² `Minimalism and Truth Aptness', Mind 103 (1994) pp. 287-302; page references in [[section]]IV below are to this paper.

³ Paul Horwich, Truth (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) pp. 87-8. Horwich makes it clear that he is not merely proposing to fall back on the idea that ethical judgements do not express beliefs, saying that `the essential character of emotivism might be captured without having to question the existence of ethical propositions, beliefs, assertions, etc.'

⁴ On this point see Simon Blackburn, `Wittgenstein's Irrealism', in J. Brandl & R. Haller (eds.),Wittgenstein: Eine Neubewehrung (Vienna: Holder-Richler-Temsky, 1990) and `Wittgenstein and Minimalism', in Garrett, B. and Mulligan, K. (eds.), Themes From Wittgenstein, Working Papers in Philosophy, No. 4 (Canberra: Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU, 1993) pp. 1-14.

⁵ `Deflationist Theories of Meaning and Content', Mind 103 (1994) pp. 249-85

⁶ The claim isn't merely that mature science needn't have recourse to the term `belief', of course, but that the explanatory needs of science won't require a category that deserves the title `belief'--that there is no such natural kind, as we might put it.

⁷ JOS recognise that the connection between belief and truth-aptness is not so tight as to entitle us to say in general that a sentence is truth-apt if and only if it would normally express a belief. Unusably long truth-apt sentences might violate the `only if' clause, for example, and paradoxical claims that are believed true might violate the `if' clause. Nevertheless, JOS take it that in all the central areas of dispute between cognitivism and non-cognitivism--ethics, conditionals and so on--the central issue for cognitivism is whether the sentences concerned are normally used to express beliefs.

⁸ This is not a failing in JOS's own terms, it should be noted, for they understand minimalism as something close to what we have called insubstantialism. Our point is that there are others in contemporary philosophy who call themselves minimalists, and reject non-cognitivism, whose motivation is closer to quietism.

⁹ Is it correct to call quietism a philosophical position? Certainly, for ordinary practice hardly takes it as non-negotiable that the lover of wisdom cannot overturn ordinary practice. Indeed, isn't it common sense that the wise person knows a whole lot more than common sense?

¹⁰ We shall also be raising a further worry about JOS' approach in [[section]]V.

¹¹ Note that the problem would not arise if (2) and (3) were offered as products of speculative psychology theory, for then there would be some basis for the claim that the folk are simply wrong about (1). It only arises if (2) and (3) are themselves said to be platitudinous.

¹² `Reference Explained Away', The Journal of Philosophy, 81(1984) pp. 469-92.

¹³ Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).

¹⁴ Horwich makes this point in `Gibbard's Theory of Norms', Philosophy and Public Affairs, 22 (1993) 1, pp. 67-78.

¹⁵ Truth , op. cit.

¹⁶ We noted earlier that Horwich himself endorses this compatibility, as well as exemplifying it.

¹⁷ The qualification is needed because as Horwich's case illustrates, insubstantialism about truth is a non-cognitivist position which is doubtfully compatible with quietism about truth.

¹⁸ A referee has suggested that the non-cognitivist might say that the folk application of the truth predicate to ethical claims is full blooded, but relies on a deep error: the error the folk make of thinking that ethical claims have cognitive meaning. Granted, this move is in keeping with the sort of non-cognitivism that we find, for example, among the Positivists. Nevertheless, the main point is untouched: If having cognitive meaning is a matter of being truth-apt, and truth is insubstantial, then there is very little room for the folk to be in error about the cognitive status of any discourse to which folk usage applies the truth predicate, assuming that the truth predicate plays its insubstantial function perfectly well in sentences of that discourse.

¹⁹ At this point JOS themselves rely on the claim that there is `a platitudinous connection between ... truth aptness and belief.' (p. 294) This claimed platitude ought to seem questionable, however, by their own lights. Why? Simply because they themselves maintain that it is questionable whether moral `beliefs' are real beliefs--whether `There are moral beliefs' turns out to be a central platitude, robust under scrutiny--and yet the folk maintain that moral claims can be true and false (and are hence truth-apt). One way to maintain consistency here is allow that moral claims really are truth-apt, and to reject the analytic tie between (real) belief and truth-aptness. JOS's own methodology seems ill equipped to reject this possibility a priori. All parties concede that there is some loose sense of `belief' in which moral claims do express beliefs. Why not say that it is this liberal use of `belief' which is deployed when the folk recognise a connection between belief and truth-aptness? Our point above is that insubstantialism truth about makes any other course implausible. An insubstantial truth predicate is likely to be at home in any discourse to which `belief' applies, strictly or loosely--if truth is insubstantial, truth-aptness comes cheaply.

²⁰ For more on these issues see Huw Price, Facts and the Function of Truth (Basil Blackwell, 1989), and `Semantic minimalism and the Frege point' in S.L. Tsohatzidis, (ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1994).

²¹ Our examples in the previous section all illustrate this point. In seeking to explicate the function of reference talk, normative talk and truth talk, respectively, Brandom, Gibbard and Horwich are not systematising snippets of folk wisdom, but addressing deep issues in socio-linguistic theory.

²² There is a very clear exposition of the program in Jackson's `Armchair Metaphysics', in M. Michael and J. O'Leary-Hawthorne, (eds.), The Place of Philosophy in the Study of the Mind (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994) pp. 23-42. It is also a major theme of Jackson's 1995 John Locke Lectures. See also David Lewis's `Reduction of Mind', in S. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to Philosophy of Mind (Oxford:Blackwell, 1994).

²³ The intended metaphor will be lost on readers unfamiliar with Canberra. Canberra's detractors often charge that as a planned city, and a government town, it lacks the rich diversity of `real' cities. Our thought was that in missing the functional diversity of ordinary linguistic usage, the Canberra Plan makes the same kind of mistake about language.

²⁴ Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, `Moral Functionalism and Moral Motivation', The Philosophical Quarterly, 45(1995) pp. 21-40.

²⁵ This line of thought is pursued at length in connection with talk about meaning in Mark Lance and John O'Leary-Hawthorne,The Grammar of Meaning (forthcoming), and more generally in Huw Price, `Metaphysical pluralism', Journal of Philosophy 89 (1992) pp. 387-409.

²⁶ We would like to thank Michaelis Michael, Graham Oppy, Philip Pettit, Daniel Stoljar and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and discussion.