Inferential Expressivism and the Negation Problem

This chapter develops a novel solution to the negation version of the Frege–Geach problem by taking up recent insights from the bilateral programme in logic. Bilateralists explain the meaning of negation in terms of a primitive B-type inconsistency involving the attitudes of assent and dissent. Some may demand an explanation of this inconsistency in simpler terms, but here it is argued that bilateralism’s assumptions are no less explanatory than those of A-type semantics that only require a single primitive attitude, but must stipulate inconsistency elsewhere. A version of B-type expressivism called inferential expressivism—a novel semantic framework that characterizes meanings by inferential roles that define which attitudes one can infer from the use of terms—is developed. This framework is applied to normative vocabulary, thereby solving the Frege–Geach problem generally and comprehensively. The chapter includes a semantics for epistemic modals, thereby also explaining normative terms under epistemic modals.