Any theory claiming that certain utterances have meaning by describing (or purporting to describe) some aspect of reality rather than in various other ways (for example, prescriptivism and emotivism).
In practice the term is confined to ethical utterances. ‘Lying is wrong’ and ‘You ought not to lie’ both purport to state moral facts, though descriptivism leaves it open whether they are reducible to facts of another kind (naturalism, for example).
Source:
R M Hare, ‘Descriptivism’, Proceedings of the British Academy (1963); critical
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 Descriptivism: How Grammar Really Works
- 2.2 The Meaning of 'Ought': Beyond Descriptivism and Expressivism in Metaethics (Oxford Moral Theory)
- 2.3 The Golden Age of Philosophy of Science 1945 to 2000: Logical Reconstructionism, Descriptivism, Normative Naturalism, and Foundationalism
- 2.4 Teaching the History of the English Language (Options for Teaching)
- 2.5 DESCRIPTIVISM Annual Philosophical Lecture, British Academy
- 2.6 TOWARD A STRUCTURAL THEORY OF LITERARY ANALYSIS Prolegomena to Evaluative Descriptivism
- 2.7 The Feeling of Value: Moral Realism Grounded in Phenomenal Consciousness
- 2.8 Kant and the Problem of Self-Knowledge (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy)
- 2.9 Normativity and the Problem of Representation
- 2.10 Wittgenstein and Naturalism (Wittgenstein's Thought and Legacy Book 3)
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