Expressivism about Expression

Abstract

Expressivism is standardly characterized as the view that (i) the meaning of a sentence should be given in terms of the mental state it expresses and (ii) normative sentences express mental states different from beliefs. The aim of this paper is to clarify what “expressing a mental state” means in (i). I reject a descriptivist characterization of expression according to which expressing a mental state consists in “voicing” it and propose another characterization that amounts to expressivism about expression. Finally, I explore how to flesh out clause (ii) once expression is understood as I propose to.