Shang Lu

This paper argues that solving the problem of Creeping Minimalism by accepting minimalist conceptions of some notions while rejecting others is considerably less stable than it first appears. I begin with the debate over the minimalist conception of belief. By providing general criteria for minimalist conceptions, I argue that there is at least a defensible minimalist conception of belief that does not build in the Humean doctrine. I then extend the discussion to a broader range of notions central to expressivist semantics. I claim that once expressivists accept minimalism in some core cases, there is a genuine pressure to extend it further. This pressure arises from the accommodation of ordinary moral discourse, the family resemblance among minimalist conceptions, the supportive connections among at least some of them, and the broader anti-reificatory strategy that minimalism about truth encourages. The upshot is that accepting minimalism halfway is not impossible, but it is dialectically unstable as a general response to Creeping Minimalism: any proposed stopping-point must be defended by a strong notion-specific justification.

Many meta-ethical theorists have proposed solutions to ‘the problem of Creeping Minimalism’, i.e., the problem that expressivism appears to lose its distinctiveness relative to realism when expressivists adopt minimalism. In this paper, I categorise potential solutions to the problem of Creeping Minimalism into three types: to reject minimalism outright, to accept minimalism in part, and to reinterpret expressivism within a global minimalist semantics. Mainstream solutions in the literature fall into the third category. I argue that those solutions fail for the same reason. That is, the semantics in which they reinterpret expressivism is not minimalist. Those solutions will collapse once we adopt a minimalist approach to essential notions, such as explanation, representation, and truth-making. My conclusion is thus that, so far, mainstream solutions to the problem of Creeping Minimalism by reinterpreting expressivism within a global minimalist semantics have failed, and it is unlikely that a successful solution of the same type will be forthcoming.

This paper argues that moral error theory faces a heavyweight demarcation problem analogous to expressivism’s ‘creeping minimalism’ (Dreier 2004). I propose a framework for meta-theories that diagnoses this internal demarcation failure. Under global minimalism, error theory’s ability to distinguish error-theoretic discourses (e.g., ethics) from success-theoretic ones (e.g., physics) is trivialised. While Tiefensee (2019) claims minimalism reduces error theory to global moral skepticism, I contend that error theory’s substantive demarcation hinges not merely on the categorical falsity of moral claims but on the soundness of its core argument: moral discourse presupposes objective facts (the conceptual claim), which do not exist (the ontological claim). By adopting a feminist-inspired minimalism about objectivity—where objectivity is procedural, tied to discursive practices like public scrutiny—error theorists gain grounds to defend the conceptual claim, which gives moral error theorists reasonable grounds to adopt minimalism. Yet minimalism simultaneously renders the ontological claim false, collapsing the distinction between moral and paradigm realist discourses. Some potential responses like bifurcation and inferentialism to the problem are also considered and critiqued.

Contemporary developments in meta-theory have blurred the boundaries between major positions and, with them, the responsibilities of meta-theorists to sustain substantive demarcations between rival views. The recent debate over the problem of Creeping Minimalism (PCM) vividly illustrates this difficulty. As attempts to solve PCM have appeared to falter, theorists have increasingly disagreed not only about how it should be resolved, but also about whether it is really a serious problem, and if so, for whom. This paper proposes a new conceptual framework of meta-theories to address that broader theoretical and terminological muddle. The framework clarifies the nature of meta-discourses, specifies the purpose and responsibility of meta-theories, and reinterprets PCM accordingly. On the view defended here, principal meta-theories are answerable for sustaining a principled and substantive demarcation between the discourses they treat as realist and anti-realist. PCM is therefore best understood as a heavyweight demarcation problem for expressivism: expressivists must either identify a substantive distinction between expressive and non-expressive discourses that survives minimalist pressure or reject the move to minimalism. Reconsolidating expressivism with realism, or appealing to global expressivism, is not a satisfactory solution.

The general aim of this thesis is to contribute to the discussion about the problem of Creeping Minimalism. The problem, as James Dreier (2004) introduced it, is that moral expressivism seems to lose its distinctiveness from moral realism when expressivists adopt minimalism to vindicate moral language in everyday discourses. In particular, the thesis argues two claims. The first claim is that the problem of Creeping Minimalism has no satisfactory solution in the literature so far, and it is unlikely that a satisfactory solution will be forthcoming. The second claim is that the problem of Creeping Minimalism is an instance of a more general problem, what I call the demarcation problem, for various mainstream meta-theories. The demarcation problem for a meta-theory is the problem that the demarcation made by that meta-theory between so-called ‘realist’ and ‘anti-realist’ discourses is trivialised in a global minimalist semantics. Meta-theories that face the demarcation problem include non-cognitivism, error theory, deflationism, epistemic pessimism, and possibly many more. Responses to the problem of Creeping Minimalism are categorised into three types. First, those that attempt to avoid the problem by rejecting minimalism once and for all; second, those that seek to avoid the problem by only partially accepting minimalism; and third, those that seek to solve the problem by reinterpreting expressivism within a global minimalist semantics. All three types of responses are unsatisfactory, and it is highly unlikely that any of them will eventually lead to a satisfactory solution. The demarcation problem for a meta-theory is lightweight if the triviality of its discriminative power is merely conditional: that is, the demarcation made by the meta-theory is trivial if advocates of that meta-theory adopt a global minimalist semantics. By contrast, a demarcation problem for a meta-theory is heavyweight if its advocates also have sufficient reasons to adopt a global minimalist semantics. I argue that mainstream meta-theories – including non-cognitivism, error theory, deflationism and epistemic pessimism – face at least lightweight demarcation problems, and, moreover, it is highly likely that those demarcation problems are heavyweight.

With the development of artificial intelligence (AI), the landscape of meta-ethics, which has largely centred on human ethics, faces pressures that may significantly reconfigure it. In particular, if future AI systems were to exhibit sufficiently integrated capacities for moral reasoning, moral intentionality, and moral reflection, novel meta-ethical questions would arise concerning what I call ‘AI’s own ethics,’ as distinct from ethical principles merely imposed on AI by human designers. This paper offers a conditional and methodological framework for identifying the questions that would emerge if such AI systems were to arise. On that basis, the paper distinguishes four domains of meta-ethical inquiry in the era of AI: questions about the nature of human ethics from the human perspective; questions about the nature of AI’s own ethics from the human perspective; questions about the nature of human ethics from the AI perspective; and questions about the nature of AI’s own ethics from the AI perspective. The paper then considers how some existing mainstream meta-ethical theories—such as cognitivism and non-cognitivism, error theory and success theory, relativism, and objective realism—might illuminate these domains, while arguing that many familiar human-centred formulations of those theories may not transfer straightforwardly to AI cases without substantial revision. The overall conclusion is that the emergence of AI’s own ethics would place significant pressure on current frameworks and may require substantial refinement, reconstruction, or reconceptualisation.