talk of truth and facts, the difference from realism becomes merely verbal; Blackburn replies that the explanatory order remains decisively antirealist.

Key figures

• Simon Blackburn
• John McDowell
• David Wiggins

Seminal works

• blackburn1984
• blackburn1993
• mcdowell1985
• wiggins1987

Frequently asked questions

How is quasi-realism different from straightforward expressivism?

Expressivism gives the basic account of moral judgement as attitude-expression; quasi-realism is the further project of showing that this account can recover the realist-sounding features of moral discourse, so an expressivist may or may not pursue quasi-realism.