Jackson and Pettit envisage three chief objections against their view and thus in defence of expressivism. We describe them in turn.
P. Expressing vs Reporting belief:
We can distinguish between expressivism and subjectivism. According to the former, an ethical sentence like ' Euthanasia is wrong' expresses a non-cognitive attitude toward euthanasia, but does not say that the speaker has it. The latter, on the contrary, says that that sentence reports the speaker's non-cognitive attitude toward euthanasia, which implies that euthanasia is the object of some attitude of the speaker's .As Ayer put it this way: " The orthodox subjectivist....his own view is that they express propositions about the speaker's feelings.…show more content… Jackson and Pettit reject the objection by arguing that expressivists fail to understand the distinction between reporting belief and expressing belief. According to expressivism, it is possible to express an attitude without reporting it[i.e.(1)], in the same way it is possible to express a belief without reporting it. But Jackson and Pettit claim that it is not possible to express an attitude without reporting something as well as it is not possible to express a belief without reporting something, because when I express an attitude or a belief I do report the content of that attitude or belief. Their argument runs as…show more content… The sentence 'Snow is white' express my belief that snow is white. Therefore, the sentence 'Snow is white' reports something.
In the case of ethical sentence, the argument is very much similar to the factual sentence.
It is not possible to express an attitude without reporting something, because when I express an attitude I do report the content of that attitude . The sentence 'This is good' express my attitude that this is good. Therefore, the sentence 'This is good' reports
