Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

The interests of metaethicists and philosophers of language overlap at the explanation of normative and evaluative disagreement and agreement.  Tim Sundell recently argued that disputes over e.g. aesthetic value could be entirely explained as metalinguistic negotiations (Sundell 2016). Metalinguistic negotiations (Sundell 2011, Plunkett & Sundell 2013) are supposed to be processes through which interlocutors try to negotiate how best to use a word relative to a context. But these metalinguistic negotiations are limited in their range of application and unable to satisfactorily explain the unifying features of value talk in the variety of domains where it occurs, or so I’ll argue in this talk. A satisfactory comprehensive account of value talk, that covers its diversity of roles in human action, requires stronger commitments than metalinguistic negotiations afford.