Expressivism and the Value of Truth

Expressivism in its most theoretically virtuous forms aspires to be an account of all evaluative claims. In a recent paper, Lynch (2009) has argued that expressivism cannot accommodate claims about the value of truth, since an expressivist account of any normative claim requires a ‘normatively disengaged standpoint’ which is unavailable in the case of truth (one cannot cease to value truth while still being an inquirer). In this paper I argue that Lynch’s objection to expressivism rests on an ambiguity. The expressivist can distinguish between a standpoint that is committed to certain evaluations and a standpoint that employs those evaluations in its explanations.